Thread: Ok you clever buggers...

I'm a cheapskate deep and dyed..and I need some bright ideas.

I have 44 calibre 240gn HRBC coated projectiles Round Nose, flat pointed.

I use them for hunting up to that magic 120m mark..well yeah a little more sometimes but mostly less than that.

While the sheer weight of the projectile and its flat point do a good job dropping things, I'd like to enhance that a little by drilling the nose to make either a cup point or a hollow point if I go a bit deeper.

Photo shows 2 with original FP and 5 with rough as guts approximations of cup points, hand done with my trusty Ryobi drill held in right hand and a loaded cartridge held in a press and in a lightly clamped Lee Factory Crimp Die. This holds the cartridge firmly and presents the nose of the projectile just under the top of the die. I then peer down the die and attempt to locate the drill tip in the center of the flat tip. Yeah. You can see how well that works out. Then on the bench I do a bit of coarse adjustment. I'm guessing these will still be accurate minute-of-dinner plate at 100m but would like to do a bit better than that.

What would be very cool is a bright idea for a jig that would
1. Hold the bullet securely on its own without deforming it
2. Auto centre the drill bit
3. Have an adjustable drill setting

I'm prepared to buy a small bench drill press as a starting point which should give me centering and depth setting capability. And I need one of those tools anyway

But how to hold the bullet?

If I can work with bullets instead of loaded cartridges I can check/verify finished projectile weight.

Any bright ideas? Including or other than a drill press? And no, I don't want to go buy Hornady XTPs thks.