New bullet

[Don McDowell]

After several years of messing with the nose pour adjustable dual diameter bullet from Brooks for the 45's I finally pulled the trigger and ordered on with a couple of slight changes in a fixed base pour.
Have a bunch cast and wrapped will load a few and test fire tomorrow.

[Distant Thunder]

Don,

Being a not so recovering mold-aholic I need more information.
Weight?
Diameters?
Length?
Alloy?
Paper?

It sure is a good looking bullet and while I don't need one in .45 I can't help but think how such a good looking bullet would look even better sticking out of a .44-77 case!

I really like that you had it made with a longish base diameter requiring a bit deeper seating which is working well with bore PPBs in my .44-77. I would think a 2-D bullet would work even better seated in about .250 to .300".

I have some 2-D ellipticals loaded that are seated deeper that I hope to test for the first time this coming weekend at a gong match at 500 yards. If they look good there I'll load more to try at a mid range paper match in August.

These 2-D bullets are seated deeper than they are designed to be and if they shoot well I'll lengthen the base diameter in the mold to get the powder charge/compression/seating depth that will work best for Creedmoor. Somewhere between 82 and 85 grains of 1 1/2 Swiss would be about ideal for a 520-ish grain .44 caliber PPB.

[Don McDowell]

This may well have been an exercise in spending money on another mould. LOL
The nose pour adjustable that is shooting so extremely well in several of my rifles, and like crap in some others, is working very well with a base that is .6 inches long. And it has a sharp transition from the base to the nose.
This one I had him keep the base to .5, and increased the diameter .001, with about a 10 degree transition.
Both of my dual diameter 44's are nose pour so the base length can change a lot. LOL. Both shoot extremely well. But yes the tempatation to have Brooks make a fixed length base pour with that original postel nose is strong.. The problem I have is trying to figure out if the length should be a compromise that will shoot in both the 19 twist Shiloh barrel and the 17 twist in the 44 strait or just for one or the other..

[Randy Bohannon]

You know you should do one for each rifle, other wise you end up with three moulds. One which is not perfect for either rifle but does ok.

[Don McDowell]

Yeh but that would be sort of boring.

[Distant Thunder]

I think if you keep the nose on the short side of things that you can stretch the OAL a bit and still be pretty well stabilized in the 19-twist and especially if you don't shoot it too far from the 19. It would be very well stabilized in the 17-twist and would shoot as far as you would want. Exactly what length you could get away with I'm not sure but I think that it could be estimated fairly easily.

If the nose length was adjusted to be say 40% of the OAL and still maintain that original looking profile the length might be stretched to 1.350" or maybe even 1.400" and have good stability out to 600 yards in a 19-twist. The problem is that molds are not cheap and trial and error can get expensive very quickly.

When I developed my 18-twist 2-D .40 caliber PP bullet I kept the nose a bit on the short side and a bit on the fat side and that worked out very well. I had an old nose pour adjustable mold that was originally made with a longish tapered nose that I used as a Guinea pig. It never really shot well as made so I machined it to have a shorter nose without the taper and also converted it to 2-D. Once I had a good idea of what length I could stabilize in my 18-twist and what length of base diameter worked best for the long freebore in that rifle I went ahead and cut a new mold at a fixed length and used my developed dimensions, diameters and lengths, from the adjustable mold.

Unfortunately I no longer have the access to the machines that I did back then. I still think I could come up with the design and length that would work in my 17 twist using molds I have with a minimum of machining and testing to get good results.

That same process could be used to develop a bullet that would work in both a 19 and 17-twist.

You give up some BC in designing a bullet this way, but an accurate bullet with a lower BC is not the worst thing in the world. You just have to turn the knobs a little more and shoot enough to know how much to turn them.

It would be an interesting experiment to see how well my little .40 caliber ppb shoots in a 16-twist rifle. I may have to talk to Arnie and see if he would be able to run some of those through his 16-twist rifle and see how they do. I'm guessing they would shoot very well and even might surprise us with how far they would shoot well.

[Don McDowell]

I've been thru the 1.35 thing in the 44-77, it will hold well to 800 and if the conditions are just right will do 1000. Problems crop up rapidly in cross winds after 600. Holding to 1.3 in the 19 twist will solve a bunch of problems beyond the 600 yard line.

[Distant Thunder]

Randy,

The only problem I have with your thought is that we can learn a lot by finding out what doesn't work so well and not by just proving what we already know works well.

[Randy Bohannon]

Makes sense, I’ll shut up and learn.

[Distant Thunder]

Randy,

I never meant you had shut up!

Your point that optimal performance from both twist rates would require two different bullets is valid. I was just saying that with one bullet it might be possible to get very good performance from both twist rates if you favor the slower twist more when considering the length of the bullet and that you might be surprised how well the shorter bullet does in the faster rate.

Any time you design a bullet to work in two different rifles there will have to be some compromise, more noticeably when working with two twist rates. One size does not fit all!