Time to cast,

[Don McDowell]

You can probably slide by with as much as a 3 grain spread if the bases are all good, and if the lube grooves are filled on a greaser.
But with good casting technique holding to a 1 gr spread, with .5 +- from the median weight , with the bulk of a run of 100 or so right on the median weight is pretty doable.
It will mostly come down to what gives you piece of mind when you're on the line and going for score. Confidence in your ammunition and knowing it's as good as it can be helps shoot better scores, providing the wind and mirage gods are going to allow that on any given day.

[Distant Thunder]

I had time today to dig up the CAD drawing for what I call my Lodi bullet, mold #EPP 4. This is the bullet I have used in my .45-90 at 1.460" long and more recently at 1.435" long in my .45-70. I believe that every Creedmoor match I have won at Lodi with the exception of the 1st one in 2009 was won using this bullet or the earlier mold, #EPP 3, which casts an identical bullet to this one.

The nose profile is an elliptical identical to the prolate mold I cut for Brent Danielson, but I modified mine by capping the tip with a .125" radius and lengthening the shank a little. I originally modified the design in part to increase the weight in a length that would work in my 18-twist barrels, but it also improves the transonic performance. When I shortened it for my .45-70 and the lower velocity, 1296 fps, compared to my .45-90, 1423 fps, I had to give up the extra shank length it had, that did not seem to hurt the performance any. I much prefer the nose be 40 to 43% of the OAL and this bullet ended up at 49%, but it works anyway.

The only way I know to describe the ellipse that I used for this bullet, and Brent's prolate, is with a major and minor axis and that is 1.500" x .442". The other way I could describe it would be with a diameter and an angle, but that doesn't seem to apply here in my mind. Brent called this form a 411 prolate, but I do not know what that means.

The only difference between a prolate and an ellipse is the prolate refers to the 3-D form and ellipse refers to the 2-D form.