Well, there is no debate.... I have no life
They are out of business cause their product was never deemed to be consistently accurate. And I am sure a bunch of other internal issues.
Being able to produce a solid lathe turned (machined turned) bullet would be great if performance could be figured out. Saves all the headaches of sourcing jackets, forming dies and such.
Talking to machinists, the ability to hold tolerances we demand on a spinning machine is far more difficult then I thought but if someone has the tools and skills to figure it out, there is a huge market.
AFAIK, other companies around the world making or trying to make lathe turned bullets have not really been all that successful. The larger bores seems to have had better luck with 50BMG shooters doing ok with lathe turned bullets.
But then, how accurate are they compared to small bore?
I think some are trying to make their product too extreme and hoping that super high BC will sell. The aerodynamics of a solid projectile vs the jacketed/cored bullet has to be better examined. A solid bullet just doesn't balance out the same so maybe a radically different shape is needed to make it all work.
A dream project for me when I am retired and have buckets of money
Jerry
Well, there is no debate.... I have no life
They are out of business cause their product was never deemed to be consistently accurate. And I am sure a bunch of other internal issues.
Being able to produce a solid lathe turned (machined turned) bullet would be great if performance could be figured out. Saves all the headaches of sourcing jackets, forming dies and such.
Talking to machinists, the ability to hold tolerances we demand on a spinning machine is far more difficult then I thought but if someone has the tools and skills to figure it out, there is a huge market.
AFAIK, other companies around the world making or trying to make lathe turned bullets have not really been all that successful. The larger bores seems to have had better luck with 50BMG shooters doing ok with lathe turned bullets.
But then, how accurate are they compared to small bore?
I think some are trying to make their product too extreme and hoping that super high BC will sell. The aerodynamics of a solid projectile vs the jacketed/cored bullet has to be better examined. A solid bullet just doesn't balance out the same so maybe a radically different shape is needed to make it all work.
A dream project for me when I am retired and have buckets of money
Jerry
I've been thinking of eventually turning some bullets as well just to try personally, but cost effectiveness is definitely a big issue for anyone who wants to do that as a business. Way I see it the manufacturing costs would leave no room for dealer mark up and require direct sale at a slight premium, which usually means fairly small market, and even so much of the profit in such a set up would come from the scrap dealer.
Making them accurately and QC isn't that big an issue in manufacturing terms, there's tooling that will go all day or all week on copper or brass and parts done by the million every year to tolerances much more accurate than a bullet needs.
It's just paying for it making bullets that is nearly impossible.
I remember those...was LR not part of the original Chey Tac group way back when??
For target projectiles they need to be quite precise a bad surface finish will do it, as will slightly to much material left on. Will change the weight and the pressure behind it after fired.
As I said, nothing complicated about it in terms of manufacturing so long as the ROI is there. It's done 24/7/365 on much harder materials to microns, I can guarantee you that liquid nitrogen and changing tip every part has no place in it, and copper finishes great. But I'm not gonna get into a whole study on this on here, no point.
It would be a much harder task to convince people to pay the premium price when the bullets currently available are already shooting so accurate/consistently. There's enough people debating between a $39 box of bullets vs a $41 one as it is, let alone 3-4X that for a potential ballistic gain that only a select few could ever notice or have use for at very long range, and those shooters are generally already putting them all in the V bull anyway.
Then you get a few people who try them out in some factory rifles with no set/controlled parameters for a worthy comparison who then blog on the net about how those bullets aren't worth anything(as has happened with many other things), and that can quickly hurt an investment.
Bullets currently available are far from the weak point in my shooting, though I'll eventually turn some for myself for the fun of it. I was repointing the meplat of bullets on the lathe, but after a few hundred couldn't even see a difference from that, we need a 1000yard indoor range
![]()