Meplat Trimming and bullet pointing

[SND]

The change in weight from removing a few thousands to even the tip, is insignificant, .02-.04gr. Pointing then makes it a bit longer again.
Weight sort after that's all done anyhow, no different than sorting regular bullets.

 

[Mystic Precision]

As an OCD person who has not seen or done this I have to ask;
If you are trimming the bullet are you not removing mass?
And I assume some bullets require more trimming than others so how do you equalize the mass between bullets?
Personally I can't wait for my skill set to be at the point where this would be a concern, lol...

The amount of mass removed in trimming is irrelevant to the overall mass of the bullet. The goal is to make the aerodynamic drag the same.... this can vary if the nose size and shape varies enough.

Older Lapua Scenars have quite open tips and see the biggest gains in pointing. The improvement is there for bullets not already optimised at the factory.

So did Sierra MK's until Sierra started pointing at the factory. now Nosler RDF are so pointy, there is no gain.. in fact, I don't think we at home can even point as sharp.

I would put my energies elsewhere now.

Jerry

 

[freedomintheskies]

over the speed of sound you throw that out, look at subsonic aircraft vs super sonic aircraft. 747 and an f/18 for example. the meplat is there for a few reasons, but mostly because of the handling before it starts traveling down the barrel. firstly, its easier to make a fairly consistant meplat in a production environment than a perfectly centered sharp point. if the point is out of center, the bullet wont fly consistantly. next they have to ship it, so it has to survive packaging and transport which is hard with a soft copper or lead point.

finally, it might have to survive being banged around in a magazine in a semi auto then rammed up a feed ramp before firing. a bit of inconsistancy on a meplat is much less detrimental than a slightly out of center sharp point.

Funny you should mention F-18 vs. 747.
A number of years ago, I was part of a test on supersonic aircraft where we were doing the evaluation of new ***** ******* . It was determined during the testing that if there was any damage or inconsistency with the erosion cap on the radome (pointy end) of the aircraft, a flat spin would be induced by the disrupted airflow over the nose of the aircraft in high alpha (the angle of the nose vs airflow) situations. In comparison, the aircraft with perfect erosion caps would stall and fall like a leaf instead of entering an increasingly violent yaw (flat spin).

Which means: the more perfect the point, the better flight characteristics. The question is whether or not the low AOA (angle of attack) experienced by a bullet in flight will cause a noticeable amount of inaccuracy.

 

[Boomer]

According to Nathan Foster, meplat trimming can be an advantage for the long range hunter. A trimmed meplat increases the frontal area of the hollow point, thereby increasing the terminal performance of a bullet not necessarily intended to displace tissue. Annealing the bullet, if the jacket is hard, further increases it's ability to deform at transonic impact velocities.