Sorting older style bullets from a newer style.

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RichardSlinger

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I've got several boxes of 154gr spire points and as I understand it, the 154gr bullet was changed a few times over the years.
I'm not entirely sure what all the changes were other than the cannelure was moved a bit forward on some.

I'm not sure if I accidentally mixed them up or if I bought them like this off the EE but I've got a big bloody balls-up on my hands.
Anyone have a clever idea for sorting them all out ? (Other than the obvious cannelure not in the same place)
 
Now you have me worried, because I did not know about those changes made! I had been building up a stash for my various 7mm - most particularly for the 7x61 S&H - buddy took a moose with that bullet from his 7x61 S&H with single shot, so kinda made me want to try some for myself. I have one older Hornady box of 100 that is sealed - box has numerous white "Hornady" at an angle for a design. Also, a newer opened box - same part number - my note says it contains 140 bullets - so is mixed - is the newer box with a sectioned Interlock picture on top. I found two 7mm 154 grain with boat tail in the open box - they have cannelure, so not sure what they are. A third box is 7mm 154 Interbond - also opened - they appear all boat tail, with no cannelure.
 
Sorting yours. Not sure there is any way to do that except handle and inspect one-by-one. Would look for things like how the exposed lead tip formed - is it same or different, perhaps over all length of the bullet and shape of the ogive? So long as all weigh 154 grain, not real certain how to distinguish one version from another?

I had similar with 180 grain 30 caliber Grand Slam - originals were made with soft front and hard rear core, then manufacture of them was changed to only one core. I did not know that - so 11 x "old" boxes, and 4 x "new" boxes. Only thing I can go on is that visually one version has two cannelure grooves and the other version only has one cannelure. The limit that I can sort them, I think?
 
I ended up sorting those that were obviously different by the position of the cannelure.
Then used the Hornady oal length gauge to make sure the ogives were all in the same place.
Tedious but I now have them sorted I believe.
 
Hornady did that years ago with their 270/130gr Inter-locks supposedly because Win 70 FWTs had short throats.I just seated them to the same OAL ignoring the cannelure and they shot fine.
 
I suppose like most reloading things - have to try to see what works in your rifle? I have never crimped a center-fire jacketed bullet, so presence or absence of a cannelure was never an issue for me - good to hear that maybe the location of that cannelure does not affect the performance. I thought that I was building up a stash of "old time" moose capable 7mm bullets - maybe I still have that!!!
 
If you want to dump little boxes of bullets into a big box, only combine bullets of the same Lot#. The machines that make the bullets get new dies every 100,000 bullets or so, and sometime they even make a small change in the dimensions, or jacket thickness or lead alloy, so the difference between Lots can be quite significant.
 
Ganderite - thanks for that - sort of - I just today happily received 4 boxes of 100 x Sierra #2156 PALMA bullets - thought that I was "golden" - frack!!! - three different lot numbers among four boxes!!! I guess I can use that to blame, instead of 65 year old eyes, on the PALMA iron sighted rifles that I want to try!!!! Not that I can read wind or mirage worth a crap anyways, but need to line up the "reasons" for the inevitable results ...
 
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