Tooling marks on brand new "match grade" bullets

Goose25

Goose25

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I just bought 2 boxes of 250rounds of 6.5mm 140gr Nosler Custom Competition (supposedly match grade) bullets today. Got home open the box minutes ago and WTF, every single one of them has tooling marks on the bullets ogive. I'm not sure what to do about this.:mad:

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The 69 BTHP's I load in my 1 in 8" twist .223 work great. Looks like they might be where the jacket is thinned to close properly. Don't know what to say but mine are working great.
 
Those aren't tooling marks. They're grooves in the jacket to let 'em open better. Don't wory about the points being uneven. The point doesn't matter. The base does.
 
I just checked my 6.5mm 140's and they look the same. Accurate regardless

my 22 cal 77gr dont show these marks.......also accurate
 
As long as it's uniform, any series of marks on a projectile shouldn't be an issue... if it's imbalanced, then I'd say you're hooped!

Looks fine to me, as Jerry said as well.

-M
 
If you examine most any bullet close enough you will find similar marks , they are there from the jacket material being "folded" when forced into the point form die when being swaged! if advertised as match they should be just fine as match grade and will shoot as good as your rifle and load will allow!
 
Goose25 said:
do yours look like that also?
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Exactly like the pics of his. I've weighed a bunch and the quality control is good enough unless you are an unlimited match shooter with a 75lb bolted to the bench machine. And gophers go pop ok too! Not the KA-BLAM of a V-Max or Grenade but dead is dead.
 
mysticplayer said:
This is normal and common to most match bullets.

It is part of the manf process and will shoot just fine.

Jerry
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Hey, if Jerry says they're normal, then I have nothing to worry about, he's my internet mentor afterall. Guess I got my panties in a bunch for nothing.:redface:

For those of you who are using these, how have they performed? These are a steal at $78/250 rounds.
 
I just had a look at my Nosler bullets I have been using and they seem to have these tooling marks on them as well, I switched to A-max becase of two things uniformity of the tip and the fact they dont have these marks on them... the Noslers even though they claim to be high quality match have alot of imperfections... the tips all are not the same... they have these tooling marks which other manufactures dont like Hornady Sierra and Berger...

I have ran some of my Noslers thur a tip uniformer... I have yet to shoot them to see if it makes any difference at all... I am guessing because I made the tip bigger they will have more drag and drop.

Regardless the Nosler Custom Competition bullet line for me has not shot worse then 1 MOA during testing out of a basic remington 700 nothing special... even with these un-uniform tips and tooling marks they are still a great bullet and pretty good value.

Mirror finish .308 168 A-Max its about a perfect is a bullet can get physically... I didn't weigh them or anything.
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.308 168 Nosler Custom Competition notice the tip isn't exactly perfect. This Nosler doesn't have those tooling marks for some reason... maybe they changed out the tip forming die...
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On the right you can see the one I ran thru the tip uniformer.
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.308 Nosler 168 with tooling marks, uniformed tip
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Here they all are waiting to be tested... tiped one on the left, normal in the middle and A-Max to the right :)
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I've been seeing those lines on bullets since the '80s. Remington factory ammo had them and I noticed my Hornady bullets had them too back then. I did some research and found out that in those years Hornady were the suppliers for the entire Remington Extended Range line. The .280 I used back then was accurate enough and flopped a lot of game. No problems. Some accuracy buffs here are way over thinking this game. Develop your shooting skills and let the bullet makers worry about their quality. If it sucked they woudn't sell would they?
 
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