Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting Lapua Scenars 155 .308 differences?

I recently bought another 1k of these to resupply as they shoot great and seem to do seriously good work on the 2 antelope and 2 deer on which I have tried them.
I was organizing the bench and pulled one of the older ones out and comparing it to one of the new ones and noticed the opening at the tip was quite different?
Any ideas what impact this will have, if any?

Sacrifice one of each and let us know what you see.

At first blush I'd speculate it will lower the B.C.

Better expansion on animals....

I should clarify, the wider hole is from the older set that I have. No idea the age of the new set I got here.
With the wider opening, I shot an antelope and while she ran 15-20 yds, her heart was split in half. I found the tip of the bullet in her hide. The tip was darn near perfect.
The other three animals I have killed with them have a gaping hole on the off side and either fall down dead or run a few before falling down dead. Shots were 185, 225, and 290.
The tip I recovered was about 150.

When you say the tip was near perfect, what do you mean?

Do you mean it looked like new, or that it was perfectly expanded?

Looked like new

So the bullet did not expand at all?

Guessing it expanded some as her heart and insides were a mess. Don't know where the bottom of the bullet went, the tip was intact and looked as if it had been twisted off. Wish I hadn't given it to my daughters who dropped it in the fields of WY never to be found again.

Scenars have a large hollow cavity at the tip, they're designed that way to make the bullet longer to increase the BC.

The hollow tip is just a thin piece of copper with no support so if it snaps off the now exposed lead and copper jacketed body of the bullet can expand and penetrate.

Once the bullet hits the target the tip did it's job getting the bullet there.

However it works, as long as it works it's all good.

It would be nice if Lapua made a 140 Scenar in .284.

I have seen ScenarShooter's pics of beaucoup animals having fallen to Scenars.

Two questions:

1) Is there any reason to believe that the Hornady ELD-X's will perform any better terminally on game, and

2) Are the Scenars as a rule more accurate than the ELD-X or are they comparable?

Having shot both the 155 scenar and 200gr ELD-X in 4 different rifles, the scenar has proved the more consistently accurate bullet for me. YMMV

I recently purchased 1K 155g Lapua Scenars and mine too have a significantly enlarged tip opening which will likely yield a lower BC. I have a pending inquiry into the dealer rep, but things are moving really slow.

Pain in the ass to gather the DOPE all over again.

The smaller open tip will improve BC enough to witness a noticeable difference of a few inches at 1000 yards.

Shooting 5 rounds each of the same load using both bullets at a 600 yard target on a calm day should be enough to document the change in BC.

I talked to Kevin at Nammo/Lapua. He is sending my pics and lot numbers to Finland to see what kind of tolerances they have or should have.
The one opening is ~.0028
The wider opening is .0052
Not quite twice as wide.
I'll report back what I learn. I have a bunch of the narrow openings loaded and they shoot well. May go try a deer with them on December 1

I've been waiting on a response from Kevin for several months. Hopefully we'll hear back soon. If this is an indication of Lapua's QC heading into 2017, I think I'm done with Lapua.

Given the staunch competition in the BC department, and recent offerings from Hornady you would think Lapua would be doing everything possible to improve BC.

I had the same thing a few years ago. I bought a new 1000 count box and the hollow point was a substantially different size. I'm thinking about trying the 155 L's next time. Has anyone tried the L's on game? What do you guys think of the newer L's in general?

Bb

Bb,

I've only used the 6.5 136 L's on a quantity of one (1) antelope. At 234 or 235 yards, it blew through both shoulders no problem. Should have used them again last fall but went with the 130 VLD. It worked the same...

I'm getting ready to buy some 155's so interested in hearing results. The regular 155 and the L have the same BC.

It appears that Lapua's QC has gone to [bleep]. Lapua has been unwilling to explain the deficiencies, or correct the problems. This will be the last Lapua bullets I buy. Zero response from Lapua's Rep.

I haven't wasted any money on the ELD-X. (plastic tips on all other bullets melt in flight - gimme a break)

In my custom M700 .264 Win Mag (1:9) any my Tikka T3 .260 (1:8) the 140 A-Max simply couldn't hang with the 139 Scenar in the accuracy dep't.

Well yea....the tips are melting....grin

Tip degradation is a fact. It isn't saying that the tip "melts" and there is nothing left, it's saying the the tip is slightly reduced and affecting potential BC.





DELGUE,

The ELD-X is a very different performing bullet than Scenars. In general Scenars will produce a narrower yet slightly deeper wound channel. ELD-X will produce a wider yet slightly shallower wound channel.

I updated my copy of Oehler's Ballistic Explorer last week and discovered it now includes Lapua custom drag functions, which were developed using Doppler radar. Lapua also publishes a G7 BC of 0.230 for their 0.308 155g Scenar. Another new tool in Ballistic Explorer is the drag analyzer.



The custom drag function is in green with G7 in red. The two plots match up well between 2600 and 1600 fps, but outside that range G7 shows more drag. Still, even with a muzzle velocity of 3200 fps there's only 4 inches difference in drop at 1000 yards.

There's over 50 custom drag functions, and I've only played around a bit, but found that some bullets don't match well with either G1 or G7, at least not at long range.

OK, so I traded for 250 of the .308 155 scenars from another member. I am seeing the same thing as the OP - some of them have a smaller opening.

More interesting, the smaller opening tipped bullets have a different COAL when loaded with the same seating die as compared to the larger opening ones:

Larger opening: 2.790"
Smaller opening: 2.815"

Anyone else see this problem?

Next step is to test them...

Kimber7,
It's been my experience these 155 Scenars are very forgiving and non-picky with seating depth variances.