Home Forums Hunting & Shooting BPCR Bullet Nose's How Important Anyways??

The recent thread on chamber pressure and the resulting talk about alloy and some of the problems "I" alluded to about nose slump got me to thinking about this subject. A couple of years ago I had a friend who had a very nice C.Sharps Highwall in 40-65. He was having a hell of a time getting this little guy to shot. bullets where tumbling he had no accuracy and it looked like a dud of a rifle. I just hate to see anyone give up on a rifle, so I took it with the promise i would try and get it to shoot. I started by doing a little research. This research turned out to actually solve the problem. Turns out that John Softstall (SP) the owner of C.Sharps always unless other wise instructed by the buyer, installed an 18 twist Badger Barrel in all of his 40-65's. The bullet my friend was shooting was a Paul Jones Spitzer at 422 grns. This bullet was simple to long to stablize in that 18 twist barrel.

Now along about this time I learned that at one time years ago Paul Jones made a dozen or so moulds for a very strange BPCR bullet. This bullet is known as the "Grappe Transonic" it is a strange looking thing and I will try and explan the profil. Pictur a Coke Bottle the old kind, the Grappe looked something like that in profile. it is a spitzer with a very long nose coming up like a nose cone and then coming to a needle point, this needle point is something like 1/4 to 5/16ths or so long kinda like the neck of one of those old coke bottles.

Paul Jones no longer makes this mould and in talking to him he damn sure wasn't going to make anymore of them. Paul is kinda a funny guy, he is probably the most "Libereal" shooter on the planet. Believes that the sun rises and sets in the Democratic Party. He talks at length about how he doesn't make a cent on a mould and expects to go broke at any min. He makes only moulds for guys like you and me that he wants to make for us. And yet there are other folks like Dan Theadore another Libereal that he will bend over backwards for. With Paul its his way or the highway. I must add that he also makes the best damn mould I have ever cast with. After some coniveing on my part i finally was able to locate and buy one of those dozen moulds Paul had made. This little bullet was pretty short and weighed 374 grns cast from 30-1 alloy. It really did turn that 18 twist 40 caliber rifle on, and I shot many, many groups with it at 500 meters in the 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 inch size. One day i was shooting this thing refining the load before I returned the rifle to the owner. I wondered just how imprtant is that long needle nose? So I took a pair of diagonal cutters and snipped a dozen of the noses off. Funny thing was it made no difference what so ever in the impact. those modified Grappes shot right into the group I had going. Now there is no way any of those dozen where anywhere snipped at exactly the same spot, or did they weigh any where near the same after being modified. We all know that the base is the steering end of the bullet, but please surely the nose is supposed to have something to with it. Isn't it?

Gunny

Gunny,

Years ago in my mispent youth my time and mind were both consumed by reading the fat, yellow, Herter's catalogs. Their answer to "the single greatest bullet available on earth" was a design called the "Wasp Waist". It was a jacketed bullet available in numerous calibers for which the likes have yet to be seen again. Your Paul Jones bullet mould story brought this buried tidbit from the dark of my wornout memory.

Gunny, I'm not familiar with the design you describe but your results with the pruning job do not surpise that much. Most bullets will suffer damage to the nose with small effect on accuracy, though bullet bases damage be another critter entirely. We in the shooting fraternity that seek accuracy oft get lost in the minutae of perfection, and lose sight of larger facts. An example might be relatively large discrepancies in powder charge having little influence in accuracy at shorter distances. I think that is especially true of black powder shooting. I define shorter as mebbe 300 yards, perhaps longer or shorter depending on your mileage. More importantly in the case of your help for your friend, was the use of a design I assume was shorter in the main, needle point not withstanding. Aerodynamic moments occur where there is something to act on, the long slender point you describe sounding a bit wispy to generate much issue there. That part trimmed the bullet may have had more conventional shape, and weighed....350 grains or so? I imagine the remains being perhaps a 1/4 to 1/3" shorter than the bullets your friend had failed with? Ignoring the trim job it would perhaps serve as the point of real comparison between the successful bullet and the also ran. Important minutae that.

I believe it was Crossfire that said in one of the other posts something about the comparitive advantage of over stabilizing vs. understabilizing...if you have to make a choice, you're better off with more turns per inch in the rifling, unless you are very precisely certain of your research. I've heard that some who pursue the Art of Bugholism sometimes build the gun around the bullet rather than search for a bullet their gun will shoot. Seems counter-intuitive I suppose but from a pure perspective of engineering it makes great sense. The reverse approach explains perhaps why there are many bullets out there, clothed in copper, that have odd weights about them. The 7mm 154 gr, or the 139 grain, or the myriad of BR bullets in 6mm like 68 grains, or 62. Bullet makers take stock of predominate twist rates and after analyzing their bullet material specs. build to a specific weight for form that yields a length most compatible for that twist. Or so I think...

I recall doing the same thing <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" /> 'wasp waist' bullet and all! (could it be we have 'dated' ourselves) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I should add after a bit more thought, bullet noses do have an effect, but primarily as it relates to drag, and not a lot more so far as exterior ballistics. Drag at supersonic velocities is lessened quite a bit by sharp pointy noses, but is far less influence at subsonic velocity. It(nose profile) accounts for something around 70% or more of the drag coefficient above Mach 1. Shank contributes about 2%, the base contributing the balance, difference between flat base and typical boat tail about 7% IIRC. These percentages are greatly influenced by velocity, that being important at one speed not being of substantial import at others. In the world of black powder bullets the significance of form is of much less importance that to high velocity "modern" guns and bullets. Where nose deformation shows influence is in small variations of BC, the effects more telling at long range than short. One reason for this is that in rounder nose profiles there is a region of stagnation in front of the bullet...very small it is though. Another is that weight has more influence on BC than form for a given caliber.

DD...............

"I've heard that some who pursue the Art of Bugholism sometimes build the gun around the bullet rather than search for a bullet their gun will shoot. "

Yup, been dere, dun dat............80gr SMK, .223, had Morrison, cut me an 8 twist, and dedicated that whole build , to that bullet...and the than new " moly Coating".....was fortunate, Roger Johnston was alive than, and walked me through the mine field. It's been set back twice, and throat's an alligator now....it'll still hold 4.75" at 600, and I'll shoot it until it quits entirely.

Joe, ................if i'm not mistaken , somewhere in my packed away plunder is an original Herter's cat...........wherein old Jacque is typically B. S.'ing the troops ( he was a pretty good hand at that).......and made the wild claim that through some scientific breakthrough ( black magic?) ................the wasp waist slug actually ACCELERATED, in flight. He was quite the character, no?

Have to see if I can find that..........

Coffee break's over, back on yer' heads.

GTC

Windcutter,

I had forgotten all about the "Wasp Waist" Herters bullet until you mentioned it. Great memory! The BS in those old yellow catalogues was in the Ultra Magnum class for sure. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

NEI makes molds for these I believe
Brent

Gents and Madams,

NEI does list these "Wasp Waist" cast bullet moulds.

1. #58A in .308 diameter.
2. #215C in .410 diameter.
3. #347A & B in .458 diameter.

The NEI website has been modified since my last visit. Consequently the copied catalog pages with mould pictures are dim to say the least.

It would certainly be interesting to hear some first hand experience with these "Wasp Waist" cast bullets in both .40 and .45 caliber. Obviously there has to be some trapped air around the waist of the bullet while it travels down/out the barrel? Brings to mind whether or not the bullet fully slumps to fill the void area or is held in a "Wasp Waist" configuration by air?

Surely some industrious bullet caster has tried these bullet moulds? Is that person in our midst?

ShortStake aka Windcutter

As per the title / subject of the thread.............the shape of the nose can be vital, if your objective is to freak out unsuspecting customers, at your local "Public" Range.

I avoid ours like the plague, and haunt the 500 m. competition end of the facility.

Try this sometime ,though........take a big BP slug, set it up in a collet, or V block set up, and bore a hole through it transversely, at an angle........'bout 2:00 down to 4:00 seems about right. ( don't expect to hit any thing with this monstrosity now, and be really sure that you've got a large impact area available)....................

Load this up, in a regular format........

On firing it will fly with a fair approximation of all the banshees in hell turned loose at once <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />, and I mean from the muzlle, all the way out to POI.

I call 'em my " Screamers".......... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

GTC <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

I'm Cleaning up my keyboard now...what moved you to that discovery if I may be so bold as to inquire? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Well, I was reading a book named " The Bloody Border"...and therin got the inside skinny on the exploits of one Giuseppe Garibaldi, during the Revolucion'......That whole mess was so hectic, and complicated the people fighting it couldn't keep track of what was going on.........I can't remember if he was fighting with Rurales, Federales,Huerta, Caranza, Zapata,....or which of the rest. He found himself, and his brigade in a captured Railroad town....Chihuahua, somewhere's........in the big maintainance shop, he bored out a coupla smoothbore tubes out of locomotive axles and they cobbled up a coupla carraiges, out of oxcart parts........ being short of time, made projos up out of pieces of pipe, ....... these barn jobs were ML's, and he did not go into any great detail about base wads, payloads, or such......but is quoted as saying that holes in some of these pipes gave them an unearthly shreik in flight.....terrifying the opposition, but that's all, as they couldn't hit squat with 'em otherwise.
.................There it is, and I just had to try it........

'Nother neat Arty yarn , from that debacle (Mexican Revolution) , is the story of the " Blue Whistler".......................anybody heard that one?

GTC

Good one sir, and I am inspired to live yet another day! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />