Is this book still in the works or is it a closed proposition?

Regards,
Eric

Never finished it.

A stroke and a plethora of surgeries helped a couple of computer crashes pretty much put the quietus on it. I was (emphasize past tense) working on no fewer than sixteen books at one time, and had decided not to bother with several others. Disabilities and setbacks scuttled all but three.

Now I'm not at all confident that the three that I'm still working on will ever be published.

Thanks for asking! Wish I could give you a better report. Life really sucks, some times � especially when one's sun is setting.

I appreciate the update especially from the source himself. I have your "Designing and Forming Custom Cartridges" and have been very pleased with the book. I believe it is a standard that will be hard for others to surpass.

Thanks for all of your efforts and for sharing your knowledge with us.

Eric

Thanks!

Homer Powley and Ken Waters liked it all right, so I guess that it'll do until something better comes along.

I'm thinking � but not very hard right now � of doing-up a Campfire piece on the matter of properly, intelligently designing a rifle cartridge. It's a formidable matter that involves careful consideration of basic interior ballistics � worlds more than simply saying "neck a .338 Whizzflinger down to .224 with a 40� shoulder."

But for three days, I have to plop a drop of Prednisolone into my eye every hour on the hour! Gad! That's a bummer and a half. By the time I stumble down the hall to the bed room, get into bed (I can't force my head back far enough sitting in my recliner), plop a drop in that eye, and stumble back to my recliner or my computer, it's nigh time for the next drop. Dang hard to accomplish anything on days like these.

I just plopped one in, and in a few minutes, it'll be time for the next drop.

And I'm not sure that anybody here will shiv a git one way or the other, anyway.

And I'm not sure that anybody here will shiv a git one way or the other, anyway. [/quote]

Just goes to show you that anyone can be wrong. keep your chin up, One day at a time Sir one at a time. Bear

Sho' wish that Homer were still alive to help me tell you guys the interior- and exterior-ballistic superiorities of the secant-ogive bullet. Joyce Hornady hired Homer to perfect that design.

Uh oh! Time for another cussed eye drop!

'Bye!

I'm sorry to hear of the difficulties that have put the kybosh (sp?) on this book. I shall have to look for a copy of the cartridge design book mentioned.

Hope your eye heals up for you soon. It's a pain having to put in drops _every hour_. I had to do that for a while, too.

It'd be interesting to hear/read the advantages of the secant ogive. I'm familiar with the exterior ballistic advantages, but it appears to me that those often come at the expense of being 'finicky' to handload, at least in terms of seating depth. I also note that secant-ogive bullets also _appear_ to more often become unstable when approaching trans-sonic speeds. That may be coincidence, though. Perhaps some bullet makers' boat tail shapes are more responsible than the secant ogive itself.

It would be interesting to hear what the interior ballistic advantages of secants are. Informed decision-making is always better, to me, than uninformed. I generally find that information readily dispels the myth of 'best,' but does allow us to much better choose our trade-offs.

Thanks for being here and posting as you can!

An article on properly, intelligently designing a rifle cartridge would be most welcome. I would probably never design a cartridge myself but the subject matter is definitely interesting.

Eric

"Thanks for all of your efforts and for sharing your knowledge with us. "

I'm with 416. thanks for all you have done to educate us. i hope the books you have decided to continue are finished before too long.

all the best to you, Dr Ken

I don't vouch for stock and price but try Huntington Die Specialties for Mr. Howell's book:
Part #4999 Description Designing and Forming Custom Cartridges for Rifles and Handguns NEW Retail 59.98

Well worth the money and at times has been hard to find and sold for more - I paid rather more on the secondary market for a second copy just to have on the two is one principle for things that matter.

On bullet shapes secant ogive et al see the new Berger loading book which has much more than just data and Berger website and also the books by Brian Litz (currently 2 but I trust and hope more to come) for an extended discussion of form, seating and other considerations.

Basically, the secant ogive gives you the front end of a larger bullet's tangent ogive � that part of a .257 or .285 tangent ogive, say, on a .224 bullet � for a better ballistic coefficient and nearly the same mass and length as a bullet of the same diameter with a tangent ogive. A secant-ogive bullet is at it's best, of course, in a barrel with the leade reamed for it. A 75-grain .224 A-max in my .220 Howell, for example, engages the rifling when its cylindrical shank comes out of the case neck.

The tangent ogive of a good bullet commonly curves along about an eight-caliber radius. A corresponding secant-ogive bullet curves on a longer radius but uses only the front portion of a larger bullet's tangent ogive. On a bullet of the same or shorter over-all length, it doesn't need the tighter twist that a longer bullet would need.

A series of good drawings would make all this very clear, of course. I can't draw it since a couple of computer crashes cost me the old version of AutoCAD that I used to make all the drawings in my big cartridge book. I can't afford any of the later versions of AutoCAD, and I probably wouldn't know how to use it, anyway. Obsolescence is expensive!

Ken you should get a co-writer to assist. It would be the
chance of a lifetime for a "Gunwriter".

+1

I wish I was a "gunwriter" and could do the job. Being able to read and review the material before it hit the presses would be priceless.

Eric

Eric,

You can always do what I have done; drive to Quemado and sit with Ken and listen.

Gentlemen, we do have a treasure here in Ken's presence!

Ken,

I'm glad to hear you're getting your exercise!

Ed

Ed,

That is a solid suggestion.

Eric

Thanks, Ken. Don't worry about the pix; there are plenty in my copy of McCoy's book, as well as drag curve graphs. I hope you are able to find a co-writer or whatever support you would need to help put such a paper or book together!

Do you have the errata for the McCoy book?

The publisher pushed the book into print before Bob had finished correcting the galleys, and Bob died before he could complete the errata. Bob's colleagues and collaborators, Don Miller and others, took-up the compilation � which took some time and may still be incomplete.

(My friend Don has died, too, alas! He was the head of the errata project, I think.)

Send me ([email protected]) your e-mail address, with a reminder, and I'll send you the errata that I have.

Here is a link for an errata on the McCoy book.

http://www.dexadine.com/download/mccoy10.pdf

Do you have more than this?

Thanks

I don't know.

I don't how much Richard has, and I don't how much I have.

Or which has the later date.

(I suspect that Richard's is probably more up-to-date than mine.)

This one is dated 4/13/2010

What I have is the newly-printed 2nd Edition of the book. This edition includes the corrections from that online errata list. It's a worthwhile 'upgrade' for owners of the 1st Edition, IMO.

Let's see whether I can explain this more clearly another way, just a teensy bit over-simplified.

� A 10- or 12-radius tangent ogive on any bullet would be much more aerodynamic than an 8-radius tangent ogive, but it'd make the bullet 'way too long to stabilize in the typical twist of a barrel of that caliber.
� The eight-radius tangent ogive of, say, a .285 bullet would equal a 10.1786-radius ogive of, say, a .224 bullet (if I've done the math right).
� Picture that bigger ogive as a curve-sided cone.
� Somewhere between its 0.285 base and its near-0.0 tip, there's a place where it's 0.224 in diameter.
� Now imagine that forward section of the 0.285 ogive � from where it's 0.224 in diameter out to its tip � on the forward end of a 0.224 shank.

Clearer now? It'd be dog-simple to draw, but I can't, so I have to depend on your ability to visualize it from a word description. Hope this helps.

Ken, that's a very clear and simple explanation, thanks.

Yes, I understand. One thing I find tremendously interesting is how the drag curve changes as one lengthens the radius of the circle which describes the ogive shape. Basically, a secant ogive of radius Rt/R=0.5 is more or less the minimum-drag shape at supersonic speeds, of circular-radius ogives. However, this nose shape exhibits much higher drag at low supersonic and into trans-sonic speed ranges. Naturally, we don't normally concern ourselves with transonic performance in a hunting context, but for some sports, for example, this may become a factor.

That of course brings up an entirely different matter � giving the bullet enough muzzle velocity to enable it to maintain supersonic speed out to the maximum desired or practical range.

Then that matter leads us into other discussions � what's reasonable to expect or to aim for in situations X, Y, and Z, etc � far beyond the question of ogive shape.

Muzzle velocity loses a lot of its allure when you look into what the bullet is doing 'way out there where it meets meat or pierces paper.

Yes. Or, choosing a different nose shape that is better suited to a wider operating envelope. Information is great for the options and choices it opens up to us. As you say, there is much beyond the scope of an ogive shape discussion.

Ken, I believe you are correct about Don Miller heading the errata project. Dr. Miller was another of the great men who has moved on to the next age. For those who haven't seen it, here's his Obituary.

Many on these pages know that one of Dr. Miller's many lasting contributions is the Miller stability formula that's used to know what twist rate is required to stabilize a bullet.

I didn't know Don passed away.

We met maybe eight years ago at the SHOT Show, when Don asked if I'd be there and if so, if we could meet. We did and had a great conversation. At the time one of the things he was working on was my empirically formulated 4-to-1 Formula: Any difference in powder capacity in a centerfire rifle case of rhe SAME caliber at the SAME pressure results in 1/4 that difference in muzzle velocity, with the same bullet.

Don figured out why the formula worked--at least closely enough for practical purposes--and was gracious enough to ask to cite my original work when publishing his article. Of course I said GREAT!

We saw each other at various other gatherings over the next few years, and always had very interesting and enjoyable conversations, mostly about ballistics but sometimes about life in general, and kept in contact with e-mails until a couple of years ago.

He was a gentleman and a scholar, in the best sense of both words.