Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Filing nose to a flat point?

Awhile back MD and a couple others referenced filing the nose flat on 225 grain .35 caliber Nosler Partitions for use in my .356 Win. Would that also work with 210 grain Partitions?

You can make any Nosler partition into a protected point version. I did this with a 284 win and 160 partition thirty years ago due to mag constraints. Killed an elk with it and it worked fine.

Before I filed off the lead, I called Nosler and asked about doing it. They said as long as you leave some lead exposed they will work fine.

1Akshooter,
Did some experiments years ago screwing up the tip of bullets. I could make them pretty ugly and convoluted, yet they continued to group pretty well. With a little care, I would not expect a problem flattening the tip of your Partitions.
On the other hand, a little damage to the bullet base will likely have significant impact on accuracy.

My experience follows fishdog52's.

I have a die for 22 LR bullets to flatten the tip of the best grouping ammunition for each rifle. It is no longer being made but Paco Kelley is making a similar tool. It would be easy to make a tool for your 356. But why? I just bought some Alaskan Bullet Works bullets for my 356.

Might or might not be germane to the discussion, but I routinely file the noses off of long .228" spitzers so as to shorten them suitably for stabilization in old slow twist Savage .22 High Powers. (I do it before loading them, via a file trim die I made up.) Accuracy is improved, and they work as well on game, if not better, than the originals. By extension, I see no reason it wouldn't work as well for other caliber bullets.

I routinely file the points on Speer .321 170 gr. They are marketed as bullets for the Win .32 Spcl....but the points are so pointy they make me nervous in the tubular magazine of my old 32-40. Anyway, no loss of accuracy. Then, I tested some in a 8x57 J bore (actual .320 groove dia) at 2660 fps and in spite of the flat point and paper thin jacket they held together pretty well in a soft pine board medium.

I've done it on 358 bullets in my 357 Super Mag so they would fit in the cylinder. Didn't make any difference to the deer.

[align:left][/align]I need to find some factory seconds Partitions. You guys have motivated me. I have a bunch of 220 grain Speer Flat Points and a couple boxes of the 250 grain bullets from Alaska Bullet Works. I talked to them the other day and they will look at making up some 220 to 225 rain bonded flat nose .35 caliber bullets. I think any of the above mentioned bullets will work on moose and bears, just need to get close. I do want a reliable 200 yard moose bullet for lung or shoulder shots on moose.

What is best way to put a crimping groove on the bullet?

In a lathe, which most folks don't have, chuck the bullet, grind a tool bit so it does NOT cut, in the shape you want your cannelure and force the tool into the rotating lubed bullet to create your groove. Unfortunately I can't tell you how well it worked, for crimping, because I was trying to create an "Interlock belt" to prevent core/jacket separations.

Shooting squirrels in town with CB 22's, I found that many escaped to live another day. When I did fatally connect, i could see evidence of the critter having been shot previously. I started filing the tips to a wad cutter profile, and the tree rats started hitting the ground for good. Accuracy was not affected.

Charlie

CCI .22LR SGB Small Game Bullets have ~3/32" flat meplat as well to improve terminal performance on squirrels and such...

https://www.cci-ammunition.com/products/detail.aspx?use=2&loadNo=0058

I use super calibris on local squirrels and they always exit. I’ve never had one escape! Hell I’ve killed big coons with them...and while they don’t exit it sends the raccoons to their eternal reward!

When CCI began offering these I got some to shoot squirrels and such with and they worked well. At that time our lease was overrun with porcupines, so one day when we were over there working on tree stands I had my boy take his 77/22 and a bunch of those CCI SGB’s to thin out the porcupines. He was within a few hundred yards of us all the time and he shot a pile of them. Every time he shot one we could hear the very distinctive smack of those flat-nosed bullets hitting. He never shot one more than once.

Forget putting a crimping groove aka cannelure on bullets. Just get a Lee Factory Crimp Die and be done with it.

Or not even crimp the necks. The tightness of the neck on a bullet is far more of a factor in keeping bullets in place during recoil than a crimp. I've run some tests on this in various rifles over the years, and don't even crimp .375 H&H rounds.

The Lee crimp dies are terrific