Bullet pointing

[Laurie]

On 1/22/2018 at 11:39 PM, The Gun Pimp said:

Ah well - that's the skill bit.  The only gauge is your eye!

 

I had some correspondence with a retired American homicide detective who lives in Florida and shoots 223 in FTR some while back. He used professional quality optical comparators a lot in his police career, and continued to do so for pointing / meplat viewing and comparison.

Another non-Mk1 eyeball method is measuring bullet OAL as you point it. This was a tip given to me by Match Rifle shooter and GB team member Mike Baillie-Hamilton. Start with the bullet tip just touching the business bit of the pointing insert. Measure bullet OAL and re-insert on the press. Screw the micrometer top on the die down say 10 thou' and 'point'. Remeasure bullet and you'll find its OAL has increased. Reinsert and screw the die down another 10 thou' (or better reducing steps to 5 thou') and repeat process until the bullet OAL remains unchanged. Go back one adjustment step on the die and that's its setting for that bullet starting at a particular unpointed OAL. 

It is essential for consistent results that all (unpointed) bullets start at the same OAL, or at any rate one with very little variation either through batching or trimming. When Sierra MKs and some other makes / models were very inconsistent with 'raggy' tips, trimming was pretty well vital for good pointing, but most makes now are much better and some minor OAL batching is all that is needed for most Berger and Scenar L models IMO. In fact, trimming (even when followed by pointing) appears to sometimes increase BC variations of finished bullets.

It is also pretty well essential to have a micrometer top seating / pointing die for the process to allow fine setting the amount of pointing.

On the Shooting Shed insert / sleeve kit that produces impressive results looking at the finished bullets (much better than the Whidden / Litz die and inserts IMO), I'm told that it is still available  for those who have a Forster or Redding micrometer top seating die.

[No i deer]

Here is a couple of my better 5 shot groupings from yesterdays breaking in the new 7mm rsaum f class profile barrel.i took everything I thought until I looked for the wipeout tactical advantage. I had to just dry patch it.these were unpointed bullets.unfortunetley I leaked one on the scenar group.patched holes were from bore sighting and to getting on with a different load

 

[No i deer]

This was the first grouping