Reading the hornady bullet bashing threads brought me back here. @davidjoe have you continued to play with this combo? Any updates? I off and on get an itch to build a 308, 30-284, or 30-6.5PRC to shoot heavies for 1000yd BR but can never get myself to pull the trigger, mostly due to bullet cost and recoil.
250gr A Tip in a 308
- Thread starter APGE
- Start date
Tom Mousel worked with it too, but he was using his own 200ish gn bullets. I get the urge to try the 185 jugs, maybe the 200.20x, the 210 VLD, and then the big heavies.
Yes, there’s a poker term, “pot committed” that does apply to me, to figure these bullets out to their very best effect, because I have a lot of them, and if heat sensitivity is the only problem, it’s surmountable. There is such a thing as insurmouhtable bullet issues, by comparison, such as terrible uniformity, grossly inferior BC, or patent unavailability when they are most needed, but A-Tips don’t possess those traits so far as I can tell.
Presently though, as Berger did distribute 245’s in the US which I had not seen as available until recently, Im actively comparing the two. To make it more interesting, those 245’s I’m also comparing to 195’s.
I’m curious if a custom bore diameter is needed. Like how heavy 22 bullets do better with a .219 bore instead of the conventional .218. Perhaps a 0.301 instead of the classic .300.
It very well might stop blowups to be a thousandth bigger. There’s a chunk of years where I did have to download cartridges, up to a coupe of grains, and couldn’t figure out why, but I finally determined those barrels had tight bore. Man did they shoot great, though.
For the 250’s, I’m not even sure there is a potential accuracy downside in the trade off, as my scores are (edit: are “not”) great when they do stay intact. Potentially a bigger bore could keep them intact AND increase their accuracy.
It’s a very odd dynamic. I can see that the wind holds are small and guys trying my guns agree with that, as well. But there are point drops that depress the scores. When I shot the 245’s, the calls were bigger, even than with 230 A-Tips, but I soon relaxed about blowups and I could tell they were shooting smaller, flatter, and just truer.
The 245’s gave the impression the barrells, all of them, were in pristine shape. That’s a great feeling, even if it can’t be uniformly true. No indication that anything is changing over the course of the string with respect to the bullets, - no higher impacts, no degradation in group size, no widening of SD’s, no fliers. I typically would see a fall off in score in the last 10 shots, and/or the last 5, and this can indicate heat induced inaccuracy, (but also a shooter wanting to just finish) and I didn’t see that with 245. It’s early with 245’s. The only LR outing was promising though. I felt that if I learned those bullets’s calls, I could shoot 198-9’s with them, a good portion of the time.
The 250’s have had good pair fire strings. Those are shorter in round count with longer time between shots. They have snagged more close call 10’s than my calls deserve. When I pull one out for pair fire, maybe I’m trying harder because it’s a fresh start. Or maybe because there is an opponent. I don’t know. But my string scores with them are not “happy”.
It has occurred to me more than once that we are allowed to change guns every string, always starting fresh. We could use a different bullet for pair fire, than string shooting. Even different cartridges. Bayou has 60 rounds of string fire followed by 30 of pair. I could use A-Tips in only pair fire. The 230’s are tougher than the 250’s. But I came away from TSRA liking the 250’s better.
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Evan, apologies, I blew right past this being the .308 thread and I didn’t talk about that at all.
The .308 cannot blowup a 250, and for that reason I know that no matter what, I can use them, and not just in a 18 pound TR rig, technically.
The 250 in a .308 shoots inside a .284 with 180’s, once you have 47.0 or more grains of H4350 behind it. I have loaded as much as 48 grains. This is the only positive “overlap” between TR and Open I’m aware of, with the one example of negative overlap being a 6 BR at LR, against the big .308’s. (Modify a TR load to beat the standard Open load, and the case of a TR load beating an Open load when both are conventional without modification).
I don’t know where Ned Ludd has been but he would verify that a higher BC bullet going slowly is not necessarily a bad experiment.
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I do plan to study these jackets very carefully, intact and sectioned, before and after firing, independently and comparatively.
I don’t presently have the ability to photograph the revealing views through this new to me, old binocular microscope on my phone but that may be coming, and I was amazed how well it works on objects with depth.
Podcast guys, having to take such a close look is because you put the word “match” on the box, and recreated the Phoenix missile (long range, expensive, accurate, and explosive), and because I agree with your A-Tip approach to such an extent that I have bought a lifetime supply, and must figure them out. This group on here, is your audience type, when you label a box “match” - you’ll never get “too far into the weeds” for us
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I don’t presently have the ability to photograph the revealing views through this new to me, old binocular microscope on my phone but that may be coming, and I was amazed how well it works on objects with depth.
Podcast guys, having to take such a close look is because you put the word “match” on the box, and recreated the Phoenix missile (long range, expensive, accurate, and explosive), and because I agree with your A-Tip approach to such an extent that I have bought a lifetime supply, and must figure them out. This group on here, is your audience type, when you label a box “match” - you’ll never get “too far into the weeds” for us
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The main thing I’ll be searching for is micro-cracking in the jackets. Same thing we’d instinctively look for if someone gave us the random assignment of inspecting aluminum aircraft fuselages. I could definitely envision a spinning jacket with a crack, opening up. If anything else looks amiss, though, I won’t ignore it.
I’m not seeing anything concerning so far, and I’m pretty particular.
This is a rather poor quality picture through my phone, held awkwardly but it does represent the low end of magnification level that I’m using.
The view through the microscope is orders of magnitude better than this.
The jackets don’t look brittle to my eye. They don’t appear to have cracks.
The area where the most potential “non-uniformity” could show up is the junction where the aluminum tip is seated, which is the pictured area.
This is not bad at all. Because they don’t wipe these down, if you photograph them with the best phones, then enlarge the pictures, you might believe you are looking at defects that in actuality are nothing more than black oily film where machine contact was made. Once wiped down, this small indentation pictured, is about the most significant imperfection I’ve looked at, and I can say that this is a literal microscope and the act of seating bullets can do more than this.
Overall I have to say that they are leaving the factory as they were intended.
This is a rather poor quality picture through my phone, held awkwardly but it does represent the low end of magnification level that I’m using.
The view through the microscope is orders of magnitude better than this.
The jackets don’t look brittle to my eye. They don’t appear to have cracks.
The area where the most potential “non-uniformity” could show up is the junction where the aluminum tip is seated, which is the pictured area.
This is not bad at all. Because they don’t wipe these down, if you photograph them with the best phones, then enlarge the pictures, you might believe you are looking at defects that in actuality are nothing more than black oily film where machine contact was made. Once wiped down, this small indentation pictured, is about the most significant imperfection I’ve looked at, and I can say that this is a literal microscope and the act of seating bullets can do more than this.
Overall I have to say that they are leaving the factory as they were intended.
Attachments
This reminds me of project that has my attention. 180gr bullets from a 22lr.
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