To All,
Situations have kept me away. Apologies for not responding sooner. Thank you for your kind words. I know how difficult shooting can be when things are not going well. I say this a lot and will say it again, I am committed to doing whatever I can to strengthen the shooting sports.
I believe that when a shooter is having trouble they need help from someone or they just might put that rifle in the closet forever and take up golf. I just happen to be a bullet maker so bullets is the area in which I am familiar and can provide the most assistance.
I take this same approach with Berger. I focus,maybe too much) on how we can make things better for the shooter. I am listening careful to the feedback and I am hearing shooters say "stop bullet failures, end poor availability, provide different bullet sizes for my use, lower prices, provide loading data and rapid tech support." All of these are the same things that I would want as a shooter. I can assure you that we are working on all of them. We will make great improvement is most areas and as much improvement as possible in all areas.
Having said all of that, the root cause of the bullet failure situation has been identified,there are several). Our focus now is on finding the solutions. There are two paths and we are walking them both. The first is education. There are several things that shooters can do to eliminate or significantly reduce bullet failures. Most of these are related to reducing friction,and there are several ways to do that).
Let me be clear that with all of the violent things that happen to a bullet while being forced through a barrel it is unfair to say that the results of failure is the fault of the shooter. A shooter has little control over the situation once the primer ignites. The point of eductation is to help the shooters prepare a combination that can be very successful while at the same time preventing failure before the primer ignites. For those of you that have not seen my report on this subject please email a request for a copy to eric.stecker@bergerbullets.com.
The second path is for us to work on the bullet. We need to truly understand what is going on so that we can make changes that most importantly do not reduce the precision potential of the bullet. The secondary goal is that it actually has to solve the problem. I could make a whole bunch of bullets that have thicker jackets, say that the problem is solved and find out after we have shipped them all over the world that it has not been solved. The changes need to be confirmed. With the infrequency of this result and the difficulties in "making" it happen it has proven to be challenging. The thicker jacket is the next test. We have tried other changes that so far have not solved the situation completely.
Jannie,
I've got your email and I will be in touch directly. We will be shipping you boxes of both standard bullets and thicker jacket bullets. My hope is that you can duplicate the failure results and then shoot the thicker jackets right away to see if you can make them fail. Keep in mind that you should not do anything unsafe to you or your equipment for the sake of creating failures. We will not stop until it is solved so you should not risk needlessly. If you are not able to make the standard bullets fail we will at least learn that much.
Peter,
There is no question that if the thicker jacket does significantly reduce or eliminate failures we will be making them in all calibers. We are already preparing the tooling to make thicker 6mm so that we can verify what we learn from the 6.5mm test. The problem we are facing now is that we are finding so few shooters that recently have experienced failures in spite of all the "reports". We will keep working on this.
Making thicker jackets in every caliber will be a massive project as we will keep the standard jacket thickness available since the VLDs are working so well for the big game hunters. I do not know what will happen to the terminal performance of our VLD if the jacket is thicker and I am not going to fix something that is not broken. No hunter has reported bullet failure to reach the target so this is not a problem for them.
Scott,
It has been consistent that the vast majority of bullet failures have been with non coated bullets. There have been a few reports of moly coated bullets failing however the causes were known per the shooter,self inflicted).
Moly is such a hot button for so many shooters that we do not push it as a solution,we suggest moly or any friction reducing lubricant applied to the bullet or the barrel). The fact is those who shoot moly do not experience failures,that we know of) unless other factors overwhelm the benefits of moly. Remember that it is a combination of factors that create the failure result. Moly is not the cure ignoring all other factors but it does help.
However, it is true that recently a very well known shooter using a different brand had some 117 gr tipped bullets fail that were boron coated. I know nothing about boron but folks relay that it is pretty slippery stuff. If the boron worked properly and the cause was not friction related then what could the cause be? Tough question.
Long, heavy bullets are the most likely to suffer from heat related failures but in this case it might have been something else. This is a great example of why finding a solution is so challenging because when we learn something we think we can hold on to we learn something else that seems to contradict it on the surface.
I hope you are well. Please excuse my lack of communication with you as I am a bit overwhelmed lately. I'd like to say things are getting better however it seems that the more we do the more we get to do. I am not complaining but it keeps me away from the phones.
Larry,
Always a pleasure and tell Bev I said hello.
Regards,
Eric
