LOAD DEVELOPMENT

“Bullet Tipping”

Posted by Mr.Wild on
Have you ever looked at a bullet’s tip (meplat) and wondered if that causes any performance loss from the manufacturer? Well Whidden Gunworks makes a pretty awesome ”tipping die” that has some pretty solid gains in BC with downrange feedback to prove it. We will be providing some data for you so there is a full picture of what we gathered. whiddengunworks.com
Lab radar confirmed both lots of ammo tested were exactly 2890 FPS. One lot with closed meplat Berger 115 VLD, and the other with standard meplats from the factory. It is important that the side by side test starts with the same load. It helps keeps the variables to a minimum. There was no POI shift at 100yds on paper. mylabradar.com
Another critical part to testing these is having a “control rifle” that is capable of really small groups. This is so there is no variation in downrange feedback because the rifle is not accurate. Part of why the tipping process is cool is that the bullet load data will shoot exactly the same group sizes so the zero is the same. The only thing you need to adjust is the ballistic coefficient once it’s confirmed on steel.
Applied Ballistics runs the Berger 115 VLD G7 BC at .289 untipped. This is the starting point for data we ran. We had multiple water line hits on a 25% IPSC at 866 yards verifying this starting point.
On the Applied Ballistics app, we adjusted the G7 BC to a .31 to get the bullets flight path corrected onto target with the tipped bullets. The first shot down range at the same 25% was .4MIL over the top of the target. It was interesting to watch the exact same bullet with the same load get there almost 1/2MIL flatter from closing the tips.
The Data we ran for the first shot was 5.9MIL with the untipped bullets for the 866 yard 25% IPSC. We ended up making a .2MIL adjustment for more elevation to put the bullet on the waterline. 6.1 MIL was waterline at 866 yards with the G7 BC Applied Ballistics provided. “Applied Ballistics APP -HOW TO-“
Now switching lots to the tipped bullets, we started with the same 6.1 MIL elevation from the previous target impact at 866 yards, result in a high miss on the target. This confirmed that the BC was in fact much higher. We made an adjustment to center, and put 15 rounds on the target confirming that the actual data to hit the target was only 5.7-5.8 MIL .

Once you have your new data point, go back to the bullet profile screen, and adjust the BC higher until you make your numbers line up for your target you are truing at.

Like previously stated, we ended up with a .31 G7 BC. Not too bad. Further testing is still needed before we go any further into this topic. For all intents and purposes, this was more of a fun test to see if there was really a performance gain. THERE IS. Its roughly 5% more efficiency. If the time it takes to close the tips on bullets is worth it to you, do it. The die is relatively expensive coming in around $300. One thing that is interesting to note, not all bullets have such large gains in BC. Were assuming at this point that the long and skinny bullets benefit the most, such as 115GR 6MM. They are claiming anywhere from 3-10% more BC. The process took roughly 10 min per 100 bullets on a single stage press.
Ensure that you do not over point the bullet tip. There are instructions with the die on what the meplat should look like after tipping. Hope you enjoy this. We had good results with a relatively low budget project. Subscribe for more content in the future. http://appliedballisticsllc.com “Applied Ballistics APP -HOW TO-“ HOW TO MAKE DENSITY ALTITUDE DATA CARDS

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