454 Bullet test
Variations on a Nose
32 Rimfire Boot Pistol Restoration
Welcome to Glenn's Gun Room
Dan at www.mountainmolds.com
had an Idea to see what the accuracy effects were on differnet bullet nose shapes,
meplat diameters and gascheck vs plainbase.
Me, living only 5min from his shop eagerly agreed to help in the test.
As more testing is done on each bullet style, I'll post the updates here.
More Powder, Bigger Bullets.
Updated: 3-26-03
I already had a 454 357gn mold from his shop and found the bullets to be very accurate
in my Taurus Raging Bull 454.
A Simmons 2.5x7 scope was mounted useing the Taurus scope base.
My wife made a sand bag to help eliminate shooter error.
Dan soon had several molds turned
out with 2 different shapes per mold.
We started with the 45FC 70% nose, ogival flatpoint 70% meplat gaschecked 330gn,
Dan cast several bullets and we tried water quenched, oven hardened in wheel weights and also 50-50 WW/Linotype.
They all seemed to shoot about the same out of my gun.
An accurate load was found for the 70% gc bullet useing WC820 surplus powder at around 1360fps.
This load was used in all the following tests. The consistency of the bullets was evident in that
I didn't have to change the seat or crimp die when switching between different syles of bullets. I guess CNC boreing works.
Below are some of the initial targets shot at 50yds. As time allows I plan on doing an extended test
on each bullet design to see if they will all shoot the same given the right load.
As it was, this initial test took 4 hours of range time and around 400rnds of 454 ammo.
Must pay homage to the GunPowder Gods. :)
I was glad the surplus powder comes in 8lb jugs and is much cheaper than 296.
My lot of WC820 seemed to take about 1-2gn less powder than 296 for similar velocities.
Now onto the targets.
70%nose plain base group size 2.1" 3 of the shots went into .120"
70%nose plain base group size 1.9" 
90%nose gaschecked group size 1.7" 
90%nose gaschecked group size 1.75" 
70%nose gaschecked group size 1.4" 
70%nose gaschecked group size 2.0" 
70%nose gaschecked group size 1.94" 
70%nose gaschecked group size 1.98" 
80%nose gaschecked group size 2.5"
70%Semi Wad Cutter gaschecked group size 2.12" 
SWC plainbase mystery bullet, details not yet availible.
group size 2.0" with 3 touching at .354" 
70%Truncated Cone gaschecked group size 2.3" 
70%nose bore riding gaschecked group size 3.65" 
70%nose bore riding gaschecked group size 3.3"