I haven't shot any pointy bullets, all have been flat nose, but I've not had accuracy issues in either of my BCs. The very first load thru the 45-120 after I got the proper front sight to hit close to POA at 100yds was a 1½" group with the XMR5744 start load and 405gr Rems, I've also shot some big bullets, 535gr Piledrivers at a little less than 1700fps with H4895 at 200yds, that group was 3½" with the first 2 shots right at 1", pretty good for my old eyes and hard sights, I'm sure with more practice and load refinement, I could do a lot better than that. The bad thing about H4895 is it's position sensitive, if I didn't tip the barrel up before shooting, I'd get a brief hangfire, even tho Hodgdon recommends no fillers, I think that powder needs some Pufflon or Dacron to keep the powder against the flash hole, never a problem with the 5744 tho in that respect.
One of the last trips to the range with the 45-70 BC was to compare velocities between the 22" and 32" 45-70 barrels, the BC barrel shot a nice one hole cloverlead at 100yds with the 350gr Hornday RN and H322.
Bernie shoots the Lee 500R bullet with gas checks added, it's a pointy bullet, he gets excellent accuracy out to 600 meters. I tried his trick of chamfering the base of a non-gas checked bullet with the Lee chamfer tool and installed several gas checks yesterday, it works like a charm just as he said.
Just for fun, I'm learning to use QuickLoad 3.4 that I just got, here's some calculated data for a hot 45-120 smokeless load in the BC 32" barrel, based on my 45-120 fired brass which holds 124.4gr water. The 2775fps is based on a Quick Load prediction for a max load of H4350 with a 102% fill and 98% burn, about as good as it gets at a max pressure of <50kpsi which is right at 500 S&W operating pressure. The velocity is within the operating parameters of the 350gr X bullet in a 458 Lott according to the Barnes #3, in fact in the 460 Whby, it's loaded to 3000fps. Exterior ballistics calculated with Sierra Inf 5.1
Tim
Trajectory for Barnes .458 dia. 350 gr. X at 2775 Feet per Second
At an Elevation Angle of: 0 degrees
Ballistic Coefficients of: 0.402 0.402 0.402 0.402 0.402
Velocity Boundaries (Feet per Second) of: 1960 1960 1960 1960
Wind Direction is: 0.0 o'clock and a Wind Velocity of: 0.0 Miles per hour
Wind Components are (Miles per Hour): DownRange: 0.0 Cross Range: 0.0 Vertical: 0.0
Altitude: 500 Feet with a Standard Atmospheric Model.
Temperature: 59 F
Data Printed in English Units
Range Velocity Energy Momentum Drop Bullet Path Wind Drift Time of Flight
(Yards) (Ft/Sec) (Ft/Lbs) (Lb-Sec) (inches) (inches) (inches) (Seconds)
0 2775.0 5983.6 4.31 0.0 -1.5 0.0 0.000000000
25 2718.9 5744.1 4.23 -0.14 0.13 0.0 0.027304499
50 2663.5 5512.6 4.14 -0.58 1.48 0.0 0.055174416
75 2608.9 5288.6 4.05 -1.32 2.51 0.0 0.083626047
100 2554.9 5071.9 3.97 -2.38 3.23 0.0 0.112676545
125 2501.5 4862.4 3.89 -3.78 3.61 0.0 0.142343627
150 2448.8 4659.4 3.81 -5.52 3.64 0.0 0.172646633
175 2396.6 4463.1 3.72 -7.63 3.32 0.0 0.203605887
200 2345.1 4273.3 3.64 -10.11 2.61 0.0 0.235241949
225 2294.3 4089.9 3.57 -12.98 1.51 0.0 0.267576101
250 2244.0 3912.7 3.49 -16.27 0.0 0.0 0.300630774
275 2194.3 3741.5 3.41 -20.0 -1.94 0.0 0.334429621
300 2145.3 3576.1 3.33 -24.17 -4.34 0.0 0.368997363
325 2096.9 3416.4 3.26 -28.81 -7.21 0.0 0.404359618
350 2049.1 3262.5 3.18 -33.95 -10.57 0.0 0.440542825
375 2001.9 3114.1 3.11 -39.61 -14.44 0.0 0.477574287
400 1955.4 2971.1 3.04 -45.8 -18.86 0.0 0.515482255
425 1909.6 2833.5 2.97 -52.57 -23.85 0.0 0.554295978
450 1864.4 2701.1 2.90 -59.93 -29.44 0.0 0.594045651
475 1820.0 2573.8 2.83 -67.92 -35.65 0.0 0.634762272
500 1776.3 2451.7 2.76 -76.56 -42.51 0.0 0.676477433
Tim