One day in the summer of 2004, after casting some 311299 bullets, I emptied the container of bullets onto the concrete floor from a height of about 3 feet.
After saying the obligatory words I was ready to re-melt the bullets and start again, but then thought that these bullets gave me an opportunity to experiment.
I inspected and weighed the bullets, discarding any with casting defects or outlying weights, as I do with almost all my cast bullets. The acceptable dropped bullets had dents ranging from pretty bad to no dent at all. I rejected no bullet for a dent.
I was working with a M54 Winchester in 30 WCF at the time. I loaded the dropped bullets and undropped bullets with the same loads, and shot them for group at 100 yards.
If I'm testing two loads, I shoot load "A" first, then load "B". Then I wait about fifteen minutes, may clean the gun if that is part of the test, and then shoot load "B", then load "A". This takes the "clean" and "hot" bias out of the testing.
In each of the four tests, the dropped and dented bullets shot smaller average groups than did "perfect"= not dropped and dented bullets.
Here are the averages"
1.569" vs. 1.650", 4 groups each
1.181" vs 1.613", 4 groups each
1.060" vs. 1.290", 5 groups each
0.913" vs. 1.019", 4 groups each
I don't know what conclusions can be drawn from this experiment, other than that dents don't seem to radically degrade the accuracy of cast bullets.
joe b.
