Anal retentive cast air rifle bullet sorting and culling

The title pretty much sums up the subject of this post.

I cast for two cast bullet air rifles and have been casting for over 40 years. During time I have won a few State Championships with cast bullets in different disciplines, most of the rifle bullets were sorted to as little as + or- one half grain on 550 grain bullets, but recently I started culling and sorting to + or-.10th for my Haley 257 Scandalous, meaning that bullets were kept that weighed 101.3, 101.4 and 101.5 grains.

But today it got a little more retentive, I am now weighing and sorting to .10th so all bullets are the exact same weight.

The bullets are intended to be used for the next “Pepsi Challenge” and that is to confirm a hit at 600 yards and perhaps even as far as 625 or 650 depending on if I can get my scope to go that far.

Shooting at these distances leaves no room for anything other than perfect bulllets, + or- 10th grain can result in a trajectory deviation of .175 inches at 600 yards in a perfect world. So I changed my standards.

First I am using a 4 cavity NOE mold and it is difficult to cast with and not leave flashing on the bases, I have developed a technique that lessens this flaw, so as of today I do not use any bullet with a flashing on the base, the 502 and 552 yard shots were bullets that had base flashing, which is lead overflowing from the base underneath the sprue plate. And this week with bullets with flashing I shot a 1.5 inch group and a 2 inch group at 280 yards so it is not that they are that inaccurate, I just want better bullets.

I have a NOE manufactured tool to remove that flashing, but to me it would seem the base has to not be square if one side has a lop, so they are now discarded. That tool also bevels the base to make it more uniform.

After casting, I visually inspect each bullet for any outside defects and discard any bullet that is not visibly perfect. Then I weigh the bullets and place them on a 12″x12″ board that hs 15 rows of 20 1/4 inch holes, sort of like a Cribbage board for bullets. each 1/10 of a grain is assigned a row. as I weight and sort, the rows grow and those rows make a graph of the percentage of individual weights in addition to segregating the weighs.

I then cull out the rows of lighter bullets on the theory that a lighter bullet that is visually perfect and weighs .3 or.4 tenths of a grain less than the majority of the bullets probably has an air bubble inside the bullet that can cause wobble.

I then put the weights into individual bags and there may be as few as 15 per bag, but doing this each time I cast, I eventually end up with as many as 200 bullets all visually perfect and weighing exactly the same.

Then I form the base with a NOE tool for that purpose that will take off any flashing so small that I can not see it with the naked eye and at the same time visually inspect the bullet again. They the bullet is returned to the bag and a few drops of 10 wt Traxx silicone oil is added to the bag, the bullets gently tumbled in the bag and then sized with a Lee Precision sizer in a portable hand press.

This may seem like a lot of work, and it is, but when I have to drive 8 hours, 550 miles on a three day trip to shoot 600 plus yards, I would just as soon weed out any potential problems in accuracy.

Now that I have different weights of bullets segregated to exact weights, I need to shoot the bullets here at home at 280 yards in perfect conditions to determine which weight is the most accurate and compare those groups to past groups with bullets that were weighed to + or – 1/10 grain and bullets that had flashings that were removed and the bases recontoured.

And yes, I know what your thinking however, I don’t line my socks up in my drawer or my clothes on a hanger as to color, eat each item on my plate one at a time and my work bench and casting bench has things scattered around on it like a mad woman’s shit.