Lightening copper projectiles

[ozfisher71]

Has anyone tried to reduce the weight of solid copper projectiles by either trimming and re-boatailing or boring into the base.
My small lathe is accurate to about 1/4 thou.

[Hercl]

Never heard of anyone doing such a thing...

Out of interest, are you trying to improve ballisitcs/performance?

Or modifying bullets which don't shoot well in your rifle into bullets that do?

[ozfisher71]

I am having trouble getting the projectiles I am after but have plenty of the next weight up.

[Apollo]

Personally, I think you are crazy even thinking about the idea.

Don't care how flash the Lathe might be, how are you going to determine exactly how much material to remove. Boy, you must have some spare time.

How much difference is the weight of "next weight up" in what you can't obtain.

There has got to be a much better alternative

[Old Fart]

...by either trimming and re-boatailing or boring into the base.

Trimming - Altering the boat tail or turning it into a flat base bullet would effectively make it a 'new' bullet so your existing load work ups wouldn't match. Defeats the purpose of the whole exercise obviously.

Re-boat tailing - In theory that would be ok, but you would need to match the various contours and angles of the lighter weight projectile near perfectly for the to be the 'same' bullet. Otherwise same problem as above, weight may be equal but the accuracy would not.

Boring a hole in the base - That's not going to give you the lighter bullet you want and I think you'll just muck up the performance with a ruined boat tail. Give that a miss.

[SendIt]

I'd think drilling a hole in the bottom of the bullet to lighten it would also give you some drag issues.

Another reason to avoid that option.

[Rippah]

Interesting idea.

If you do end up giving it a go It would be cool to see some pictures of how you get through it and how well they shoot.