A few days ago, I observed something I had never suspected; maybe someone else has, and I missed it, but--here goes.Setting the scenario:I had loaded 25 cartridges with 10 gr. of Red Dot, a powder that I had not used before. It seemed to be a pretty good fast powder, and I set an arbitrary charge, so as to fire it and establish a performance baseline; I would then shift the charge up or down to see the difference a small change made in velocity and accuracy. A common procedure.The bullets (and this is the important part) were Lyman 311299, which had proven one of the best designs. The Brinnel Hardness Number was 30. I had hardened them myself. They had been tested for hardness many times over.After loading them, I was looking in my container of bullets, and spied 5 that I hadn't used previously; I checked their BHN and it was 15. I decided to load them and use them as sighters, because the load was so different I wasn't sure I'd be on the paper. It developed that I was, and I was quite close to the aim point. O.K.Then I fired the others at the Official CBA competition target.Here's where the mystery comes in:The 25 rounds, (recorded as 2-ten round strings) were: Avg. Vel. 1284 E.S. 16 S.D. 4 The Sighter string: Avg. Vel. 1786 (!) E.S 20 S.D. 6The absolutely only difference was the BHN. Same batch of cases, same box of 100 primers, etc. etc.The strings were fired consecutively, no waiting. The 15 BHN bullets formed a 1-7/16 group, with 4 in 5/8".The 25 were O.K., but not quite as good, but meriting further testing.Sorry to be so long winded (again) but it needed detailing to be meaningful.Bill
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. My fate is not entirely in Gods hands, if I have a weapon in mine.
