Hollow Point vs Cup Point

Idahocaster - is your objective a bullet that comes out of the ballistic gel looking nice, or a dead animal? And what sort of animal?

If your objective is a gentle load for small game, then please ignore the following.

If you are intending to kill something medium to large with these bullets, I would suggest driving them as hard as you can before groups open or leading appears. On both counts you may get further along with a harder bullet, but try both. Speed gives energy/momentum, but more importantly it moves bullet metal around.

As Ed Harris notes, it is then a case of corrrect alloy for the velocity (and the chosen hollow). The continuum will be from a soft bullet with minimal hollow (or cup) to a bullet maybe a bit harder than #2 with a modest hollow - about .100" or .110", tapered, and taking no more than 5% of bullet weight.

In my experience, blowing the nose off a hollow point bullet is no sin unless the pieces are turning up on your plate. If the hollow is sufficiently modest to begin with, and the bullet hard enough, the fragmentation does not occur all at once, and leaves a substantial amount of bullet to keep on penetrating.

To illustrate the "not all at once" statement, a few days ago, using 175 gn HP bullet as described at 2200 fps, I pulled off a double (unintentionally) on some 3/4 grown pigs - the first through the ribs, the second in the neck. There was still plenty of destructiveness left over for the second pig.

In any case, once the mould is drilled, you can have multiple pins made - hollow, cup, solid bullet - and can try the different forms for effectiveness, preferably on the end users.