weatherby 340 bullet swap

gjshaw

I am not new to bullet reloading, but I have never tried pulling the bullet heads from factory ammo and replacing them with a different one. My question is, I just purchased 3 boxes of weatherby 340 with the 250gr. nosler partition and I want to pull the bullet's and replace them with the 225gr. nosler accubond head's. I want to do this since I can not find out what powder weatherby is using in their bullets and I want to try and duplicate their balistic's. I have a collet type puller and a rcbs press so what are everybody thoughts and has anybody else tryed this? I hate the thought of tearing down the $60.00 a box of bullets and not coming out with something that is going to work any better.

mrbruce

The weight are close enough that it shouldn't be a problem but I would only do 1 and check it out for accuracy and any problems before I would do them all..

bpost

quote:Originally posted by gjshaw
I am not new to bullet reloading, but I have never tried pulling the bullet heads from factory ammo and replacing them with a different one. My question is, I just purchased 3 boxes of weatherby 340 with the 250gr. nosler partition and I want to pull the bullet's and replace them with the 225gr. nosler accubond head's. I want to do this since I can not find out what powder weatherby is using in their bullets and I want to try and duplicate their balistic's. I have a collet type puller and a rcbs press so what are everybody thoughts and has anybody else tryed this? I hate the thought of tearing down the $60.00 a box of bullets and not coming out with something that is going to work any better.


Mrbruce is right but lets explore this a bit more for reasoning behind the question.

Commercial ammo is loaded with bulk powders that are not available to hand loaders. Factories blend powders to get a specified burn rate and load it. That is why you can't determine what powder it is loaded with. Suffice it to say they are very slow for that caliber.

Duplicating factory ballistics is almost impossible in the real world rifles we shoot. They use pressure barrels and the exact same conditions are not duplicated in your rifle. Each rifle will produce different results with the sale ammo.

Your best bet is to load several rounds with charges of different powders, following the reloading manual recommendations. Make sure you caredully work up looking for pressure signs. Your rifle will tell you which powder/bullet combination is best for your rifle. You may actually exceed factory ammo performance if you are lucky [:D].

FWIW calling the bullet part of a cartridge "heads" seems to a common error. If you are referring to rounds or cartridges the correct term for the projectile is "bullet".

perry shooter

Bpost and others are correct but one other thing is a factory Weatherby with 250 grain bullet would not have the same powder charge with a 225 grain bullet . IMHO the 225 would most likely come out of the barrel slower then the 250 Powder is progressive the more pressure the faster the burn the faster the burn the more pressure For the sake of this example if you had a bullet made out of say aluminum at the right diameter and it was 70 grains with this powder charge it may be only 800 FPS. I would go with the powders listed in the reloading manuals and forget pulling bullets. If you want a bullet with faster speeds then you can get with available reloading components. then I suggest getting the barrel rechambered to 338/378 Weatherby.