Now the problem with the .223 bullet is they are normally short fat little things, OK fat is a relative statement however until you get to the speciality bullets such as the heavier Berger offerings or the heavier SMKs such as the 80 grain there is not a lot of length to work with. This means the alignment area of the sleeve in my pointing system has to be reduced somewhat. Also the ogive to meplat transition is quite rounded on the majority of .223 bullets so the tip tooling itself would need to be of a radiused form to ensure an even blending to the meplat.
There was also one final consideration, I did not have many bullets to work with as I am not really a .223 shooter so the bullets I had were items of various heritage and origin in a bag on a shelf. Looking at the handful of bullets in my hand I realised they were somewhat varied and weighing them revealed everything from 52 to 90 grains including some military stuff formed from the front instead of the more traditional HP design.
As there was a Redding die in the press the system was built to suit and the only real difference to the others I have built is the sleeve has a smaller hole in it and the spacer behind the tip tooling is longer. I also machined quite a large chamfer on the nose of the sleeve to make orientating the bullet a bit easier.
The results
This is a 69 grain bullet with the meplat diameter reduced to just under half of the original. The picture is not great however it proved the principle to me and you should get an idea of the improvement over standard. Next test was on the 80 grain SMK, we do have a lot of these things on the shelf as they are the bullets used on the 22C Wildcat the Viking shoots. They pointed to needle like standards with the meplat reduced to as fine as 0.5mm/.020 Next step was the military 55 grain bullets, they certainly close down from the flat blunt closed meplat however they will never get to the SMK standard.
A happy half hour passed and at the end of it I had a handful of pointed bullets with a few buckled for good measure. My view is bullet pointing of the .223 should really only be tried on bullets of 62grains or heavier however the good news is it can certainly be done and the system has been polished and shipped out already. I am looking forward to feedback on the results. It would be interesting to see what sort of elevation gain is seen with the 69/80 grain range bullets and also the changes in down range velocities as with these the G7 BC change can be calculated.
Such projects are always fun, sometimes they work incredibly well and other times the parts are resigned to the scrap bin. Today it looks like it is going to be the first of the two options. Happy Days.