Berger fullbore 155.5 with cracks

[Billy308]

Hi all,
After using a couple of small boxes of 100 of the above and being impressed with the finish and uniformity and results on target, I have noticed in my next box of 500 some cracking in the surface near the point of the projectile.
These stretch marks or cracks are rough enough to feel with the edge of your thumb nail.
They are aproximately 6mm long and about 15 of them around the circumference. When seated with a redding competition seater the cracks appear 3mm either side of the very slight ring left by the seater. The whole box appear to have the same appearance. I have tried unsuccessfully to take a close-up photo to show.
So far I have only used at 300 yards and they have been fine.
Cheers Bill

[6.5x55ai]

I brought in a reasonable quantity of JLK 6.5mm 130 VLD's and was disappointed to see the same marks you describe on them. (Not quite as many marks around the circumference as yours though.) I cannot fault their accuracy though. mmm.

[aaronraad]

Hi all,
After using a couple of small boxes of 100 of the above and being impressed with the finish and uniformity and results on target, I have noticed in my next box of 500 some cracking in the surface near the point of the projectile.
These stretch marks or cracks are rough enough to feel with the edge of your thumb nail.
They are aproximately 6mm long and about 15 of them around the circumference. When seated with a redding competition seater the cracks appear 3mm either side of the very slight ring left by the seater. The whole box appear to have the same appearance. I have tried unsuccessfully to take a close-up photo to show.
So far I have only used at 300 yards and they have been fine.
Cheers Bill

Cracks are different to indentations.

Cracks along the ogive typically appear as a single defect running lengthwise and with a bit of direction change around the circumference. Essentially a defective jacket and therfore a defective projectile.

Indentations though appear as a series of identical axial defects along the ogive caused by 'excessive' lubricant being trapped during the pointing operation. It's 'excessive' in terms of being visible to the naked eye, but always occurs to some extent as lubricant is always present. Some shooters will only notice this when they actually polish and clean the projectiles before handloading. Does not appear to affect accuracy, but might change point of impact when compared to groups shot with no visible indentations from another production batch. Another reason not to mix batches of the same projectile. Sometime visible lubrication indentations along the ogive are impossible for the bullet swager to avoid due to the characteristics of a batch of jackets.

The second type of crack I've seen while pointing up during swaging, is similar to excess lubricant indentations in appearance, but more significant. The difference is that the ogive has actually bust or split in a straight line at one or more locations. I've seen this caused during ejection when the projectile is first released, but then catches again while the shank is still supported to some degree. The unsupported ogive though can compress, if the ejection pin does fail to penetrate the meplat, and the thin walled ogive will burst. Easily identified by bright copper and sometimes exposed lead.