Praise for 6.5mm "Thick Jacket" Bergers
As we reported some days ago in the Daily Bulletin, Berger Bullets is rolling out a line-up of tangent-ogive, non-VLD “thick jacket” bullets. These are designed to work more reliably on extended shot strings with hot barrels. In addition, the bullet shape should be less sensitive to seating depth than secant-ogive VLD designs. Berger’s Eric Stecker reports: “So far we have made ONLY the 6.5mm and 7mm in the THICK jacket configuration. Remember that the THICK jacket is meant to eliminate or significantly reduce bullet failures. The standard bullets still perform very well. We will soon be making THICK jacket bullet is 22 cal, 6mm and 30 cal. When these bullets are available we will be posting the news on this forum.”
Larry Bartholome, past captain of the U.S. F-Class Team, has tested the 6.5mm thick-jacket 140s. Larry is impressed: “I have been shooting two different lots of 6.5mm 140gr thick-jacket Bergers and they are, if anything, more accurate than the thin-jacketed ones were/are. I have shot Lot 235 and Lot 1231. I used Lot 1231 in the Lodi Midwest Palma Championships shooting F-Class. It would be hard to ask for a better bullet. I don’t think I had a bullet out for elevation (10” Ten-ring) out of 340 record shots I fired all week.” [Note: These are VLD-style bullets Bartholome is using, not the tangent-ogive 140s.]
A thick jacketed 37 grain 17 caliber VLD would probably end the disappearing bullet failures so many of us have had trying to get what should have been a great round.
I could never get the 37’s to stabilize in a 6 twist 17 PPC. they would either enter the target sideways or never make it to the target.
I forgot to mention in my post I using
140 VLD thick jackets not the BT version.
Larry B.