Whidden Gunworks Bullet Pointing Die System
Gear Review by GS Arizona
This article originally appeared in the Rifleman’s Journal website.
Many of you have doubtlessly read Bryan Litz’s articles in our Daily Bulletin and on his Applied Ballistics website about various current long-range bullets. Bryan’s work carries a great deal of weight in the world of ballistics, so his comments (and mathematical proofs) regarding the benefits of bullet pointing certainly caught my attention. Bullet pointing, like meplat trimming, is an effort to reduce the ballistic inconsistency created by the somewhat jagged tip of the jacket where the bullet forming dies bring it to a point in the manufacturing process. Of course, we could eliminate this problem altogether by shooting closed-tip, open-base bullets like the Lapua D46, but that merely shifts the jacket problem to the other end of the bullet.
In any event, hollow point bullets rule the accuracy world today, so John Whidden, multi-time National Long Range Champion at Camp Perry and a talented gunsmith and designer to boot, came up with a very handy tool to let us make those hollow points pointier. Let’s have a look at John’s tool and see how it works.
The Whidden Bullet Pointing Die System uses a Forster bullet seating die body as its basic structure and that’s a good choice given the quality machining Forster does on these. The real heart of the tool comes in two parts: the caliber sleeve and the pointing die that fits inside the sleeve. In fact, to point up different caliber bullets, you only need to change the caliber sleeve, everything else remains the same. The last item is the bullet base that slips into a standard .308 shellholder and supports the bullet as it goes into the die body.
It took me less than five minutes to get everything set up, including changing the caliber sleeve from 6mm to .30 caliber. John’s instruction sheets are well illustrated and clearly written; you should have no problem getting up and running.
Pointing the bullets is as easy as sizing a piece of brass. You can see in the top photo the difference between a few pointed bullets and a few un-pointed ones. The innermost pointed bullet in the picture was my first attempt and I adjusted the die a little after that, you can see that the others are closed a little more. John even includes a couple of sample bullets so that you can see one done right and one done wrong. That is a nice addition that can help you achieve the desired results.
I think Bryan’s work supports the validity of this concept and John’s tool puts it into practice in a simple-to-use manner that makes it just about impossible to do any damage to the bullet. I have shot pointed bullets in various calibers at many matches now. Pointing is not a “miracle cure”, but I believe that pointing bullet tips can produce long-range accuracy gains, through reduced vertical dispersion, for many popular types of match bullets. The Whidden Bullet Pointing Die System retails for $220.00 (with one insert). Additional die inserts are $42.00 each. Extra caliber sleeves are also $42.00. You can purchase directly from Whidden Gunworks, or from Sinclair International.
Similar Posts:
- How to Point Bullets — Whidden Bullet Pointing Tool Review
- Uniforming Meplats — How to Point Bullets with Whidden System
- Pointing Basics — How to Use a Bullet Pointing Die System
- Bullet Pointing System Available Again
- ABCs of Bullet Pointing — Increase Bullet BC Uniformity
Tags: Bryan Litz, Bullet Pointing, Bullet Tipping, John Whidden, Long Range Ballistics, Meplat, Meplat Uniformaing, Pointing Die
In my experience with bulletmaking and tip dies I have noticed that it is easy to cause problems: too much closing can cause jackets to buckle, especially with open-tip bullets. If you have a bullet comparator use it to check before and after pointing to be sure you haven’t buckled the jacket. A quick micrometer check at the start of the ogive may also be a good precaution. Easy does it!!!
The process obiviously improves the fligtht characteristics of the bullets so why have Berger and competitors not incorporated the operation in their production processes???
“The process obiviously improves the fligtht characteristics of the bullets so why have Berger and competitors not incorporated the operation in their production processes?”
They will, just let ‘em know how much more per bullet you’re willing to pay.
Seriously? to do this would require a lot of additional machining/worker involvement which leads to more expense – and there’s only a few thousand of us crazies out here who want it so it’d never be profitable.
Well, sir, I’m not sure that is the case. I could be wrong–very wrong–but from what I understand of the bullet making process along with about 30 years of experience in manufacturing processes my perception is it would take some additional steps involving more forming/finishing. There would be additional dies and setup but the additional cost per unit would be relatively low. Now, if you are one of the folks who work on the lines–tool and die and/or design engineers–and I’m talking out of my hat then I’ll take my crow with a little bernaise sauce.
OOPS!!Sierra already is doing it. I should have read the article about the New Sierra 155 Palma bullet for 2009. Sorry Mr. editor.
TA
PS How about the newly introduced Lapua Scenar’s;maybe them too?
I am strong proponent of the Whidden pointing system. I have have significant increases in BC with most of the VLD bullets.
Whidden now has three pointer stems depending on which bullet you are using. These were formulated to get the most significant increase with a given bullet shape.
You will note that Lapua is now pointing some of the Scenar bullets.
Sierra recently began closing the points on many of their matchking bullets. Including the 155 Palma. They site a higher BC. Ive found the .30 caliber match king 155 Palma 2156 shoots 2 minutes higher at 1000 yards then the open point 2156. Proving a higher BC
This is the next big thing in target bullet making, meaning … once there was boat tail,vld advancement and next, its going to be tip pointing. Manufacturer will all do it in time because the benefit (higher bc, more speed, better design, and the look ) are too great to be ignored for the target shooter. For the hunter its is not the way to go since the hollow point tip helps for expansion. But Target shooter need higher BC at all cost. Now, will they trim and point or just point. Because a big part of making these bullet more accurate is also to trim them to the same length before pointing them.
It makes perfect sense a closed point will have less drag then a open point. Wonder why it took so long for manufactures to figure out this common sense detail.
In my own experiences with closing bullet tips, too much is as bad as not enough. Bullet meplats must be uniformed to the datum line, uniformed in the meplat cavity then pointed for maximum gain.
I built my pointing setup at home. Cant see why a multi million dollar corporation with an engineering staff. cant close them a little better.
I am very familiar with the Sierra 2156 Palma bullet. I closed the meplats on 25,000 for the United States Palma Team to be shot at the Nationals at Camp Perry and the World Palma Championships in Australia in 2011.
The bullets were tested for vertical at John Whidden’s 1000 yard range in Georgia — about 500 rounds — all shot by John in the prone. I pulled all the targets. Emil Praslic of the AMU kept the stats on all the tests of components and vertical.
The bullets were sorted base to ogive. There were two lots. One lot of 4,800 and the balance in another lot. Each lot had a short and long sub-lot. There was .008 difference. When you took all the date on the measurements, the long and short sub-lots of each main lot could have been (but were not) mixed together, i.e., short with shorts and longs with longs.
At the end of the testing, John was shooting 1.5″ of vertical at 1000 yards.
I closed the meplats with the goal of seeking very uniform BC — not just a higher BC that would come with the meplat closing anyway. Since the coaches in Palma competition make the wind calls, and the rifleman points and shoots, the coaches must be able to trust the shooter when he breaks a center X shot. The truthfulness of the “conversation” between the bullet and the target and the shooter and the coach cannot be had unless vertical is eliminated.
The AMU did their due diligence in testing the bullets at Ft. Benning as well. The ES and SD at the barrel and on the target in the 300 yard (or meter) testing stayed uniform. The vertical was gone.
These bullets set records at Camp Perry in 2011 and John won the Queens Cup at the Word Championships with them.
All of the bullets were pointed with the original die developed by Ferris Pindel and myself in 2002. I paid for 22 days and nights of research and development on this die and other one-of-a-kind tooling developed by Ferris at my request during my testing of meplat modification. It cost me more than a carbide bullet making set up. That being said, when the project was complet, Ferris called and let me know that “I did it! The die is perfect.” Time, experience, records and championship have proven it so.
The Pindell die is easy for me to adjust because I am moving towards 200,000 closed meplats. But John Whidden developed the micro top system to make the process available to the every-day shooter. Easy to use on the fly with different length bullets. John’s new version of the die is just beautiful and the closing fixtures work great. John’s dies really do a tremendous job on the long Hybrid ogives.
The Pindell die may have started the ball rolling, but the Whidden die made the era of meplat closing easy for everyone.
I sent 58 Clinch River 106 grain bullets to Jason Baney a few years ago to test in his 1000 yard light gun chambered in a straight 6BR. All I did was close the meplats. No sorting and not super prep tricks. I told him no more but just asked him to test them.
Jason tested unmodified 106 Clinch River bullets he was shooting at the time in a round-robin fashion. The unmodified bullets grouped in the 5″ range and the modified meplats grouped around 2.5″ with about half the vertical. Additionally, the closed meplats shot about 18″ higher — which was what I knew would happen. That calculates to a lot of BC advantage.
The pictures and details of this testing were posted by Jason on Bench Rest Central and this board.
Bottom line — there is NOTHING you can do to your best competition loads prepared for long range competition that cannot be improved with properly prepared meplats. Absolutely nothing. Pure fact, no BS whatsoever. It is a no brainer.
If any shooter does not think that EVERYTHING in you shooting package matters, ask yourself what you would give in a big Regional or National match for another X or 10 or even a 9 instead of an 8 in windy conditions when a wind call is missed. Priceless.
On December 16, 2002, Ferris Pindell wrote me a letter that says it all. “In my over 60 years in the bench rest game, I have found the following to be true: Accuracy is the result of a multitude of tremendous triffles.” What more can I say.
Regards,
Jim Hardy