bullet base knurling??

[jgar]

Have an idea to throw out to you all.
During load testing sometimes I will engrave the bottom of the bullets with some lines or circles to let me know what bullet I used in the sabot. Nothin fancy just use the point of a knife.
When i check out a sabot i look at the inside of base and it will have an impression of the lines and i can check for base flaring or lost petals whatever and corelate that to the bullet and powder that was shot.
I do not have to do this with the BO,s. They have the little divot in the center from the forming process. This leaves a nice little nipple protruding when you look at the inside of the fired sabots base.
This got me to thinking that the BO is used with great accuracy in a lot of smokeless ML's. It has a thick jacket, no cannelure and nothing to grip the sabot but the divot in the center of the base.
The base of the sabot and the bottom part of the bullet are the first things to impact when the charge is ignited so maybe this could be part of the accuracy of the BO. The sabot and the bullet are mated together from the start.
When i get the time and money to do some testing i am going to checkerboard the bottom of some .458 250gr barnes tsx flatnose bullets with a knife and see how they shoot against some straight out of the box.
If roughing up the bottom of the bullets has been tried and disgarded as folly please let me know.

[Dave W]

Numerous people have commented that the 300gr .458 Rem is just as accurate as the BO in their gun. The Rem has a flat base with nothing to mate it to the sabot. JMO the bullet diameter and the fact it is jacketed has more to do with its accuracy than the hole in the bottom, plus it is about the highest BC bullet available for us in that weight range.
Anything is worth a try though, let us know how you do.