Under weight Rainier bullets!

[Prof Young]

Was cleaning up loading room today and had cause to weigh some Rainier bullets. According to the lablel these 44 cals were 200 grains. We are talking plated flat points here. Well I weighed a dozen of them and all were between 182 and 184 grains.

Some questions:

Is this normal?

Does it make a lot of difference in the general ballistics.

Should I be loading these as if they were 180 gn.

Life is good.
Prof Young

[lordmorgul]

Under weight of the same construction is unlikely to cause any issues other than slight increase in velocity as long as the diameter is the same in spec. I’ve measured similar differences in my rainier bulk. They aren’t match bullets.

But if you’re going to run a different loading then binning them into groups would be the way to go.


Andrew - Lancaster, CA
NRA Life Member, CRPA member, Calguns.net contributor, CGF / SAF / FPC / CCRKBA / GOA / NAGR / NRA-ILA contributor, USCCA member - Support your defenders!

[Marco Califo]

Someone will probably suggest you call Ranier and ask "what's up with that?".
But, they went out of business a year ago and "es no mas".
I have on hand and have loaded their plated bullets. I was ok with them, for range bullets. I have been buying Berrys since then.
Is it possible you reuse boxes (as I do) , and maybe the label is not right? I would also measure the diameter, and confirm the caliber.

[Nick_C_S]

From my experience, bullets tend to run a tad heavy.

Sounds to me that they were considered 180gn bullets. ??

[Hammerhead]

Yup, sounds like they were mis-labeled 180 grainers.
180 and 200 grain data isn't that different, go with 200 grain jacketed data (staying within speed restrictions of course)

I've been shooting Rainier since the '08 shortage forced me to try them. Good stuff, sad to see them go.

[TimRB]

Originally Posted by Hammerhead

Yup, sounds like they were mis-labeled 180 grainers.

Yes--The few times I've thought to weigh bullets they were mostly spot on but sometimes as much as 1-2 grains (out of 77 or 80) from their nominal values. Nowhere near as much as seen by the OP.

Tim

[Nick_C_S]

Good stuff (Rainer Bullets), sad to see them go.

Yeah. Me too. I really really liked their 38 wadcutter. Unlike all other plated wadcutters and semi-wadcutters, they didn't have a rounded edge. In fact, they had a slight raised rim on the leading edge - cutting paper just as clean as lead. Fantastic.

I talk in the past-tense only because they are defunct. Fortunately, I read they were closing up shop here on TFL and I promptly got on Midway and bought 7000 of them on clearance price, no less. And I already had a few K. Gonna be a while before I run out

[Unclenick]

It's not unusual for cast bullets to have a 3-grain weight span, especially coming out of multiple-cavity molds. It's just not enough to upset normal pistol range accuracy with them. In the case of 184 vs 200 grains, that's a much bigger difference and would affect point of impact in a revolver, impacting lower. I suspect, as already suggested, they were in a mislabeled box.

That said, other than a sight adjustment, it won't impact normal revolver shooting much. Even a SWC, which has more drag than you will with a round nose flat point, if I load the two weights to the same muzzle energy, running the 200 at 900 fps and the 184 at 938 fps and adjusting the 200 BC of 0.194 down to 0.1785 for the lighter bullet, zeroing both at 50 yards and assuming a front sight post 0.7" above the bore axis, the peak of the trajectory for the 200 is 1.1" at 28 yards and the peak for the 184 is 1.0": at 29 yards. The difference in total bullet drop (what you would see if you fired horizontally rather than with zeroed sights) is 5.5" and 5.1" for the heavy and light weights, respectively. If you are seeing 0.4" difference clearly at 50 yards, you are shooting better than I am. The difference in drop doesn't reach 2" until 140 yards, by which time you are well out of any sight adjustment range you are likely to have.

[TX Nimrod]

Considering both the slightly higher recoil and longer barrel time for the 200s, the difference in POI between them and the 184s may be even less than simple calculations can tell us.


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[Unclenick]

At some ranges, that will be true. At close range, the 200's will impact a bit higher, with how much depending in part on how heavy the gun is and on how solid the grip on it is. That is why my numbers were premised on a common sight zero having been dialed in first.