Arm or ally 55g fmj, did a weight sort on 1000.

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Shadow9mm

New member
Arm or ally has a in house .224 bullet made for them, a 55g FMJ. I ordered 1000 to give them a try as they were right at $100 shipped to my door. Decided to do a weight sort for consistency. There were a few odd outliers on the low end, and the majority were in the 55.4-55.5 range. For bulk FMJ I am happy with it. Next up is load development, I will keep you all updated.

Here's a link, currently out of stock. https://www.armorally.com/shop/arm-or-ally-22-cal-55gr-fmj-bt-w-cannelure-bulk-oem/

53.3-1
53.8-1
54.7-1
54.8-1
54.9-2
55.0-9
55.1-67
55.2-82
55.3-112
55.4-296
55.5-325
55.6-95
55.7-8


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The very low ones may well have air pockets in them. Find the best load you can with 55.5-grain bullets, and then try a group that includes the two most extreme low-weight examples. If they have voids that aren't centered, they should jump away from the mean POI.
 
I'll have to check my "Bob's Bullets" for weight disparities, 1k was something like $110/shipped & they're pretty little pills. Great uniformity amongst the batch insofar as visual inspection goes.

Not sure of why they have the little micro nubbin on the tip of every projectile but they seem to preform well in the tests I've watched.
 
I'd put my money on 55.1-55.7, if I had to do so.
But 55.0 will probably group well enough with the rest of the 'heart' of that bell curve.

Those extreme lows, however, would be for very casual plinking.

I sorted 1,000 Hornady .243" 95 gr SSTs some years ago. Good weight distribution.
All usable.
1,000 total (exactly 1,000 - no extras :().
94.9 gr - 26 (2.6%)
95.0 gr - 95 (9.5%)
95.1 gr - 715 (71.5%)
95.2 gr - 151 (15.1%)
95.3 gr - 13 (1.3%)
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I later bought something like 1,600 more 'blems' and sorted those. (No chart.) Bigger spread with some extreme lows and highs.
"Extreme weights" are used for pressure testing when developing new loads. The good stuff gets used for accuracy load workup and good loads.


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Quick update. Did a test with these bullets today, they did not perform well at all.

Long and short of it, they shot 7.61moa at 25yds. All charges were weighed, and the bullets were weight sorted, these bullets were all from the 55.3 to 55.5 range.

I shot some of my usual training loads, 55g Hornady FMJ, thrown charges, same powder same powder amount, also weight sorted bullets from their batch. they came in at 3.62moa.

This barrel has not been the best, and I was shooting with a 6x LVPO. but I was stable off bags, all the shots felt good. This barrel will probably not be on my rifle much longer. But in any case they were twice as bad as the Hornady bulk fmj loads.
 
Did some 300yd & 400yd shooting. I tried Arm or Ally 62gr fmjbt and Armscore 55gr fmjbt - both super-cheap.

The AoA 62gr was running 2800fps (Tactical Rifle), the Armscore 55gr 2800fps (AA2015).

The Armscore 55gr was good to 400yds, after which the dispersion made calling shots a crapshoot.

The AoA 62gr wasn't good for anything past 200yds. 300yds was iffy and 400yds a waste of time. The 62gr was super inconsistent - you could see the wild shot vapor trails through the spotting scope.

Conclusion: AoA 62gr is much less accurate than my other El-cheapo 55gr bullets from Armscore.

16" barrel, 1/8 twist
 
shadow if i took the time to weigh them i'd cull those bottom 4 use the next 11 as foulers and enjoy the rest.

15 out of a grand aint bad for "bulk"
 
Yeah, they might be unstable. The question is, why? But they also just may have badly eccentric centers of mass.

Shadow9mm:

Did you mic the OD of these bullets? Can you give their lengths, your rifling twist, and the velocity you were reading off of them?
 
FrankenMauser said:
Short range for testing, especially if a flat-base bullet.
But, regardless, :eek:
Click to expand...
Yes, 25 is short range, both are boat tail. First time I shot this bullet. Did a quick workup to look for pressure signs, and was not sure where it would be on paper relative to my zero. Started at 25 just to make sure I was on paper, and after shooting that group, it did not make much sense to drag my target stand out to 100. Was going to chrono as well, but I gave up on that as well after that group.
 
Try rolling a few of them on a piece of glass and watch to see if the bottom shoulder where the boattail meets the bearing surface has a wobble with each rotation. An off-axis boattail can sure do what you are seeing.
 
Unclenick said:
Try rolling a few of them on a piece of glass and watch to see if the bottom shoulder where the boattail meets the bearing surface has a wobble with each rotation. An off-axis boattail can sure do what you are seeing.
Click to expand...
Good idea! I forgot that bullets steer by the base.

These boat tail bases on these bullets make up a significant % of the bullet mass and if they are off (likely from folding the jacket) they'll fly poorly.

I wish I had way to measure the runout on these bullet bases.
 
Already on their way back. They said they don't normally accept returns on bull bullets. Not sure why they did this time.
 
I did the "roll them on a piece of glass" trick. I could see the out of center boat tail when they rolled. I couldn't see a difference in weight. I did this with the 62gr fmjbt from Arm or Ally.

My take away is that a flat base hollow point is probably easier to make fly true because it is easier to form the base.

I'm going to roll some Armscore and Hornady fmjbt I have on hand.
 
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Rolled on glass Armscore 55gr fmjbt, Hornady 55gr fmjbt, Speer 70gr Spire Point.

Hornady has a much shorter boat tail, and rolled perfectly.

Armscore has a longer boat tail, but the lead base is rebated, and it rolled nearly as good as Hornady. The Speer was included as it was the only flat base I had on hand, and of course it rilled perfectly.

The pictures L-> R Hornady 55gr fmjbt, Armscore 55gr fmjbt, Arm or Ally 62gr fmjbt, Speer 70gr SP



 
When using inexpensive 55 gn fmj, am more concerned with getting ogee consistently closer to lands, than sorting by weight. This may mean seating out past the cannelure, with paying attention to the usual concerns over col . It is possible the overall shape of the bullets is more inconsistent than the weight.

In the past this has turned out decent short range practice rounds.

And with the price/availability of all components, am giving consideration to using as good as bullets as i can afford.
 
A little OT, but at the NRA Annual Meeting last week, I put in a suggestion with Hornady that they include their FMJs on their 4 DOF program bullet list for the guys trying to use them to imitate M2, M80, and M196 Ball ammo. They told me they hadn't done that because they were not making the FMJs to match standards, but I pointed out the M1 Garand, for example, is usually a 1.5 to 2.0 moa gun anyway, so that people would be happy to have enough info for more accurate average come-ups. He said he would pass the suggestion along to the ballisticians, so we shall see if anything comes of it.

Two problems result from an off-axis boattail. One is that the center of mass is then off-axis. The other is that the longer side of the boattail catches more of the muzzle blast, tending to push the bullet to drift away from the trajectory centerline in the same direction that the lateral toss of the off-center of mass does at muzzle exit. An error multiplier.

Bryan Litz also mentioned that flat base bullets are easier to manufacture concentrically and to make shoot straight. They just have lower BCs than their boattail counterparts. But for modest ranges, all benchrest shooters run flat base bullets, AFAIK. Years ago, my Rem 600 in 222 Rem would drill cloverleaves all day long using the 50-grain Hornady flat base soft point available back then (circa 1980). I would be very surprised if their 50 and 55-grain V-max bullets didn't do the same.
 
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