Mountainguy, they're skived, but in the wrong place behind the jacket opening, which is what I think you meant.

It's very difficult to accomplish with the small hole in the front of the jacket, and the rollover of the jacket is still present, which doesn't help things. Once expansion commences, the skiving in the middle of the jacket comes into play, which makes things worse as it would open up too easily and too widely.

Overall, it'd be better to redesign the bullet with skiving at the front rather than the back and a larger exposure for the softpoint.

Just buy some Core-Lokts if you want a better 200 RN. I'd doubt the effort would be worth it as even after modification you'd have an inferior bullet to the Remington.

 

Yeah what 35 Remington just said! It is hard to beat the Core-lokt bullet in the 35 cartridge period.It was designed for that cartridge and it works perfectly.It can be bought in factory ammo or in bulk as a component.So just get out there and buy some before some idiot in marketing decides it isn't trendy enough for todays hunters and they stop making it ! Do I make myself clear?

 

Fair enough - I'm with you guys - the rem clrn's are far better bullets in this application. The only problem is that I have several hundred hornadys
35 rem, I did understand from your great write-up that the hornadys present a "when it rains, it pours" scenario in terms of expansion. When they are sufficiently stressed, they expand at both the tip and in the midsection, where the skiving is present. At lower velocities, the tip doesn't initiate expansion, so the skiving in the midsection is useless.
This is why I'd like to weaken the jacket around the tip of the bullet to make it more useful at low velocity. I don't see this making the bullet significantly more frangible overall - I just want it to behave more consistently at low velocity. If I were running it at higher velocity, it would be a moot point.
So what should I use to cut through the jacket at the tip? Ideally the skives would be somewhat symetrical - I'd like them to run about .25" on four sides. Since I've got the bullets, I might as well mess with a couple to see what comes of it.
MG

 

Sorry for the lateness in the reply.....I had gotten sidetracked in other areas, and haven't followed up like I should.

I can't see where a bullet that has skiving on the nose of the bullet AND the sides would turn out to be anything other than excessively weakened.

Okay, I'm mentioning the Remington bullet again, but in this bullet the skiving is only at the tip, with the jacket thickening as it rolls back toward the cannelure. This usually stops expansion at this point and the bullet tends to avoid overexpansion and excessive weight loss. Opens up easily even at long range due to the proper location of the weakening cuts.

With the Hornady skived in the nose and the sides, I can't say that the bullet would do anything beneficial. It would be mostly about losing even more weight in expansion, and perhaps greater fragmentation.

What you need are very fine hacksaw blades and a patient methodology that skives the bullet similarly each time. Go to the hardware store and pick a blade with very fine teeth.

Now, doing it the same every time, well, that's the hard part.

Shoot these Hornady bullets up in developing loads and save yourself the trouble. Buy some Core-Lokts for serious work.

 

I'm with you 35 - I just have 300+ of these things and have to make peace with using them somehow. Hacksaw is a good idea - I'll test them at some point as issued and skived and then report back. I agree they'll be somewhat more frangible at impact, but at low velocities they ought to be more consistent, and still plenty for deer-sized game. Thanks -
MG

 

You need to practice with something . Use up the Hornaday's w/ that . A box of Remington core lok's could last a lifetime as long as you had something else to practice with.