I just couldn’t get how “secant” and “tangent” bullets differed. So John tore out a page of his handloading notebook and started drawing.
While John drew pictures for me, our friend Shrapnel dropped in with a handloading question, joking that he doesn’t read, so he’s grateful to have John as a good friend. Right now? I’m grateful he sits across the table from me.
slightly heavier ones. And the heaviest bullets don’t fly as flat as far. And then, of course, the heavier the bullet, the harder the recoil – if the speed it is fly- ing at is a constant. (That was a lesson I learned from my nearly century-old German 9.3x72R. It took a honker of a bullet, a 180-grain Speer Hot-Cor, but didn’t go much faster than my shotguns. Consequently, recoil was much more pleasurable than a bullet half its weight in my 270.) The thing is, though, all manuals assume handloaders know a little math. They’re wrong. I’d bogged down completely when I got to the page on bullet shape.
I went to Wikipedia, and got even more confused: “The profile of this shape is formed by a segment of a circle such that the rocket body is tangent to the curve of the nose cone at its base; and the base is on the radius of the circle. The popularity of this shape is largely due to the ease of constructing its profile.” My Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary – for a first defi- nition – calls tangent, “in immediate physical contact; touching.” But the drawings didn’t show tangent being any
“touchier” than secant.
Wikipedia’s description of “se- cant” wasn’t much better:
“The profile of this shape is also formed by a segment of a circle, but the base of the shape is not on the radius of the circle defined by the ogive radius.” They didn’t seem to understand
dyslexics, and were talking about nose cones, not bullets. Sure they’re alike, but I had a mentor sitting in the room with me, who would talk bullets. When I looked up, he was gazing at me, with a wry smile on his face.
“So a secant is a pointier bullet?” I said.
“Well, yes. But that’s not all,” he said, tearing a page from the loose-leaf notebook he keeps his shooting data in. (That’s how it always starts. That and a pencil.)
John started to draw. “You know what an ogive is?”
“Yes. It’s the curved part of the
bullet. And the Berger reloading book describes the VLD as having a ‘long secant ogive.’ So pointier. Obviously if secants are the long ones, they’re the pointier ones.”
“Not necessarily.” He started to draw. “Tangent bullets are pretty ‘pointy,’ too.” But then he got up and went upstairs to his office, and came back in a few minutes with a book: Understanding Firearm Ballistics: Basic to Advanced Ballistics; Simplified, Illus- trated & Explained, Revised Improved & Expanded, by Robert A. Rinker. I had a sinking feeling.
New Exact Small Arms Ballistics
“The Source Book For Riflemen”
New Book by Art Pejsa World Renowned Authority In fine hard-cover
at the low Price of $24.95+$3 S&H Also still available,
Pejsa's Handbook of Ballistics at $19.95 plus the world's most accurate program for 32-BIT PCs or PDAs at $39.95 postpaid.
Phone 612-354-3411 or:
Pejsa@sprintmail.com
www.varminthunter.org Page 101
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196