Calling a bullet by it's manufacturer's name

Just don't call 'em late for dinner. Seriously though, as others have said, it is pretty standard to call 'em by a manufacturer or even by a specific product line (i.e. Berger makes a 7mm 180 grain bullet in hunting, match, and hybrid I believe) so I just say 180 hunting vld's.
 
Just as long as we stop referring to them as "pills".... drives me batty. Seriously though, if you're talking to a serious marksman they usually go by manufacturer name or acronym, so you can't go wrong.
 
I don't know firearms lingo, obviously. I don't want to sound like a complete idiot when I'm talking to more knowledgeable marksman. I just realized I have not thought of bullets as "bullets" in many months.

Stop worrying about sounding like anything in particular. Ask questions that seek the knowledge you lack. Being just exactly who you are and being satisfied with who you are is how one ceases sounding like that "complete idiot" you'd like not to sound like.
 
I refer to them as just bullets unless the context of the conversation requires that I name them by make/model/weight etc.

I reload 9 mm and 38 Special and I hardly even remember who makes the bullets or what their ballistics are. I always use 158 gr bare lead SWC or SWCHP for 38 and 147 gr Cu plated lead (nose shape not important) for 9x19.
 
You get way more street cred if you mention AMP jackets, moly, rebated boat tail, and secant ogive in any particular order. Eventually most AR jockeys at the 50yrd berm doing mag dumps will think you are a reloading GOD.
 
You get way more street cred if you mention AMP jackets, moly, rebated boat tail, and secant ogive in any particular order. Eventually most AR jockeys at the 50yrd berm doing mag dumps will think you are a reloading GOD.

My Battalion Commander asked if there was a "real" difference between M118 and M118 LR. I went into a very oversimplified explanation of Ballistic Coefficient, comparing the 168 SMK HPBT and the 175 SMK HPBT.

Now, in their minds, I am the god of reloading, and all before me tremble.
 
My Battalion Commander asked if there was a "real" difference between M118 and M118 LR. I went into a very oversimplified explanation of Ballistic Coefficient, comparing the 168 SMK HPBT and the 175 SMK HPBT.

Yabut M118 was not loaded with the 168 SMK, that was the M852 7.62 NATO match cartridge. M118 was loaded with the same 173 gr FMJBT bullet that was used for the M72 30-06 match cartridge and the much older M1 ball (which was the post 1936 designation of the US Cartridge, Caliber 30, Model of 1906).

Eventually as the tooling used to make the 173 FMJBT wore out, the accuracy of M118 ammo degraded to the point that it was reclassified as M118SB (Special Ball).

You are correct about M118LR though, which obviously replaced M118/M118SB.
 
Last edited:
My Battalion Commander asked if there was a "real" difference between M118 and M118 LR. I went into a very oversimplified explanation of Ballistic Coefficient, comparing the 168 SMK HPBT and the 175 SMK HPBT.

Now, in their minds, I am the god of reloading, and all before me tremble.
I went through the very same back in 2001 when justifying why we needed to pull the entire loadout of M118 from the boat for M118LR prior to deployment. At least I had the CWO5 Bn Gunner on my side because the BC REALLY didn't want to listen to a Sgt even when we explained to them how much more accurate they were, but my own analogy involved something to the effect of "would you rather us drive a VW Bug or a Corvette in a race for our lives?" I think he agreed just to get me out of his office and back below the "O" levels "where I belonged".
 
people that give me the manufacturer code for the bullet they shoot drives me nut, as in: the sierra 2275 shoot great in my rifle. instead of the 30 cal 175 SMK, so I started making up code and confuse the piss out of them.