I'll start by saying, I've been reading posts for a long time on here and always get great information from everyone here on the forum. It's time I share, what I consider crucial information on the eld-x bullet.There has been a few threads on here about the inconsistency between lots of bullets in their base to ogive lengths and weight variances. And WOW! They weren't exaggerating! I've been loading 200 gr. Eld-x for my 300 win mag. I bought the very first box I could get my hands on when they first hit the shelves a couple yrs ago. Some of you may have noticed the first run of these bullets had a red translucent tip. I started as you should by establishing my Max length to rifling using an overall length gauge and comparator. It took me a while to get a load worked up but eventually found a combo that worked.H-1000 78.5 gr. .018 off the lands.5/8 " 5 shot group a big ragged hole basically. By now I'm nearly out of bullets and have search around to find another box. Breaking into the new box ,and just continued on loading with my recipe, suddenly accuracy goes away. Well a couple of tight bolts ,loose primer pockets and a case separation later, I shot through the Chrono and my velocities were a higher and sparatic, I dropped my charge down 1.5 gr and it came back in pretty good but not like it was shooting. Now I was thinking maybe weather , temp.pressure , different lot of powder?something changed. Well you guessed it! I thought I had better recheck my distance to lands again just for kicks. Come to find out , this lot of bullets ended up being longer by .023 tho. So I was jamming my bullets .005 in the lands. That's a problem! Since then I have bought a couple more boxes and they are all different, I know I should be buying several boxes of the same lots, but finding more than box or 2 is still difficult. I called hornady, and Tim there told me that all bullet manufacturers have this much variances in their bullets ,and all theirs all meet specs.Well I told Him "BS! I've never seen any bullets this far out."He was no help, was not nice about anything he said, and basically said it's my problem and my job to measure every individual bullet.Then tells me that if I want to be that picky, I should use the eld-match, that they have much better tolerances.So I asked him how well those work on elk. Lol.The conversation ended there by me hanging up. Now as far as the eld-x being a good bullet, I believe it is. It performs as advertised, but the quality control and customer service is BS. Their sales are still sky high from all the hype and commercials about Doppler radar and magic tips that don't melt, so no need to give 2 ***** about it now! I'm going to give you guys some actual solid numbers to look at here, and you can decide if this acceptable. I'm sensing my gun might smell bergers for lunch!
Measurements are with calipers and Hornady comparator
First batch of bullets translucent tip:
To the lands 3.900 length of bullet 1.866
Lot 2161170 dtl3.877 1.866
Lot 2170162 dtl3.882 1.869
Lot 2170254 dtl3.900. 1.851
Lot 2170148 dtl3.908 . 1.853
Thanks all for reading my rant ,and pass this information on as it could potentially be a dangerous situation.
