GUNS Magazine September 1956

souvenir bullet originally had to weigh within %& of a
grain to be acceptable. And the diameter is held to a tolerance
of 2/lO,OOOths of an inch, about one-twentieth the
diameter of a human hair."
The work which brought Sierra bullets to their present
high standards was long and difficult. When Snow and
Harbour first got together and started to consider making
better bullets for target shooting, they found that more
accurate die presses to punch out the jackets and form the
slugs were needed. Secondly, they wanted to improve
bullet design. When another shooter-machinist, Jim Spivey,
added his know-how, the three began to work toward their
goal in earnest. Instead of treating it as a simple coppel
cased pellet hurled through the air, they realized that a'<
bullet was a tremendously complicated center of many '
I
different forces, some acting to throw it to the target, and -,
others trying to divert it.
Experiments with the die presses showed that none wer? j
exactly right for their rigid requirements ofaccuracy. The , ,
partners then adapted the 30-ton BKss press with diq,'.
plungers and other improvements of their own design.
Those die sets are the heart of each riant machine in the
.a
modern Sierra factory. They turn out streams of beautiful
jacketed bullets as fast as corn coming from the sheller.
Only the best tungsten carbide and other tool steels is
used for the dies. One of the partners~and sometimes
two-is always at his lathe and grinding machine shaping
new sets for replacing those worn out on the machines, or
working up a new bullet design. In final shaping of these
beautif~ll~-~olished, precision mechanisms, ordinary micrometer
readings in thousandths are too crude-the
reads out to ten-thousandths for routine work.
scale Bullet jacket begins as disk stamped from copper alloy
strip by big press in Sierra factory in Whittier, Calif.
Rotary finishing press shapes lead wire cores into jackets
automatically at high speed and then spits out bullets.
Automatic press is fed lead wire from big revolving spool
(left) to make bullet cases. Finished bullets fall into pail.