spectr17
11-06-2002, 06:57 PM
JOEL PENNY FEATURE -- Jim Matthews-ONS 06nov02
TOPANGA -- Joel Penny is from a different era. He is from a time when shooters still knew that the simple truth about rifle accuracy was a bullet that fit the bore of the barrel. A lead bullet.
http://www.jesseshuntingpage.com/images/joe-penny-bullet-caster.jpg
This isn't to say there's anything wrong with jacketed bullets, but can you get them in a range of sizes for your .30-06 that vary from .3075 to .3105 inches in diameter? Well, no you can't. Most everything is .308 inches. Measure bullets from a dozen boxes of Noslers, Hornady, Speer, and Sierra bullets in 30 caliber, and they will all be darn near exactly .308 inches in diameter.
If you have a gun with a bore that is just slightly oversize, you probably need a bullet that is a little bigger in diameter to engage the bore correctly for decent accuracy. Ditto for a slightly underside bore. In older rifles, there is quite a variation in the diameter of the bore, depth of grooves, width of rifling, and so on. Sizing a lead slug to .310 might just be the ticket to make the gun shoot if it were slightly oversize.
Now that might be "old school" and ancient technology, but school is school, and a whole new generation of shooters are learning about the simple and cost effective joys of straight lead rifle and pistol bullets.
Revolver shooters never did stray too far away from lead bullets, but rifle shooters seemed to have largely left behind an era when just about everyone shot at least some lead loads in their rifles. Part of that certainly has to do with our overblown interest in magnums and high velocity. Push straight lead slugs too fast, even ones with gas checks on their bases, and you have a barrel cleaning problem. But load a magnum with lead gas check slugs at 1,200 to 1,800 fps and you have a load you can shoot cottontails with or just get in some serious practice without the pounding of full-power loads.
Joel Penny has spanned the two generations. The 71-year-old Topanga resident has been casting lead bullets for customers since 1959, but Penny's interest in lead slugs started when he was a youngster not even old enough to go to school.
"We had an old gunsmith and black powder man who lived two blocks from my house, and I'd get my legs whipped for going down the street to watch him mold bullets. I was only five or six years old then," said Penny.
A machinist and tool maker for 35 years, Penny's interest in shooting and guns led him to a weekend rangemaster job where he "found out there all the problems were with people's guns and what they were doing wrong."
Today, Penny has over 3,000 customers from all over the world and one of the largest mold selections in the world -- at nearly 300 -- and most of them are molds that are no longer made. He has everything from a variety of 22 caliber molds on up to a massive 4 bore mold that makes 1/2-pound slugs .955 in diameter.
"When I was going to gun shows all the time, they called me `the 32 man' because I had so many different 32s," said Penny, who admits that he still makes a lot of 32s, but he pours bullets for the whole range of rifle and pistol diameters.
"I could leave any 30 caliber mold on the pot 100 percent of the time and sell them all," said Penny, who often puts in 10-hour days hand-pouring bullets for customers, often making 1,000 bullets or more in a single sitting. But he admits he's always behind.
"Where I've made my business is in the sizing," said Penny. He always asks those ordering bullets if they slugged the barrel so he can match the bullet size precisely. For pistol shooters, he generally sizes the bullets 1/2 thousandth of an inch over the bore diameter, for rifles a full thousandth. For some guns, he varies the scheme of things. For example, Marlin rifles have a micro-groove rifling and "to put pressure on the shallow grooving," Penny often goes 1 1/2 thousandths over the bore measurement.
Modern production guns are very consistent and Penny has learned what certain guns shoot well. He can tell you that 9mms pistols vary considerably, Glock and Smith & Wesson have .355 diameter bores, Sigs have .357 bores, and Beretta's are even slightly larger and need.358-diameter bullets to stabilize, said Penny. Shooters of .45-70s see variations in bores that ranges from .457 to .461.
And shooters sometimes wonder why some ammunition shoots well in one gun but not another. Or why some guns just won't shoot at all. It may all be as simple as the diameter of the bullet.
Proving that things don't change, Penny's prices are right out of the 1950s. While he insisted he was going to be raising prices $1 to $2 per hundred, his prices are still amazingly low when compared to other companies lead slugs and downright cheap when viewed next to the prices of jacketed bullets. Prices range from $6 to $12 per hundred for gas check bullets in most standard diameters, and each slug is touched by Penny's fingers and custom-sized to fit your bore.
"I give them something that will shoot," said Penny.
[Shooters can write Penny's Hand and Machine Casting, P.O. Box 314, Topanga, CA 90290 for a price list or call him from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday at (310) 455-1567.]
TOPANGA -- Joel Penny is from a different era. He is from a time when shooters still knew that the simple truth about rifle accuracy was a bullet that fit the bore of the barrel. A lead bullet.
http://www.jesseshuntingpage.com/images/joe-penny-bullet-caster.jpg
This isn't to say there's anything wrong with jacketed bullets, but can you get them in a range of sizes for your .30-06 that vary from .3075 to .3105 inches in diameter? Well, no you can't. Most everything is .308 inches. Measure bullets from a dozen boxes of Noslers, Hornady, Speer, and Sierra bullets in 30 caliber, and they will all be darn near exactly .308 inches in diameter.
If you have a gun with a bore that is just slightly oversize, you probably need a bullet that is a little bigger in diameter to engage the bore correctly for decent accuracy. Ditto for a slightly underside bore. In older rifles, there is quite a variation in the diameter of the bore, depth of grooves, width of rifling, and so on. Sizing a lead slug to .310 might just be the ticket to make the gun shoot if it were slightly oversize.
Now that might be "old school" and ancient technology, but school is school, and a whole new generation of shooters are learning about the simple and cost effective joys of straight lead rifle and pistol bullets.
Revolver shooters never did stray too far away from lead bullets, but rifle shooters seemed to have largely left behind an era when just about everyone shot at least some lead loads in their rifles. Part of that certainly has to do with our overblown interest in magnums and high velocity. Push straight lead slugs too fast, even ones with gas checks on their bases, and you have a barrel cleaning problem. But load a magnum with lead gas check slugs at 1,200 to 1,800 fps and you have a load you can shoot cottontails with or just get in some serious practice without the pounding of full-power loads.
Joel Penny has spanned the two generations. The 71-year-old Topanga resident has been casting lead bullets for customers since 1959, but Penny's interest in lead slugs started when he was a youngster not even old enough to go to school.
"We had an old gunsmith and black powder man who lived two blocks from my house, and I'd get my legs whipped for going down the street to watch him mold bullets. I was only five or six years old then," said Penny.
A machinist and tool maker for 35 years, Penny's interest in shooting and guns led him to a weekend rangemaster job where he "found out there all the problems were with people's guns and what they were doing wrong."
Today, Penny has over 3,000 customers from all over the world and one of the largest mold selections in the world -- at nearly 300 -- and most of them are molds that are no longer made. He has everything from a variety of 22 caliber molds on up to a massive 4 bore mold that makes 1/2-pound slugs .955 in diameter.
"When I was going to gun shows all the time, they called me `the 32 man' because I had so many different 32s," said Penny, who admits that he still makes a lot of 32s, but he pours bullets for the whole range of rifle and pistol diameters.
"I could leave any 30 caliber mold on the pot 100 percent of the time and sell them all," said Penny, who often puts in 10-hour days hand-pouring bullets for customers, often making 1,000 bullets or more in a single sitting. But he admits he's always behind.
"Where I've made my business is in the sizing," said Penny. He always asks those ordering bullets if they slugged the barrel so he can match the bullet size precisely. For pistol shooters, he generally sizes the bullets 1/2 thousandth of an inch over the bore diameter, for rifles a full thousandth. For some guns, he varies the scheme of things. For example, Marlin rifles have a micro-groove rifling and "to put pressure on the shallow grooving," Penny often goes 1 1/2 thousandths over the bore measurement.
Modern production guns are very consistent and Penny has learned what certain guns shoot well. He can tell you that 9mms pistols vary considerably, Glock and Smith & Wesson have .355 diameter bores, Sigs have .357 bores, and Beretta's are even slightly larger and need.358-diameter bullets to stabilize, said Penny. Shooters of .45-70s see variations in bores that ranges from .457 to .461.
And shooters sometimes wonder why some ammunition shoots well in one gun but not another. Or why some guns just won't shoot at all. It may all be as simple as the diameter of the bullet.
Proving that things don't change, Penny's prices are right out of the 1950s. While he insisted he was going to be raising prices $1 to $2 per hundred, his prices are still amazingly low when compared to other companies lead slugs and downright cheap when viewed next to the prices of jacketed bullets. Prices range from $6 to $12 per hundred for gas check bullets in most standard diameters, and each slug is touched by Penny's fingers and custom-sized to fit your bore.
"I give them something that will shoot," said Penny.
[Shooters can write Penny's Hand and Machine Casting, P.O. Box 314, Topanga, CA 90290 for a price list or call him from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday at (310) 455-1567.]