Would/should this occur upon shortening a hollow point bullet then plugging in a nice plastic point?
Imagine - the 178 grain Hornady hollow point boat tail bullet shortened by .14 inches, then having a .14-inch-long plastic point replacement resulting in the bullet having an unchanged length. The weight loss of .14 inches of copper jacket is estimated to be 2.5 grains (hollow point jackets thicken at tip end). The 2.5 grains of removed jacket were subtracted from 178 grains resulting in 175.5 grains. The plastic weight was interpreted as being zippo.
Both bullets were subjected to the Miller Sg estimator that showed:
.308 178.0 grain Hornady hollow point boat tail, Sg = 2.02
.308 175.5 grain Hornady plastic point demo, Sg = 2.46
Replacing the plastic tip with the extremely increased density lead would shift the CM forward, add weight, & affect Sg. Next installment will make an attempt to demo this.
Hornady has or claimed to have defeated the problem of melting metplats with the ELDM & ELDX bullets. I have blazed away at distant rodents using the 6mm 87 VMax at just under 3,500 fps at 3000-4000 ft elevation at temperatures in the mid-eighties and have noticed no abject trajectory aberrations. The 6mm 87 Vmax has the old style, more orangy colored plastic tip. The aerodynamic qualities of the bullet should have changed but my crude observation showed no change. Hornady has a 90 grain 6mm ELDX bullet that costs more than $10 per hundred than 87 VMax - don't think I will use it. Should bullets have angled pop out fins to move CP aft? What about rotation applied to something like that.
When I was a kid, one of my pals was Jewish. Whenever I could not figure out how or why stuff worked, I went to him for help. If he could not come up with a solution, his family would help. Lots of really high power, smart thinking, combined with extensive education & experience. I would parrot the solution, occasionally without a complete understanding. This really annoyed & PO'ed folks.
Playing around with the Berger, JBM, & my spread sheet shows the same or extremely close Sg values for the same bullet with identical data input. Berger is not into plastic points & uses standard aero/altitude tables for pressure vs. actual barometric pressure measured in inches of mercury.