Defense Articles

When you examine a successful product, manufacturing business unit, or manufacturing company, you’ll find that the secret of that success is always someone’s hard work. On the shop floor, hard work can’t be replaced by glibness, a clever presentation, or familiarity with the latest books by management gurus. Machine tools don’t produce anything by themselves, and the most common ingredient in every manufactured good is sweat.

In this issue, we’re presenting a three-article package we call our Six– Sigma Seminar. Lest there be some confusion, we don’t look at Six-Sigma as a silver bullet for manufacturing problems; there are no silver bullets. We know full well that putting Six– Sigma slogans on banners and hiring a consultant won’t reduce waste or increase productivity.

The common message of our Seminar articles is that putting a Six-Sigma program in place is hard work, work that can’t move ahead without the involvement of top management. But once this approach to improving productivity soaks into the system, and becomes the way the floor does its business, the improvements in productivity and quality can truly be impressive. If you invest the necessary effort, Six Sigma can be a real benefit to your operation, be it large or small.

Some experienced manufacturing practitioners insist that Six Sigma really is nothing more than doing things the right way. We think it’s quite a bit more than that, but we understand the source of the skepticism.

Everyone with a work history of more than a few years has seen a manager toss the idea of the month at his/her staff. Wise staffers hunker down and wait, while the rookies quiver and shake, all a-twitter with excitement over the new way of handling processes. As time goes by, after many meetings and little action, a tacit, company-wide agreement emerges to forget about the whole thing. My souvenirs of a job where this sort of nonsense happened regularly include a couple of very nice coffee mugs with mottoes on them, and a large, orange paper clip with a slogan on it extolling the virtues of employee “empowerment.” Nothing kills morale faster than such rot.

Six Sigma, properly executed, has nothing in common with the kind of soul-abrading rubbish I’ve just described. Six Sigma is about fixing processes to improve quality and productivity. Don’t let the jargon about “black belts” or “green belts” get in the way. This stuff can workif you allow it to.

Still, there’s no way around the truth. As these articles explain, getting an effective Six Sigma system in place on the shop floor involves the common denominator present in all manufacturing success-hard, steady, intelligently directed work.

PERFORMANCE

The long-awaited time had come: I headed to the asphalt roadcourse. With just three pulls on the pull-start, I had the V12 running-not bad for a new engine. I broke the engine in, set the car on the pavement (without the body) and gave it a couple of quick squirts of the throttleand watched as the front universal was ejected from the car! I found this unusual, since the universals in my electric Bullet have held up well. I yanked a universal from the aforementioned car to fix the Nitro Bullet, and headed back to the track. Again, the reliable engine fired within a few pulls and I was off and running.

After a few hot laps to scuff the tires and warm up the engine, I leaned it out and let it rip. The Nitro Bullet’s acceleration was pretty impressive, but as I entered the corner, I experienced a slight push. This made the car very forgiving, but I knew it was eroding my lap times.

After a few laps to see just how quick the setup could be, I pulled it off the course and headed to the workbench to make a few minor tweaks (see “Building and Setup Tips”). My efforts paid off: the Bullet hooked up through the corners and surefootedly exited the turns-definitely a faster ride. This is by far the best running gas car I have driven, and with only a few slight tweaks from its box-stock form, it was hooked-impressive.

The ejected universal was my only problem, and it was easy to replace. The tires played a major role in getting the car to stick. I chose Pro-Line’s mounted slicks because I knew they worked well on my track. To get the Bullet hooked up on your home track, start with tire swaps, then tune the suspension.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m sure that you are just as excited about the Nitro Bullet as I was when I received the kit. If you’re a little disappointed by the plastic shocks and fiberglass parts, don’t be. Yes, metal and graphite parts would be nice to have, but at a club event, not having them won’t put you in the B-main instead of the A-main.

The car’s superior tunability is all you need to get it dialed in, but this tunability is also why I don’t recommend this kit for beginners; they might find it frustrating to have to adjust the components, and may easily tune themselves into a no-fun setup.

Today’s hunters have access to a variety of outstanding premium game-bullets, and the knowledgeable hunter will take advantage of the enhanced performance that they offer.

Even the finest gun in the world — with the best optics, a perfect stalk, a precise hold, and a perfect let-off — must still rely on the placement and performance of the most important link in the chain… the bullet. That little projectile — hammered by 50,000 psi plus, squeezed down a rifled bore, and then slammed into the atmosphere — is a marvel of functional design.

Ever since the dawn of firearms; there has been a constant and continuing search for a superior projectile. And when it comes to big game, the essential qualities of the ideal bullet are deep penetration, reliable expansion, and maximum weight retention. Whatever the angle of the shot — regardless of bone and heavy muscle encountered — the bullet must successfully penetrate and disrupt vital organs in order to deliver a quick and humane kill.

Until the widespread adoption of high-velocity magnum-type cartridges by the hunting fraternity, bullet structure was not particularly critical. At modest muzzle velocities below 3000 fps, a simple soft-point jacketed bullet performed quite well. Many design techniques have been applied to the jacketed soft point to increase its effectiveness.

Jackets are generally drawn to be thin at the nose (to initiate expansion) and thick at the base (in order to support the core and ensure weight retention). Jackets can be mechanically locked into the lead core, and the Remington. Core-Lokt, Hornady InterLock and Speer African Grand Slams are classic examples of this design.

To achieve controlled expansion, the Germans developed the RWS H-Mantle bullet in which a two-piece core is separated by a portion of the folded jacket in between the two cores — a precursor of the Nosler Partition. Another early design was the Peters Belted soft point in which a separate band (belt) of gilding metal was positioned around and swaged into the shank of the bullet to stiffen it at midsection. Remington introduced their famous Bronze Point, a true hollowpointed soft point, capped with a bronze wedge that initiated core expansion upon contact — a concept that is more often seen today in the Nosler Ballistic Tip, Hornady A-Max and V-Max, and the Swift Scirocco. Winchester developed its own capped, expansion-controlled, hollowpoint hunting bullet — the famous aluminum-nosed Silvertip.

Another parallel line of hunting-bullet development has been the expanding solid, which is composed entirely of a copper or bronze alloy. One of the first commercial hunting bullets offered along these lines was made in the ’60s by renowned gunsmith and experimenter, P.O. Ackley. The Ackley-controlled expansion bullet was composed of solid copper with a tiny lead core inserted in the tip. At the time, I was shooting the .257 Ackley Improved cartridge. I obtained a supply of Ackley’s 100-grain, solid-copper bullets believing that they would be ideal for black bear and mule deer. Unfortunately, they proved to be inaccurate in my rifle and were never used on game. Today, the excellent Barnes X-Bullet line dominates the solid-alloy bullet market.

When Winchester and Remington introduced the benefits of the .264, 7mm and .300 Magnums to thousands of everyday hunters, the push began for better game bullets that could perform at velocities in excess of 3,000 fps, and at hunting distances ranging from pointblank to in excess of 300 yards. Handloaders using premium bullets from independent bullet makers lead the way. It took time for the ammunition industry to embrace the premium-class hunting bullets and make them available to the general shooting public.

Currently, the most successful premium hunting bullets that provide deep penetration, reliable expansion, and maximum weight retention can be categorized into four groups: the Partition, the Bonded Core, the Expanding Solid, and the Polymer-Tipped Hollow Point.

The Partition

The legendary Nosier Partition is the standard by which all premium bullets are judged. It’s been around the longest and taken the most game. Wonderfully accurate, widely available and economical, it does everything a premium bullet should. Whether the game is at 30 or 500 yards, the Partition never fails to create an ample entry wound and penetrate bone, muscle and hide. If I were limited to one bullet for all hunting, the Nosier Partition would be my choice.

Under the Combined Technology program of Nosler and Winchester, a steel reinforcing cup and stronger heel crimp have been added to the rear core of the standard Partition to eliminate any possibility of core slippage and deformation, and to increase penetration. The result is the Partition Gold bullet loaded by Winchester.

Another product of this cooperative arrangement is the Winchester Fail Safe bullet, which features a homogenous hollow-point nose and a rear core that is encased in two steel cups and sealed with a heel closure disk. The Fail Safe is a very tough bullet that exhibits tremendous penetration and is best reserved for large big game — elk, moose, grizzly, and African-plains game. On smaller bodied game species, it doesn’t expand quickly or violently enough compared to a standard Partition.

Studies in the late 1990s showed that lead bullets were contaminating soil and groundwater near shooting ranges. Alternative “green” bullets made of tungsten were developed and first distributed to select Army facilities in 1999. Now researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology have found that tungsten and its alloys dissolve in water and soil at rates that exceed lead.

And tungsten, once thought to be a benign substance, is being investigated by the CDC as possibly contributing to a cluster of leukemia cases in Fallon, Nevada, where the mineral occurs naturally. Military bases are examining possible ways to capture the not-so-green bullets or prevent their leaching. Meanwhile, tungsten has been nominated for toxicity study by the National Toxicology Program.