Does anyone know of device that fits over a loaded round of 223 or 308, so that just the tip of the bullet protrudes, and is ground off, thus allowing the bullet to breakup on impacact?

i've heard of using hehavy wire cutters...

grinding makes heat

jeffe

I would be careful with modifying FMJ Ammo. If the bullet has an open bottom it is possible that the lead core is blown out through the jacket and the jacket gets stuck in the barrel. You will not notice it, when it happens but the next shot will blow up your rifle

I remember the warning given by Brainshot from the old days (60's and 70's). Was made by very knowledgable folks ... so I never tried this.

I've never heard of such a device and it sounds like a dangerous practice to me. You "may" shoot quite a number of these modified bullets with no problems but sooner or later the lead core is going to squirt through the jacket leaving the jacket stuck in your barrel. Things are going to get pretty exciting when you fire the "next" shot.

p.o. ackley actually did experiments along these lines - actually he did specifically this - trying to get a jacket to stay in the barrel to see what would happen the next shot. the way i recall it (but would have to look up) he never did get a core to blow out of the bullet and ended up driving a bullet into the barrel and melting the core out. he did not in fact blow up the gun but i can't recall at the moment whether it bulged the barrel. i'd expect it did but i'm certain he reported nothing more than that.

nonetheless - DON'T! is a very bad practice as the potential for damaging the gun is still there. if you want soft points, get soft points.

a couple years ago when I was younger and more foolish and broke anyway, I tried it on some 06 loads to go deer hunting with. Just ground them off on a bench grinder. Well it did work OK, anyway I got a nice 10 pt with it, but don't really want to do this anymore

Will is correct about Ackley's experiment. The rifle did get a slight bulge to which Ackley said it was not a problem and kept using the rifle.

Although just about everyone now seems to think it is/was a bad idea, Forster and probably others, in the 1960's, made a 30'06 bullet nose trimmer and a hollow pointer for US mil projectiles. It probably didn't work to well on AP projectiles. I suppose as one nips off more and more of the projectile's point then the likelihood of one's chances of blowing out the core increases. As far as cutting just a little off the tip and using a 1/8" hollow point, my questions would be as to the consistancy of accuracy and terminal performance. Best-o-Luck

I have to admit that in the 70s, when on Golan with UN forces we were ordered to shoot at dogs suspected of rabies and everybody cut of the tip but just the tip of the 7,62 NATO ammo. It worked well out of a FAL. A few years ago I purchased a Mannlicher 95 in 8x56R and wanting to use it on wild boar thought to do the same job. My gunsmith told me of the possibility of the core to be blown out, so I disassembled a military surplus cartridge and found the bullet to have no solid bottom. So there is a risk.
It is a pity because reloading the 8x56R is a pain in the ass. The bullet diameter is .329. Hawk produces a bullet that performs very well and it seems that Stitra in Italy makes a solid but I have not tested it.

quote:

Originally posted by snowman:
I've never heard of such a device and it sounds like a dangerous practice to me. You "may" shoot quite a number of these modified bullets with no problems but sooner or later the lead core is going to squirt through the jacket leaving the jacket stuck in your barrel. Things are going to get pretty exciting when you fire the "next" shot.

Snowman...
this was standard practice for the 40s, 50s, and 60s... some in the 70s...

spitting lead? that's an interesting viewpoint... you might call speer and tell them to stop making 1/2 jacket bullets... as that's even a WORSE design.

jeffe

My family and I shot a lot of deer with ground off military ammo during WW2, when rationing was in effect and ammo was never available. but you could buy a few rounds off the black market boys now and then and we got a case of 06 stuff and some 30 carbine stuff...

You could depend on two things happening with that stuff, it would sizzle right through them and you had a chase on your hands or it would blow up and kill them on the spot...About 50-50 regardless or the amount you cut off to expose the lead....

With the 30 carbine, soft nose or solids the result was the same, you had a chase on your hands and it took a lot of shots to get one down...it is the most pathetic caliber I have ever used, we sold it and resorted to a .22 L.R. with much better results..2 quick shots from a Mod.63 win auto in the lungs and the deer never went more than 50 yards, if that or take a head shot up close.

The hanned line used to make just such a tool, but I believe they are now out of business.

I have tried flatpointing ball ammo at the range, and had no problems with spitting the core. I did keep the meplat relatively small ~60% of bullet dia due to the concern spitting the core.

A cheap seating die could be fairly easily modified for this task.

jeffeosso There were a lot of things that were standard practice in the 40s 50s and 60s.Not wearing hearing protection,not wearing safety glasses,not wearing respriatory protection when handling asbestos and lead......That didn't make them good ideas. Go right ahead and shoot all the modified hard points you want in Your rifle. As for Speer's half jacket I fail to see how that is relavent to the comment I made. Did somebody piss in your cornflakes this morning? or are you always spoiling for an argument?

I would be very careful with this........

The Russians and some Europeans do this with ammo they sell us however! 7.62 x 39 loaded with what they call "hollow points". I have found them after the snow melts at our rifle range without deformation; a hollow point in the front and the base wide open as a FMJ is made!

This is certainly NOT AN ENDORSEMENT!! More a warning of some of the junk out there than can get us in trouble!

BigRx

Enough communist junk out ther without making some of our own to compete with them

I know it's loaded round but how about pulling the bullets and turning them around shooting base first?

that would put a new meaning on boat tailed I tend to grind off the point of my .303 milsurp ball sometimes, never had any problems when shooting goats, tho to be honest I've never had any problems downing goats with FMJ with the point intact either.

How I do it is to use a belt sander with an 80 grit belt and a shallow dish with ink in it, dip the rounds point first in the ink and grind down to removed the ink, that way all the clipped/ground rounds are taken down the same amount, minimising downrange trajectory differences that could occur by having different meplats, BC's and weights.

at 30m-60m however, it's always in one side and out the other and I use commercial SP's for longer ranges where accuracy is more of a problem....

Besides since I'm gettign into reloading I doubt i'll need milsurp for more than fun now :P

I've never done this, but I understand that in the past -- possibly the distant past -- some people solved this problem by drilling a small hole in the FMJ military bullet point and then screwing a little screw into the tip of the bullet, with the screw head pointing forward, thus making a kind of primitive bronze point or ballistic tip.

I've not seen the result, either on game or through a recovered bullet, so I can't say how effective this is. I read about this somewhere some years ago -- it may have been in a Lyman loading manual.

quote:

Originally posted by jeffeosso:
you might call speer and tell them to stop making 1/2 jacket bullets... as that's even a WORSE design...

Hey Jeffe, What problem have you had with them?

Here is my guess as to why this hardly ever causes problems and hardly ever results in a bullet with any expansion to speak of.

Up near the nose of a military type FMJ bullet, the jacket is thicker than on a hunting type soft point. The lead core doesn't squeeze out through that little hole because it can't push all that thick gilding metal out of the way, and it doesn't extrude, because it's faster and easier for all the powder gases behind the bullet to just push the core, jacket, and everything down the bore and down range.

The bullet doesn't expand reliably because the jacket is so thick up front.

That's my guess. It's not going to cause any problems most of the time. It's not going to expand like a hunting bullet most of the time. It's probably just as good an idea to shoot the animal with FMJ ammo as is rather than grind the tips off.

Maybe filing or sawing an X across the tip (making a dum dum) would result in an actual working soft point. Here, you'd have petals bending back instead of lead and jacket having to uspet and extrude. Barnes tells me this is how you get away with making a copper bullet. For a given degree of expansion with good weight retention, it's easier to bend copper than it is to upset lead. I guess if you file it far enough back, you might even get the core to shoot out and leave the jacket behind in the barrel.

H. C.

Hundreds of thousands of kangaroos were taken with modified FMJ 303s in the immediate post WWII years and while the risk mentioned above was known I've never heard of it happening.

I think one of the first rifles I ever bought for myself was a 303 milsurp, it came (via mail) with a 4 X scope, and several hundred FMJ, for 12.95 plus shipping. I tried to use the FMJ's with the tip exposed, but had poor luck. That event caused me to get into reloading, got a bullet puller, replaced the FMJ's with a hunting bullet, and it seemed to work OK after that. I didn't find out till later that the strands of cordite in the case were put in before the case was final formed, making a compressed load in the final configuration.

I doubt I would do that today, but I was young back then!! Had some fun with those spaghetti strands of powder, too.

*** this is NOT a suggested loading method.. do not attempt, ever***

Hotcore, Snowcat...
must have been a little grumpy..

what i meant to say is that with a little reason, one could look at the designs of these bullets and determine which would have a "better" chance of spitting jackets.



This should clearly illustrate what I meant.

If the nose where cut off ABOVE the olgive, the jacket would "hold" the lead core... if cut at or below the olgive, there is a CHANCE... and 1/2 jackets are AT the olgive.


Clear as mud?

jeffe

I sorta see your point. the curve of the jacket past the ogive acts like a crimp, while the Half jacketed type is in a tube... and all thats holding it there is the grip of the lead on the jacket, no mechanical stuff.