Opening tip of FMJ?

Chupathingy

New member
Yesterday at work there was 2 old timers standing around and BS'ing with each other and I over heard part of their conversation. I didn't catch the particulars of the "How", but they were definitely talking about opening the tip of an FMJ projectile. I'm no bullet smith, but it seems that doing something like this would compromise the structural integrity of a projectile that was otherwise designed.

Has anyone heard of this?


Chupa
 
Originally Posted By: ChupathingyYesterday at work there was 2 old timers standing around and BS'ing with each other and I over heard part of their conversation. I didn't catch the particulars of the "How", but they were definitely talking about opening the tip of an FMJ projectile. I'm no bullet smith, but it seems that doing something like this would compromise the structural integrity of a projectile that was otherwise designed.

Has anyone heard of this?


Chupa

Yup... it can cause real problems, since most FMJ's are open at the back - and you open the front of the bullet, and the core can blow out, leaving the jacket stuck somewhere in the barrel.

That's a very badd thing.


.
 
Yes, but don't do it. The back of most fmj bullets are open with the lead exposed. The copper jacket acts like a cup to hold the lead. When they cut off the tip of the bullet to try to get it to expand, what they do is poke a hole in the bucket so to speak. What happens under the pressure of firing, the lead extrudes out of the hole like water. You risk blowing the whole core out of the bullet. Pressures for shooting solid lead bullets, and copper bullets are way different. Pulling the trigger on a rifle with a bullet jacket wedged in the bore, would not be a good thing.

Cutting the tip off a solid base fmj bullet wouldn't hurt anything, and would make it a hollow point.
 
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Originally Posted By: CatShooterOriginally Posted By: ChupathingyYesterday at work there was 2 old timers standing around and BS'ing with each other and I over heard part of their conversation. I didn't catch the particulars of the "How", but they were definitely talking about opening the tip of an FMJ projectile. I'm no bullet smith, but it seems that doing something like this would compromise the structural integrity of a projectile that was otherwise designed.

Has anyone heard of this?


Chupa

Yup... it can cause real problems, since most FMJ's are open at the back - and you open the front of the bullet, and the core can blow out, leaving the jacket stuck somewhere in the barrel.
That's a very badd thing.


.

Cat hit the nail on the head squarely.
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DAB
 
Originally Posted By: Ridgeline17Sounds like the dumbest thing I've heard of.
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Oooooh nooooo - I've heard a lot more dumb stuff than that.


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Originally Posted By: CatShooterOriginally Posted By: ChupathingyYesterday at work there was 2 old timers standing around and BS'ing with each other and I over heard part of their conversation. I didn't catch the particulars of the "How", but they were definitely talking about opening the tip of an FMJ projectile. I'm no bullet smith, but it seems that doing something like this would compromise the structural integrity of a projectile that was otherwise designed.

Has anyone heard of this?


Chupa

Yup... it can cause real problems, since most FMJ's are open at the back - and you open the front of the bullet, and the core can blow out, leaving the jacket stuck somewhere in the barrel.

That's a very badd thing.


.

Catshooter, that's almost the exact and immediate thing I thought. However, I didn't think of the jacket potentially staying in the barrel though. I was thinking more along the lines of the integrity of the jacket being compromised and "spinning" or "fragmenting" in flight.

Was this a practice at some point in time? They spoke as if it was.

Chupa
 
Originally Posted By: ChupathingyOriginally Posted By: CatShooterOriginally Posted By: ChupathingyYesterday at work there was 2 old timers standing around and BS'ing with each other and I over heard part of their conversation. I didn't catch the particulars of the "How", but they were definitely talking about opening the tip of an FMJ projectile. I'm no bullet smith, but it seems that doing something like this would compromise the structural integrity of a projectile that was otherwise designed.

Has anyone heard of this?


Chupa

Yup... it can cause real problems, since most FMJ's are open at the back - and you open the front of the bullet, and the core can blow out, leaving the jacket stuck somewhere in the barrel.

That's a very badd thing.


.

Catshooter, that's almost the exact and immediate thing I thought. However, I didn't think of the jacket potentially staying in the barrel though. I was thinking more along the lines of the integrity of the jacket being compromised and "spinning" or "fragmenting" in flight.

Was this a practice at some point in time? They spoke as if it was.

Chupa

Some very important history that you should know...

"Early bullets were typically made in the form of spheres of nearly pure lead, which is a very soft material. These would often flatten upon impact with the target, causing a larger wound than the original diameter of the ball. The adoption of rifling allowed the use of longer, heavier bullets, but these were still typically constructed of soft lead and would often double in diameter upon impact. In this case expansion was a side effect of materials, and there is no evidence that the bullets were designed to expand upon impact.[6]

The earliest examples of bullets specifically designed to expand on impact were those fired by express rifles, which were developed in the mid 19th century. Express rifles used larger powder charges and lighter bullets than typical for the time to achieve very high velocities for black powder cartridges. One method of lightening the bullets used was to provide a deep cavity in the nose of the bullet. These were the first hollow point bullets, and in addition to developing higher velocities, they also expanded significantly upon impact. These hollow point bullets worked well on thin-skinned game, but tended to come apart on bigger game, resulting in insufficient penetration. One solution to this was the "cruciform expanding bullet", a solid bullet with an X shaped incision in the tip. This split section expanded to the depth of the incision, and then stopped, making it an early form of controlled expansion bullet.[7]

In the late 19th century, the invention of Cordite and other nitrocellulose based "smokeless" propellants permitted higher velocity than black powder, along with flatter trajectories and correspondingly higher hit probabilities. However, to limit the amount of recoil to an acceptable level meant that higher velocity rounds needed lighter (and thus smaller diameter) bullets.

Soon after the introduction of smokeless powder to firearms, full metal jacket bullets were introduced to prevent lead fouling in the bore caused by the higher pressures and velocities when used with soft lead bullets.[8] However, it was soon noticed that such small caliber rounds were less effective at wounding or killing an enemy than the older large caliber soft lead bullets. Within the British Indian Army, the Dum Dum arsenal produced its now infamous solution—the jacketing was removed from the nose of the bullet, creating the first soft point bullets. Since the Mark II jacket did not cover the base of the round this could potentially lead to the jacketing being left in the barrel. This potential problem resulted in the rejection of the Dum-dum design and led to independent development of the Mark III, Mark IV (1897) and Mark V (1899) .303 British rounds, which were of the hollow point design, with the jacket covering the base; while these were made in Britain, not at the Dum-Dum arsenal, the name "Dum-dum" had already become associated with expanding bullets, and continued to be used to refer to any expanding bullets. The expanding bullets expanded upon impact to a diameter significantly greater than the original .312 inch (7.92 mm) bullet diameter, producing larger diameter wounds than the full metal jacketed versions. The Mark IV was successful enough in its first use at Omdurman that British soldiers issued with the standard Mark II bullets began to remove the top of the jacket, converting the Mark II bullets into improvised Dum-dum types.[9]

In 1898, the German government lodged a protest against the use of the Mark IV bullet, claiming the wounds produced by the Mark IV were excessive and inhumane, thus violating the laws of war. The protest, however, was based on the comparison of the wounds produced by expanding and non-expanding bullets from high velocity sporting rifles, rather than a comparison of the expanding .303 British bullets with the previous, large bore service cartridge it replaced, the .577/450 Martini-Henry.[10] Because the energy was roughly the same, the wounds caused by the expanding bullet of the .303 were less severe than the those caused by the larger caliber, solid lead bullet used by the Martini-Henry.[11]

The German protests were effective, however, resulting in the ban of the use of expanding bullets in warfare. The British replaced the hollow point bullets with new full metal jacket bullets, and used the remaining stocks of expanding bullets for practice."
 
I knew some of that stuff already, but not all of it. I was under the impression that the Germans came up with the first projectile designed to expand on flesh though. I assumed that the first exposed lead tip was the bullet that became what we now know of as the "Spire point" type projectiles. I know that the word "Spire" is in relation to the shape of the projectile and literally translates to "pointy bullet"(although I forgot the German word for it, spire is the English translation for the German word) but I thought they went hand in hand I.e exposed lead tip and the shape.

Thanks for the read CS, I try to learn something new every day.


Chupa
 
The French came up with the first pointed bullet in their 8x50mmR Lebel. The Germans picked up on it, and called their bullet the SpitzgeschoB. They were looking for a better long range machine gun bullet. Americans called it a Spitzer and brought it out in the new and improved 30-06(1906). These were fmj bullets, I don't know when, or who, came up with the first pointed hunting bullet.
 
Originally Posted By: ninehorsesThe French came up with the first pointed bullet in their 8x50mmR Lebel. The Germans picked up on it, and called their bullet the SpitzgeschoB. They were looking for a better long range machine gun bullet. Americans called it a Spitzer and brought it out in the new and improved 30-06(1906). These were fmj bullets, I don't know when, or who, came up with the first pointed hunting bullet.


Not so, Many horses dude...

... it was the Swiss ballistician Rubin, that invented the pointed bullet - the French applied to the 8mm Label 2 years later.

The 8mm Label has one outstanding feature that has kept it #1 in it's class for over 100 years... It is the #1 Ugliest cartridge in the world !!!
lol.gif


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The Lebel rifle was developed as a result of the first successful smokeless gunpowder, invented by French chemist Paul Vieille (1854–1934) in 1884. His nitrocellulose-based Poudre B (Powder B) was three times more powerful than black powder for the same weight and left very little combustion residues after firing. At about the same time, a major Eduard Rubin ( 1846–1920 ) with the Swiss Army had invented in 1883 a copper jacketed lead cored and small bore ( 7.5mm and 8mm ) bullet that could be fired at very high velocities without melting inside a rifle's barrel.


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All joking aside, I didn't know it was the Germans who had hollowpoints outlawed in the rules of war. Thanx for that little bit of info.
 
The Germans were pretty good about complaining about expanding bullets and even the shotguns the American forces used in WWI yet had no problem using mustard gas and other chemical agents on enemy troops during the same time frame.
 


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