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View Full Version : Cutting a cross cut in boolit nose



roverboy
01-31-2015, 08:45 PM
I just wondered if any of you had did this to a cast boolit or heard of it being done for hunting? I've heard older guys talk about doing this back when most ammo didn't have hollow points. Mostly .22 ammo that was loaded with solid lead.

elk hunter
01-31-2015, 10:31 PM
The idea must go back quite some time as I have some non-headstamped outside primed 50-70 ammo this was done to. I'm sure it was loaded well before 1900 but, of course it's hard to tell when the noses were cut.

fouronesix
01-31-2015, 11:03 PM
Do it if you want to screw up the accuracy of the bullet. Of course as a kid I tried it on 22rf bullets. Maybe a year or so ago a link was posted here on the forum about this subject. A fellow did some really good bullet-in-flight videography showing the effects of messing with 22 rf bullet noses. In each case, like cutting the nose off, cutting an X, etc., the results were not pretty. The bullets did all kinds of odd things in flight. :shock:

shoot-n-lead
01-31-2015, 11:49 PM
I have ground a little more meplat on a .358 bullet that I used and it never affected the accuracy of it. I used that bullet hunting and it never failed to shoot as well as I did.

bhn22
02-01-2015, 12:05 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbRZKrvAZ7U

They've been around for ages

dg31872
02-01-2015, 12:11 AM
Paco Kelley had a way to nip off the nose of 22rf to help it open up faster, I think.

leftiye
02-01-2015, 06:41 AM
JMO, but the boolit would be likely to separate into four pieces upon impact.

roverboy
02-01-2015, 08:56 AM
I've personally never done it but, a older guy told me once about how he did it so his .22 would kill ground hogs better. Another guy said he cut a cross into .45 ACP 230 FMJ with a hacksaw.

Good Cheer
02-01-2015, 08:59 AM
Early 70's, for head / neck shots on rabbits while head lighting in thick cover, hollow point shorts just couldn't be beat. Well, except when a small Philips point screw driver was pushed into the nose. Never effected accuracy that I could see and the rabbits weren't telling. And they didn't disappear into the thickets. In more open country for jack rabbits I just used a '92 lever gun loaded with RCBS 38-162 SWC and very little powder. Just enough to get it there with very good accuracy. Even lobbing them out over a hundred yards it wasn't difficult to connect.

Good Cheer
02-01-2015, 09:01 AM
I've personally never done it but, a older guy told me once about how he did it so his .22 would kill ground hogs better. Another guy said he cut a cross into .45 ACP 230 FMJ with a hacksaw.


Once read that in WWI if the German's caught you with a file to cross cut bullet noses you were a duster.

Leslie Sapp
02-01-2015, 09:07 AM
In my younger days, I took some FMJ M1 carbine rounds and, using a triangle file, filed a cross in the end of the bullet. It didn't seem to affect the accuracy much, my standards being pretty low, minute of hog.:smile:. If I recall correctly, they were pretty explosive at close range.

marvelshooter
02-01-2015, 09:30 AM
I've personally never done it but, a older guy told me once about how he did it so his .22 would kill ground hogs better. Another guy said he cut a cross into .45 ACP 230 FMJ with a hacksaw.
I have seen it done by a now gone member of the greatest generation. He would saw a .22 lr solid point down to the driving band and use them to dispatch snapping turtles he caught in his duck pond.

w5pv
02-01-2015, 09:51 AM
I probably have done it in my younger days but don't remember.The story I always heard that back in the days of the county fairs etc,they would tie a dollar bill onto a silk string and it was yours if you could shoot it off.The ideal that a x cut into the bullet would grab the string and cut the dollar(maybe a 5) off the string.This was suppose to happened in the depression days.Just hearsay for me,just a little early in time for my being here on earth.

Fatdaddy
02-01-2015, 03:07 PM
Probably be more effective on vampires...
Other than that I think it could only hurt bullet performance.

castalott
02-01-2015, 04:03 PM
I thought it was from India...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet

M-Tecs
02-01-2015, 06:16 PM
Some use foil in the nose when they cast them.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?108366-Aluminum-Foil-Split-Nose-Boolits

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?159877-Cast-bullets-with-foil

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?38175-30-Rooski-boolit-tests&highlight=split%20nose

roverboy
02-01-2015, 06:49 PM
Probably be more effective on vampires...
Other than that I think it could only hurt bullet performance.

I remember a movie with Rupert Everett. It was a zombie movie, and he did this to kill them. In the movie, it worked GOOOOD.

FLHTC
02-01-2015, 08:14 PM
We did it as kids with razor blades on 22lr ammo. Drilled a 3/8 hole in a hunk of 1x6 that would steady the round, then slide the round up through the bottom of the hole. A few taps on the back of the blade, cleaved the bullet tip into four petals. This was actually in an Outdoor Life magazine back in the late 1960's. It doesn't hurt accuracy as much as one might think but it is explosive on squirrels and chipmunks.

kweidner
02-01-2015, 08:42 PM
interesting. Paco's tool is great stuff from what I read on it. I have messed with meplats quite a bit and have found them to take quite a bit of manipulation to affect much of anything except benchrest size groups insode 100 yards. Handgun distances meh.....unless your Elmer Keith. They can drastically change a BC but thats not to much to concern yourself with inside 100.

leftiye
02-02-2015, 06:30 AM
We did it as kids with razor blades on 22lr ammo. Drilled a 3/8 hole in a hunk of 1x6 that would steady the round, then slide the round up through the bottom of the hole. A few taps on the back of the blade, cleaved the bullet tip into four petals. This was actually in an Outdoor Life magazine back in the late 1960's. It doesn't hurt accuracy as much as one might think but it is explosive on squirrels and chipmunks.

Did this when I was a kid. I remember a can with an entry hole and three exits.

leftiye
02-02-2015, 06:31 AM
I thought it was from India...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet

Dum Dum Arsenal. Bombay?

dg31872
02-02-2015, 10:29 AM
I did this in my younger days.
Sharp pocket knife and just forced the knife edge in the soft lead and work the blade to make the cut wider. Easy and not much time at all.
Never used it on shots farther than 10 to 15 yards, but the results were dramatic. On racoon head shots, the 22 lr never left the head. Tremendous damage.
Used to shoot pocket gophers in the pasture with the same results. As I said, very impressive.

danthman114
02-02-2015, 10:53 AM
i have to ask, why would you need to?

45 2.1
02-02-2015, 12:14 PM
i have to ask, why would you need to?

Greatly increased killing power in most cases for an underpowered round you can't easily make yourself. The 22 LR benefits greatly from: filing a flat on the nose, dum-duming the nose, making a cup nose, hollow pointing the nose, etc. There are several tools out there that are sold to do these things and they work well.

trapper9260
02-02-2015, 12:14 PM
I have done it many years ago thinking it will take down the animal better to 22lr and seen it was not worth it in the end.I use my jack knife to do it and then crimp it back together.

danthman114
02-02-2015, 05:23 PM
they sell hp 22lr. ive never had any problems killing rabbits with just solid projectiles. i dont see a point but hey, to each his own... i have never done it, how does it affect the accuracy from 25 to 75 yards?

DLCTEX
02-02-2015, 05:58 PM
Shooting for a dollar was pretty high stakes during the depression. That was a good day's wages for a man. My dad shook dirt from plowed up peanuts for 50 cents a day, working from sunrise to sun set.

45 2.1
02-03-2015, 12:27 PM
they sell hp 22lr. ive never had any problems killing rabbits with just solid projectiles. i dont see a point but hey, to each his own... i have never done it, how does it affect the accuracy from 25 to 75 yards?


They may sell HP 22LR, but none has been seen around here for over two years. With the tools you can use most anything. We shoot a lot bigger animals than a tender easy to kill rabbits (heck, even a stick will kill them). A board member neighbor killed a fox in his front yard (~40 yds) with a shot to the rib cage/heart area with a cupped 22LR I gave him to try.... he said it dropped in place. Good performance from a lowly round. Accuracy almost always increases after modification also.

JimA
02-04-2015, 01:19 PM
Do it if you want to screw up the accuracy of the bullet. Of course as a kid I tried it on 22rf bullets. Maybe a year or so ago a link was posted here on the forum about this subject. A fellow did some really good bullet-in-flight videography showing the effects of messing with 22 rf bullet noses. In each case, like cutting the nose off, cutting an X, etc., the results were not pretty. The bullets did all kinds of odd things in flight. :shock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Dylxy3zJc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Dylxy3zJc)

He actually tried to unbalance the bullets as much as possible to see how they would fly. He never tried an X cut. The one bullet where he filed both sides fairly evenly flew pretty much to aim at 50 yards, as did one that he filed a small chunk out of on one side.

Willyp
02-04-2015, 03:32 PM
I started hunting in 1958 and remember guys with single shot 12 gauge slugs,they called them pumpkin balls,with 6 cuts across the front of the slug. These really killed a deer and tore it up!

GLynn41
02-06-2015, 11:13 AM
I measured and ground the nose of the Saeco .35 cal 245 gr and it was just fine-- also because I could not get .22hp -- I flattened the nose of my .22 by filing and the holes in squirrels were noticeable bigger and more hit reaction-- I guess they became lfns ---so in moderation it can work--- a Phillips head screw driver will modify a hp - very well and again with out ending the accuracy part--

longbow
02-09-2015, 12:09 PM
+1 on what kweidner said.

Many years ago I was reading up on modifications to .22 noses and ran across two good sources of info. One was Paco's tool and write ups and the other was Dale53 who had a collection of Ed Harris articles which included a file die to put a small meplat on the nose of a .22 bullet.

I decided to try both routes and both worked pretty well.

The file die is easy to make and removes very little of the nose weight wise (2 to 3 grs. IIRC) but makes an impressive meplat.

I made a copy (more or less) of Paco's tool just to experiment and it worked well too. I didn't notice any loss of accuracy and in fact Paco says his tool improves accuracy in many cases.

Most notable was how much better the altered bullets expanded in test media. The stock round nose penetrated much further in a Bullet Test Tube than the altered bullets but the altered boolits showed significantly better expansion.

No reason the same idea couldn't be applied to a round nose cast boolit though a file die is likely easier to make and use than trying to swage anything much harder than pure lead.

If you could cut a shallow cross accurately enough there no reason it wouldn't work but you would need a jig to guide a hacksaw or Exacto saw accurately enough to maintain balance and get even consistent expansion. I think it would be much easier and just as effective to drill a shallow hollow point using a jig or Forster HP tool, or make a meplat with a file die.

If all you want to do is play to see what happens and accuracy isn't a factor then saw away.

Longbow

bob208
02-13-2015, 11:34 AM
in Elmer Keith's book he told of cutting an x in his colt.45 bullets when he thought he mite have to go up against some one. at one time there was an outfit the made a tool that screwed on your ram rod that would impress an x in your loaded round ball or bullet.

a friend of mine found out a small pistol primer would fit in the hp of my 429421 bullets. then there was a short lived practice of drilling the nose of maxi balls and putting in a .22 short.

nagantguy
02-13-2015, 11:52 AM
Did the x trick with .22s as a kid after seeing the movie the bear, where the hunter after losing his dogs to the bear cut xs on his 45-70 boolits, did indeed knock the socks off wood chucks with those modified 22s if wood chucks wore socks that is.

fouronesix
02-13-2015, 12:45 PM
If accuracy is secondary then go for it. Plus most factory 22rf are swaged so they are about as perfect in form and balance as can be made to begin with. A 22rf bullet is traveling from the muzzle out to its effective range of maybe 75 yards through a velocity range that is subject to "maximum aerodynamic pressure" (zone of greatest drag force to velocity ratio). Additionally, any gyroscopic imbalance caused by imperfect filing or cutting will adversely affect accuracy. So two things are going on, especially with normal 22rf bullet stability- aerodynamic and gyroscopic with each interacting with the other.

Here's an interesting yatube. Of interest to me was the flight of a 22rf bullet nose shortened by a straight across cut- in effect making a short, wide flat nose. :)
http://yatube.yayabla.nl/index.php?videoid=C9Dylxy3zJc

Omega
02-13-2015, 01:27 PM
This brings back memories of a movie they did that in: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Bear,_The

When I watched it I figured it must of been to make it expand better. But shots must of been for short range.

GoodOlBoy
02-13-2015, 04:26 PM
My grandfather said they did it on some 45acps in Korea when they were expecting a particularly nasty up close fight.

GoodOlBoy

roverboy
02-13-2015, 06:38 PM
My grandfather said they did it on some 45acps in Korea when they were expecting a particularly nasty up close fight.

GoodOlBoy

I heard the same thing from a Vietnam vet. And he said, that it indeed did work........

nanuk
02-20-2015, 02:13 PM
I read a comprehensive study where they deformed the tips of bullets and accuracy was not affected to any great degree, certainly not enough to notice hunting.

on lead bullets, engraving an X on the nose did help expansion, had little to no effect on accuracy.

What I found interesting is on RB shooting
cutting an X on the ball, and seating the X towards the muzzle, threw the ball all over and destroyed accuracy.
seating it with the X over the powder did not affect accuracy at all.
Opposite of cartridge bullets, where a base needs to be near perfect for accuracy

contrary to what most "THINK" and most "Ol' Wive's Tales" but they found this with actual shooting. I can't remember where I read this, but I think it was an NRA article.

M-Tecs
02-20-2015, 09:23 PM
This brings back memories of a movie they did that in: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Bear,_The

When I watched it I figured it must of been to make it expand better. But shots must of been for short range.

Going to try and find this one. Looks interesting.