Plastic bullets

[fatelk]

I wasn't sure where to put this, since these are not cast bullets. If a moderator feels there's a better sub forum for this, please move it there. Thank you.

I bought a bunch of these little plastic .30 cal bullets, probably 10 years ago, or more. They were super cheap when I got them, surplus foreign pull-down of some kind, plastic with a copper base. I tinkered with them a few times, never found much use for them, never really worked up a load that shot for beans or practical in any way.

Recently I ended up with a bunch of old, primed 30-30 brass. I bought a bunch of unknown reloads at a gun show for next to nothing a while back, and pulled them down for components. What to do with the old tarnished brass with unknown primers? 5 grains of Bullseye and a 19gr plastic bullet; let's see what this does.

Must have been a magic load. They shoot in practically the same hole at 25 yards, out of a Winchester 30-30. No idea how fast they're going, since the load was a wild guess, but I think they're moving right along. I saw several of the spent bullets on top of the gravel berm, plastic shredded. They're louder than a .22lr, but of course zero recoil. My daughter liked shooting them, and in the lever action they function perfect. I think it will be a fun lever-gun load for blasting tin cans.

[Bazoo]

Dang that's neat. How close do they shoot to point of aim?

[RU shooter]

That is neat ! I bet there chugging along pretty good , ya figure a 150 gr cast bullet with that load is in the 1000 fps range maybe a bit faster .

[fatelk]

I only shot them at 25 yards, but at that range they were about an inch to the right of normal ammo. I don't know how fast they were going; next time I get out with the chronograph I'll clock a couple. I have an idea they're going pretty dang fast. When I tinkered with these bullets before I used different powder and lighter charges, and didn't get very good results. I remember accuracy being poor, and I'd find barely mutilated plastic bullets on the berm. This time they made a sharper crack, and what remained of the bullets in the berm was shredded pretty good. Maybe upping the velocity was key to accuracy?

[samari46]

I have some of the West German 7.62x51 training rounds with the blue case and bullet and metallic case head. Shot a few at our local range and at 100 yds almost but not quite made it through the backer board. Left them sticking in the wood to confound and mystify any member who saw them. Don't know how fast they were going or weight. Frank

[fatelk]

I finally shot a few across the chronograph. It's funny, most of them were around 1650fps, but a couple of them were going 2000fps. I was careless when reloading theses for the chronograph: I had a bunch of old large rifle primers that I'd saved from pull down ammo, that I used. I know some of them were magnum. I wonder if that's what made the 300+fps difference? Even at that, they still shoot relatively accurately.

I put a few steel soup cans out on the 35 yard berm and shot at them. They didn't even wiggle so I was wondering if I was way off somehow. When I walked down to look I found a bunch of cans with little hole punched clean through them.