Mixing glass or shrapnel in with alloy?

[Castaway]

I don’t see where logistics enters this inane concept. There’s no procurement, warehousing, or transportation of men, material or equipment involved. An ill conceived idea, not thought through in either the making of the bullet, or application; based on the false premise a lead bullet doesn’t expand.

[emt1581]

With said ammo it will (NEVER) be a good shoot and yup delete this crap !/Ed

Ok, since your comment was something no one else shared in the two pages prior....how would this be any different from specifically designed defensive ammo including the cast HP, cast fragmenting, and JHP rounds in your legal experience?

As for the thread, mods can feel free to lock it or delete it.

[Plate plinker]

A crappy court appointed one after the first leech takes all the money this fella has.

i don't think that you would find a lawyer to defend you in court

[44MAG#1]

People, people, people keep responding to this keeps it alive.
Let it die a quite death.

[Hanzy4200]

I think people way overthink defensive projectiles. The reality is that in 98% of cases, you could use a plain RN bullet and achieve results. People tend to have a severe reaction to being shot, with anything. HP deliver the goods, but is it worth casting defensive loads? Buy one box of good defensive loads every year or so and you are set. Factory SD loads have two things most handloads don't. Flash suppressant powder, and sealed necks and primers. Your life is worth $25 a year. I like Cor-Bon 124 gr +p's.

[GregLaROCHE]

This has been an interesting thread to read. Mostly individuals opinions and examples of why not to do it.

I feel the major ammunition producers have spent enormous amounts of time and money to develop the best legal/ethical projectiles possible, hoping to get an edge over the competition. People still try to build a better mouse trap, but very few ever do. If to want to make a hobby of developing a round that expands or even disintegrates the way you want, fine. Otherwise leave to engineering and experimenting of something new to those who have the big bucks to spend on development and testing.

[Eddie Southgate]

Dang, this should be good. Don't think I want to go to trial on this!

Exactly. Try explaining your need for this to a jury . Even OJ couldn't beat this one .

[JimB..]

Hollow point cast bullets don't compare to their jacketed cousins in defensive performance. But what if they had some glass shards or shrapnel sprinkled into the alloy...maybe in the nose of the mold? To be clear, I'm suggesting truncated cones or round nose molds. Only thing that would determine effectiveness is if the alloy was soft enough to deform a bit when penetrating clothing and make the steel/glass protrude even more through it's path. To be honest, not sure if/how it would work but has this idea been tried when casting and/or in gel?

Thanks!

All sorts of inventions have come from people asking dumb questions, so I tend to encourage them.

I think that you’ll find that a cast hollow point, or even a cast wadcutter, will be sufficient for your self defense purposes, so tinkering will yield, at best, marginal improvements.

Setting the legal advice aside, I think there are a number of practical issues with adding glass.

Glass weighs a lot less than lead, and you have no way to cast a balanced bullet, so in general it’s gonna go in some direction that’s not where you’re aiming. In all shooting it’s hits that count.

Adding glass to the mold will cause the lead to cool too fast, you won’t get good fill. If you overheat the mold and glass then the glass will float to the back of the mold.

Glass shards held together by lead will be weak and brittle, so brittle that they will likely fall apart in sizing or in the barrel under pressure. Adding a gas check might help, but you still run the risk of having it come apart when fired and be an ineffective cloud of crap that doesn’t go 10’.

Glass shards will not likely produce any extra wound damage. Maybe you’re picturing lots of little knives traveling at 1,200fps, but any that break off won’t have the mass to move through any material, and any that stay attached will be well behind the shock wave in front of the bullet that does the damage.

You can read the links above, but for a self defense round think about how to increase the diameter, how to retain mass, and how to increase velocity. Adding glass doesn’t do any of those things well.

[SweetMk]

just coat them with alox. Even a non lethal hit would be about impossible to prevent from getting infected.

What do the Russians use? Do they coat their umbrella tips with Liquid Alox?

[Doughty]

Talk about "mountain out of a molehill." In my opinion, a gross over reaction to a simple question. Reminds me of the big hullabaloo in the '70s about hollow point or "dum dum" bullets in pistol ammo. Oh the horror of it. Or "black Talons? The sky is falling. The OP is basically talking about a frangible bullet, or a least a frangible nose bullet. Is it the use of the word "glass" that has setoff so many? How about if he had used ceramic particles? Or tungsten particles? Or copper particles? Is it the use of the word "shrapnel?" That sounds like something that would be used in war. How terrible.

And yeah, "logistics" probably a poor choice of words for what he was meaning. As to the practicality of casting such a bullet, not that it couldn't be done, but in my opinion, too much effort for too little possible gain. But that's also how I feel about cast hollow point pistol bullets. Some might feel that way about casting any bullet. Or even reloading. Just buy factory ammo and be done with it.

I don't like the idea of something that is harder than steel going down a steel barrel. But what if it were powder coated, or even triple powder coated? Or paper patched, or,,,, something new?

One thing for sure, if I ever tried to market a new product, I would run it by the crew here to make sure I got the proper "spin" on it.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Maybe I could have used better wording. What I envisioned was taking an empty cavity, sprinkle in some glass/shrapnel, then pour some lead in on top of it. It'd cool to fast for the fragments to float to the top (which in this case would be the tail of the bullet).

As far as expansion....not from what I've seen and even when it expanded, it's not even remotely similar in wound channel capability as the copper jacket acting like claws against muscle/organ tissue. Now if I'm mistaken, please share or link to some pics of it.

Thanks

the glass shards WILL float to the top, the solution is to pour them upside down

[mdi]

Bullet expansion isn't the "do all-end all" for SD bullets. I wouldn't even hazard to guess the number of fatalities due to the old, fat and slow 230 gr 45 ACP load, or even farther back a .54 caliber ball at around 1,200 fps mv. For effectiveness on a living target (game or potential bad guys) I have always relied on bullet design/shape. A plus is a good designed bullet will work quite well at low and high velocities...

If the question was for theory, "jes wanna know", fine. But I read the OP as wanting the glass to do more damage/cutting as it enters flesh. I don't have to add any reasons not to (I don't buy the "extra persecution by prosecutors" as they don't need any real reason), but all in all not a good idea for practical reasons...

[waksupi]

I'd sure hate to explain that one in court,

[country gent]

Even the Black Talons were hammered for being overly destructive and a hazard to doctors ( the sharp petals cutting gloves and fingers) when they came out. The Silver tips also. almost all new technologies have been. How long was it before most police departments started issuing hollow points over the old round nose slugs.

While not easily doable as the OP asks There have been several attempts to improve effectiveness of small arms ammo with expansion, limited penetration and other things. The skived jacket on early ammo was a big start. The glassers carried his concept much farther with better wound channels and more complete energy dumps.

[derek45]

Been doing it for years, I love the satisfying sound of crunching glass when I seat a bullet.

[1hole]

So you're saying the jacket provides no real advantage to organ/tissue damage over cast? I'd love to see some gel tests that compare traditional defense JHP side by side with cast HP in regard to the wound channel.

As a mental exercise my opinion on this issue is, first, use a defense bullet engineered to do the job and that will never be a cast bullet. Second, the presumed horrors of spinning bullet petals destroying large channels of flesh is greatly over rated.

Any cast bullet alloy hard enough to be shot very fast is simply too hard to reliably expand in flesh no matter how big a hollow point - or glass point - it may have. Therefore, as Lee Jarrus of SuperVel Bullets proved 50 years ago, the answer for good expanding handgun bullets is a thin copper jacket over pure lead.

Consider that the rotational speed for a bullet is only one turn for several inches of forward travel. Both travel and spin come to a rapid stop after impact; flesh and bone absorbs and stops bullet travel and spin very rapidly. Thus, contrary to breathless advertising hype, there is very little high speed "saw blade" damage that can possibly occur before a bullet stops dead still. Any surgeon getting cut gloves and hands while removing flowering bullet petals had better stay away from bone splinters because they are much larger, sharper and far more common within the wound channel than bullet fragments will ever be.

Over the last 50-60 years I've seen many side by side gel comparisons of wound channels. They all confirm that anyone seriously wanting to leave a large wound channel should be using a high velocity rifle bullet made for hunting, not a handgun cartridge and bullet.

My own solution to handgun "expansion" is to use bullets starting with a "4" or "5" and load them hot because, at best, they ain't much.

[Goofy]

Hysterical thread this is! 😂

Carry on please.

[USSR]

Hollow point cast bullets don't compare to their jacketed cousins in defensive performance.

Au Contraire!

Don

[emt1581]

Pics of the gel those were pulled out of?

Thanks

[Goofy]

Fella really doesn't need to jump thru hoops trying to do something that can't be done.

Hollow points work, flat points work, problem solved.

.44 Mag, 300 gr pure lead...


Sorry I don't have pics of the test medium, she died on the spot and wound up in the skillet.


About 287 grains retained weight, the shot was at 80 yards. Broke both forelegs, 5 ribs and cut the heart in half.

Not much sense in trying to reinvent the wheel. And yeah, they work just fine in the Blackhawk...all the time. No reason one can't do the same thing in lessor calibers. No reason one can't shoot a soft alloy in revolvers either.