Mid air bullet to bullet impact video.

[P Flados]

This thread is about a wild effort by the "Smarter Every Day" video guy, Destin. I found it based on a link posted over at The Firing Line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcQVrD7RnNI

I added a comment on You Tube:

Each individual bullet is shattering. With a perfect hit, each bullet is coming to a stop in the exact same way as if it hit a very heavy hard flat plate. To figure this out, consider shooting a heavy hard flat plate with different bullets and loads until you can find a bullet that does not shatter. Most cast bullets have antimony that makes them harder but also more brittle. Harder bullets would be good but you also need tough. Folks have tried alloys with a good bit of copper and tin and less antimony to get "tougher". Different profiles may also be worth trying (i.e. a short bullet vs. a long bullet, a wadcutter vs a round nose).

Anybody here have an idea on what kind of bullet would have the best chance of not shattering on impact.

[Saxon]

well it should be a civil war minie ball
since that is the one the chose to recreate?

and LOL i just watched it about an hr ago before i came here

[36g]

I watched it yesterday. Needs to use a pure lead Minie ball and slow down the velocity.

[scattershot]

I have seen pictures, years ago, of Civil War bullets impacting as you describe. Supposedly, these were battlefield pickups.

[bmortell]

i just cant imagine how they were slow enough to not splatter. i think i picked up some that were more squished than splattered before under a steel plate but that was testing how slow i can make wadcutters in a snub which can get very slow. maybe the soldiers had damp powder and were spilling most on the ground and lobing out loose fitting lead at paintball speeds

[jmorris]

I have a pair of bullets that collided and stuck nose to nose but the impact took place in the berm.

There are some projectile to projectile impacts in this video starting around 2:00 in.

[uscra112]

Minie bullets were swaged from pure lead.

Also consider that a lot of CW soldiers had smoothbore muskets, so the bullets would not have been rotating. And likely were shooting round balls. Or "buck and ball" which was a popular musket load.

And why have two guns facing one another? The experiment could just as well have one bullet stationary.

[jmorris]

And why have two guns facing one another? The experiment could just as well have one bullet stationary.

Would have cut the impact speed in half…

[uscra112]

Would have cut the impact speed in half…

One gun simply launches faster.

Another hypothesis is that the impact wasn't in mid-air at all. A fired bullet struck one lying on the ground or perhaps lodged in something, as you found in your berm.

[Bigslug]

No telling what the composition of the cast bullets was, but his jacketed are going to be about 1% antimony, which is a known "brittle-ing" agent.

Civil War era stuff was either pure lead or would contain up to as much as 10% tin in extreme examples like the actually-made-by-the-Brits Whitworth sniper bullets. Tin being a "toughening" agent.

The bullets in the video are probably being shredded by the antimony crystals in their mix. These are not "meat tissue" impacts by materials of different consistencies acting on the bullet nose only, but equal masses, materials, and speeds annihilating each other. That's going to give those sharp antimony "knives" a greater chance to come out.

If you want true fusions of lumps, get the antimony content MUCH lower than 1%, or eliminate it entirely.

[uscra112]

I think they were more concerned with getting some exciting video to enhance their advertising than actually figuring out the problem.

[popper]

probably being shredded by the antimony
Nope, by fps!! Lots of battlefield collided bullets from Civil War, 50,000 in the 10-20 acre farmer's fields shooting at each other.

[Gtek]

One of Gods creatures that has enhanced and fully frustrated so many I am sure since the beginning of time. Engineers, nuff said! They can be fun to watch when they get each other all spun up!