"Mankiller" double hollow wadcutters?

[cloakndagger]

Browsing through an old issue of american rifleman I found a discussion of so called "mankiller" hollow base/hollow point wadcutter ammunition. Ive seen HBWC's loaded backward but this thing threw me for a loop, two hollows instead of one? Has anyone out there ever made/tested these things since the 60's when american rifleman wrote ofit? Does anyone still make a mold for it?

[Thumbcocker]

It was offered as an option in some of the .455 Webly family of cartridges. I have heard it referred to as manstopper loads. Soft alloy moderate velocity hollow base and hollow point. Some Webly people on yhe board can give you more specifics. Don't know how well they worked or if they were used by armed forces or not in light of Haige conventions.

[kir_kenix]

Every double hbwc I've ever seen were obviously swaged examples from extremely soft lead. My old man bought several dozen coffee cans of what we were told were Hornady examples sometime in the '90s. I've shot a few thousand of them out of .38 specials with blackpowder and smokeless loads. Velocity has to be kept down because of the design and lead bhn of course. Ones I have are knurled and have a waxy lube on them.

I suppose they would do well as a personal defense load. Doubt they would be any more effective then a hbwc loaded backwards in practice. I have recovered quite a few from various dirt piles and pieces of pine board that mushroomed respectively despite the low impact velocity. Personally, I would rather have a full WC or button WC that reliably found its way to the vitals of my target then a super soft piece of lead that expanded violently on impact, but thats just me.

[kir_kenix]

Edit: Of course a 250 gr .455 boolit won't have the penetration difficulties I mentioned above. They would most likely be quite effective even at moderate velocities out of a big bore.

Should have limited my response above to light (I think mine weigh in at around 135 or 140 gr) .358 boolits and the results I've personally experienced.

[cloakndagger]

Lol yea I had imagined the .455 DHBWC moving down range making a sound something akin to a slowly....slowly... inbound bowling ball.. ive a few reversed hbwc's that ive played with, one I recovered drom a coyote fired from my .38sp was very interesting, after penetrating it mustve hit something because but for the solid point (now the base as it was reversed) the boolit had turned into a quarter...completely flat..

[dominicfortune00]

Being a HBHP boolit it is swaged rather than cast.

Worked pretty good in 455 Webleys, hence the name 'Manstopper'.

[Piedmont]

You can't do a mold for these because you couldn't get them out of the mold!! And where would you put the sprue hole? They were swaged.

You could to one end a hollow and swage the other end, or just swage both. It would be easy to make an open nosed flatbase manstopper by having someone hollowpoint a large nose SWC or just do it to a wadcutter. There are lots of photos on Erik Ohlen's site and some of them are wadcutters featuring work like this.

[Dutchman]

"As a military cartridge the 'manstopping bullet' did not have a very long life as we find that in March, 1902, the War Office notified The Webley & Scott Revolver & Arms Company Limited to the following effect: --

'I am instructed by the Secretary of State for War to acquaint you that the present regulations require all pistol ammunition for use on active service to be made with a solid bullet. No mushroom pattern is to be used.' Production was officially stopped on 14th July, 1900.

from The Webley Story by Dowd

from United States Patent Office:
http://images54.fotki.com/v627/photos/2/28344/6456804/us000634383001WebleyBullet1899-vi.jpg
from The Webley Story by Dowd
http://images14.fotki.com/v1628/photos/4/28344/9895637/001bb-vi.jpg

[cloakndagger]

Im still stuck wondering why..... why not just invert the hbwc and be done with it? Does the double hollow provide any more advantage in anyone's opinion, or is it just a Brit thing to overthink their ammo?

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

could it be to add case volume but keep the boolit heavy, therefor keeping pressures lower

[kir_kenix]

My guess is Webly throats and barrel diameters are probably all over the place (hell, isn't everything thats ever been made in the UK? No offense to any one on that side of pond...). A HBWC does a great job of orbituating and sealing a bore, ensuring accuracy at moderate velocities. That big dish of a HP was there for the expansion...guess they were going for the best of both worlds.

I put a few of those DHBWC's down range today out of a model 15. They shot well enough, and my reactive orange "square" target made of some sort of rubber caught alot of pieces of the boolits that were shed before exiting. Kind of suprised as the self sealing target usually lets just about anything exit, including .22's and whatever is left of frangible jacketed projectiles, regardless of the impact velocity.

[cloakndagger]

Hmm... that thought had not crossed my mind....yet.... seems the brits had to compensate for guns that were built a bit looser for durability purpose and then put into the worse conditions on earth and shot to heck-and-back... we still gojng with the theory that they were swaged?

[kir_kenix]

Hmm... that thought had not crossed my mind....yet.... seems the brits had to compensate for guns that were built a bit looser for durability purpose and then put into the worse conditions on earth and shot to heck-and-back... we still gojng with the theory that they were swaged?

I don't see any scenerio where they were not swaged. Pretty tough to make them in any quantity otherwise. Suppose they could be drilled out after dropping from a standard HBWC, but that would be alot of work. Otherwise the mold would have to be very unconventional...as in there would be a sprue on the 'side' of the boolit...not a great way to make a concentric projectile.

[Thumbcocker]

Swaging lead projectiles was well established by this time. I have read that the vast majority of .58 and .577 projectiles used in the civil war were swaged in factories using steam powered machines capable of prodigious production rates.

[1Shirt]

Can't believe that accuracy with hb/hp was anything to write home about beyond a few feet. The few times I have played with HBWC's backwards, they had about a max effective range on a man size target of maybe 15 feet. However within that limitation, they would be deadly.
1Shirt!