Cast Dum-dums?

[sheepdog]

Another member told me about how the old timers would place a slice of paper in their moulds to achieve a tip that had a split in it somewhat like a dum-dum. Have anyone tried this to see how it reacts ballistically, on game, etc?

[Marlin Hunter]

Interesting idea. I will have to try it sometime. I would think the paper would burn, but maybe it lasts long enough to cast one boolit. A slit tip would probably cause some out-of-balance situation and hurt accuracy. I wonder if centrifugal force would cause a rifle boolit to separate into 2 pieces somewhere just past the muzzle.

[Heavy lead]

aluminum foil tape

[mpmarty]

Arvo Ojalla a holster maker of some repute and a trick shot used to do a stunt with a cast boolit with a piece of cigarette paper between the blocks. He loaded these in a 45 long colt and in his stunt he had a "helper" hold up a knife and there was a large target behind the knife. Sure enough he fired and produced two distinct holes in the target thus proving he had "cut the boolit in half on the knife".

[sqlbullet]

Handloader covered this in the June 2009 issue in an article entitled Cast Bullet Expansion.

Lucky for you it is available as a part of the teaser PDF (http://www.riflemagazine.com/magazine/PDF/hl260partial1.pdf) they put online for each issue.

[45 2.1]

Handloader covered this in the June 2009 issue in an article entitled Cast Bullet Expansion.

Lucky for you it is available as a part of the teaser PDF (http://www.riflemagazine.com/magazine/PDF/hl260partial1.pdf) they put online for each issue.

BruceB is refered to as: A fellow on the Internet site
“Cast Boolits”. I read the article....... a lot of old technology there. It is much easier to cast a boolit of soft ductile alloy......... no need to do more as it shoots really fine and expands much better than anything you can buy. BRP has the mold I designed to do just that.

[fredj338]

Handloader covered this in the June 2009 issue in an article entitled Cast Bullet Expansion.

Lucky for you it is available as a part of the teaser PDF (http://www.riflemagazine.com/magazine/PDF/hl260partial1.pdf) they put online for each issue.

I read the articel as well. IMO, easier to cast HP. Erik @ HPMS can hook your fav. mold up w/ a single cav HP. That is how I would go. A small cup point in say 400gr 45-70 mold would work quite well.

[Char-Gar]

Well, just what is a dum-dum bullet? Like many things, there is not agreement between the so called experts. The only things certain is they were expanding bullets, made illegal for warfare by a Hague convention in the last few years of the 19th century. Most like they picked up the name from the Dumdum arsenal near Calcutta that produced ammo with both soft lead and hollow point bullets.

[JIMinPHX]

I always thought that a dumdum was just a soft point.

[JIMinPHX]

Handloader covered this in the June 2009 issue in an article entitled Cast Bullet Expansion.

Lucky for you it is available as a part of the teaser PDF (http://www.riflemagazine.com/magazine/PDF/hl260partial1.pdf) they put online for each issue.

That's an interesting article. I think that the wax he shot into was too hard of a material for an accurate assessment of how the boolit would perform on game based on the effects I saw on a 1520fps 12bnh flat point, but other than that, it was an interesting read.

I may try the lead ball trick some time. I was previously unfamiliar with that method. I would think that a preheated ball & a very hot pot would be necessary for that method to work.

I still like using my hollow pointing drill jigs because they let me adjust the size of the hollow point to be whatever I want it to be. That method allows me to make smaller hollow points in boolits that I plan to push at higher speeds to keep my expansion under control.

[docone31]

Back in WWI, in DumDum India, they made a soft point bullet.
These would be Xed with a knife.
I believe however, it was political rather than practical descisions made on the type of bullet. If memory serves me, I read it, was not there, the Geneva convention outlawed the Dum Dum.

[Char-Gar]

It was the Germans who fussed about expanding bullet in warfare. A few years later, they were spewing mustard gas all over the battlefield. They also tried to have shotguns outlawed as well. The Krauts didn't want expanding rifle bullets or double 0 buckshot to hit their soldiers, but they do love their gas!

[sheepdog]

To clarify a dum-dum was a 303 with the projectile loaded **** end forward but its better known as slang for what solders and later pre-hollowpoint days people did to these and other flat projectiles by cutting a deep X in the head, making it split on impact into four spurs. If you open a really old box of 38s you'll occasionally see a few cut as such for poor mans defensive loads.

My question as OP was has anyone done with with rifle projectiles. Being there longer, narrower, and moving far faster that makes me wonder if they wouldnt just fly apart.

[jdgabbard]

To clarify a dum-dum was a 303 with the projectile loaded **** end forward but its better known as slang for what solders and later pre-hollowpoint days people did to these and other flat projectiles by cutting a deep X in the head, making it split on impact into for spurs. If you open a really open box of 38s you'll occasionally see a few cut as such for poor mans defensive loads.

My question as OP was has anyone done with with rifle projectiles. Being there longer, narrower, and moving far faster that makes me wonder if they wouldnt just fly apart.

Sheepdog is absolutly right, hence the famous movie quote,"what you got in there, dum dums?"

[KCSO]

The 'dum-dum' was a British military bullet developed for use in India - at the Dum-Dum Arsenal - on the North West Frontier in the late 1890s.

The dum-dum comprised a jacketed .303 bullet with the jacket nose open to expose its lead core. The aim was to improve the bullet's effectiveness by increasing its expansion upon impact.


From here the name went generic to include any expanding bullet. For example in the 1970's when PD's switched to jacketed hollowpoints we were castigated for using DUM DUMS that were prohibited by law. Supposedly the Hauge Convention of which If I remmeber right we didn't sign anyway.

[sagacious]

The 'dum-dum' was a British military bullet developed for use in India - at the Dum-Dum Arsenal - on the North West Frontier in the late 1890s.
Correct.


The dum-dum comprised a jacketed .303 bullet with the jacket nose open to expose its lead core. The aim was to improve the bullet's effectiveness by increasing its expansion upon impact.
Correct.


From here the name went generic to include any expanding bullet. For example in the 1970's when PD's switched to jacketed hollowpoints we were castigated for using DUM DUMS that were prohibited by law. Supposedly the Hauge Convention of which If I remmeber right we didn't sign anyway.
Correct again. The US is not a signatory nation to the prohibition of expanding bullets used in warfare.

[MT Gianni]

Somewhere I have an American Rifleman from Sept? 1967 that has a write in column. One NRA member writes of doing this and using check end stubs. I assume that is the paper left by a check when torn off. His claim was that it was the proper thickness and width for this. He also said to make sure that there was no one in a 10' radius in front of your bbl as the occasionally came apart upon leaving the barrel. That was enough for me not to try it. I don't shoot with people in front of me but would hate to depend on a cast boolit expanding and have it so out of balance as to not hit the target.

[MtGun44]

During the 1860s thru the1890s (IIRC) the British experimented with hollow points, copper
tubes in hollow points, copper tubes filled with fulminate of mercury, and other ways of
causing more dramatic results when fighting in India and Africa. I believe that many of
these were designed and produced at the Dum-Dum Arsenal in India, hence the name.

In modern movie parlance (if you learn about guns from a movie you sure don't learn
anything much that is actually TRUE!) they apparently mean some sort of softpoint or
hollowpoint, possibly even something modified, like the X's that are mentioned. I consider
it to be a term that has no solid definition beyond the British ammo and avoid using
since most that do use it are pretty uneducated/maleducated about firearms and
especially terminal ballistics. When I hear the term I can usually depend on the user
to be pretty ignorant of guns, although not always - which surprises me since I don't
think it has any sort of a reliable definition - making the term almost useless.

[runfiverun]

in the redneck world it refers to taking a pocket knife and whittling out the lead from a rifle bullets tip.
to make it open faster, works on old round nose 30-30's too well [experience]
and the making a very deep x on the nose of either a rifle bullet or cutting one in the soft lead of revolver boolits back in the old west even.
kinda like glaser safety slugs or the 22's made even now days.
the petals would break off and go there separate ways.

[Wayne Smith]

If I remember right the paper in the mold idea was mentioned in the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook as well. I think I also remember that it was not recommended.

[Bladeforger]

Don't use one for self-defense... an attorney would destroy you in court. On game, fine. On gelatin, fine. For self-defense, spring for something commercial or use a mould that's available commercially for everyone to buy.

[Freischütz]

I thought Dum-Dum bullets were only to be used against heathens

[sheepdog]

Don't use one for self-defense... an attorney would destroy you in court. On game, fine. On gelatin, fine. For self-defense, spring for something commercial or use a mould that's available commercially for everyone to buy.

I was thinking more along the lines of against game.

[Multigunner]

Before WW1 the British experimented with several types of expanding .303 bullets for their military ammo including hollow points.
The main reason they stopped the practice was not due to the Hague Convention but because these bullets had a bad habit of becoming stuck in the bore and blowing through the core. Shed bullet jackets left in the bore became known as a Wedding Ring, and could ruin the bore of a target rifle and leave internal bulges that could result in the barrel being condemned.
The Tublar Jacket bullet has been revived on occasion, due to its being very cheap to manufacture, but some years back there were incidents including a shooter losing the sight of one eye and some disfigurement.

The .303 MkVI bullet with standard round nosed FMJ had no blow through problem to speak of but was found to make clean wounds that often would not stop a fanatical enemy.

The MkVII bullet was a development of the "Swift" spire point match bullet which was a 200+ gr bullet, and the "Velopex" Express bullet which used a light weight nose plug to allow a lighter bullet weight while retaining good bearing surface and bullet length for long range performance, the resulting bullet was the size of a 200+ gr bullet but weighed only 174 grains allowing velocity to be increased.

A happy result as far as the British were concerned was that this new non expanding bullet would usually tumble in the wound greatly increasing lethality.

The practice of turning bullets base forwards was not for expansion purposes. The Germans had found that spire point bullets too often glanced off angled armor plate used to protect observers and snipers loopholes in the trenches.
Turning the bullet base forwards gave the bullet a flat impact that acted to push metal plating through like a punch, and when it struck at a slight angle the edge of the open base acted like a tube cutter digging into the plate rather than glancing off. It wasn't particularly efficient, but worked after a fashion. The Blitz Action trauma solid copper truncated cone hollow point uses the same method to cut through steel belted tires, auto sheet metal and light body armor.

The field expedient reversed bullets lead to further experiments with reversed bullets and greater velocity retention of these lead to development of the boat tail bullet we are now so familar with.

As for crosses cut into lead bullets.
I gave this a try years ago when I found my .375 round ball mold didn't throw a bullet big enough for the chamber mouth of my Navy Arms 1851 Colt repro, the early production often had oversize chambers.
I first tapped the round ball with a tack hammer to bulge it out a hair, which worked fine, then tried a few other alteration, first drilling a hollow point, then cutting a cross through the hollow point with a bowie knife. Results were impressive when fired at lumps of red clay. The deeply drilled and cut round balls broke into four equal wedges on impact, holes in the wet red clay were fist sized craters, with football sized lumps of hard packed clay weighing several pounds blown to fragments.

A wound such as these would produce would be very difficult to treat sucessfully, and require a lot of cutting to free up embedded fragments. In the days before antibiotics even an otherwise non fatal wound would be almost certainly fatal after long suffering.

[Ralbsy]

Before WW1 the British experimented with several types of expanding .303 bullets for their military ammo including hollow points.
The main reason they stopped the practice was not due to the Hague Convention but because these bullets had a bad habit of becoming stuck in the bore and blowing through the core. Shed bullet jackets left in the bore became known as a Wedding Ring, and could ruin the bore of a target rifle and leave internal bulges that could result in the barrel being condemned.


The round to which you refer is the .303 Inch S.A. Ball Mk III, of which the last known live specimen sold at auction for £3500 (approx $5200)

the .303 Inch S.A. Ball Mk IV and Mk V were also expanding / hollow point rounds (generically known as "Dum Dum" bullets as they were developed along with the Mk III at the DumDum Arsenal in India), which did not shed the Wedding Ring, but were however banned as a result of the Hague Convention

the .303 Inch S.A. Ball Mk VI was developed as a result of this and, as you rightly stated, lacked "stopping power", which led to the development of the spire point Mk VII which has an aluminium inner tip to aid ballistic stability by keeping the weight to the rear of the bullet, which also as you stated had the effect of causing the bullet to tumble.

the further development of the .303 Inch S.A. Ball round was the Mk VIII which was a boat tailed bullet, running at higher velocity for use in the Vickers MMG.



During the 1860s thru the1890s (IIRC) the British experimented with hollow points, copper
tubes in hollow points, copper tubes filled with fulminate of mercury, and other ways of
causing more dramatic results when fighting in India and Africa. I believe that many of
these were designed and produced at the Dum-Dum Arsenal in India, hence the name.

Not so, most of the special purpose rounds developed by the British military were developed during WWI primarily for use by the Royal Flying Corps (later the RAF) for use against aircraft and Zepp's.

rounds such as Brock and Pomeroy explosive / Buckingham incendiary, which were named after the designers and conversely the .303 Inch Mk W1 armour piercing round which was designated after (and I quote from elsewhere) "Wolframite", a Tungsten ORE, which was alloyed with Steel to make "Tungsten Steel", which was used in the hardened steel cores of Small calibre AP ammo were developed purely as a result of the "war in the air".

most of this experimentat work was conducted at the Royal Laboratory / Woolwich Arsenal, although after the rounds were approved for production they were made at several different manufacturers, including Kirkee and DumDum in India

Sounds like I'm a geek? [smilie=l: Yep, I research and collect .303 Military ammo [smilie=s:

R

[Multigunner]

Not so, most of the special purpose rounds developed by the British military were developed during WWI primarily for use by the Royal Flying Corps (later the RAF) for use against aircraft and Zepp's.

Explosive bullets for the large bore Jacobs Rifles predate the cartridge era, these were intended for igniting artrillery cassions at long range.

An English Lord, (Baker?) built several large bore rifles which fired explosive bullets, but these were mainly intended for hunting heavy bodied dangerous game, he once blew the entire fore quarter off a Cape Buffalo with one of his rifles. His main gun was called "son of the Cannon" by his bearers. He built a marvelous single shot he called "Paula" which could spin him around and knock him off his feet at every shot, even though he was built like a WWF wrestler.

Early inWW1 they found the .303 bullet was not big enough to carry sufficient explosive or incendiary compositions of the day to be effective, so larger bore machineguns were mounted alongside the .303 guns. The .303 gun was used to ripp up a observation balloon or Zeplin Gas bags, and the larger bore gun used to set escaping gas aflame.

It was some time before more compact explosives and incendiaries were developed, and even in WW2 rifle caliber projectiles were only marginally effective in this role, which led to development of the 20mm cannon for aircraft use. The US had gone with the .50 caliber MGs earlier on and stuck to those for the most part.

[Walter Laich]

Actually, during my last casting session I got bored and decided to put a piece of paper between the mold halves. If the paper went from the top to the bottom I got several bullets that were in two parts, vertically. If I just covered part of the tip then the division only went down that far. The paper did end up inside the bullet and I could trim them off if needed.

they were 'cute' and went back into the pot.

walt

[nighthunter]

Placeing a thin strip of paper between the mold haves does produce a violently expansive boolit. I try to place the paper so that only the nose portion of the cavity is covered. Accuracy doesn't seem to be bothered by the alteration. You can cast these as fast as you cast regular bullets. I have only done this with 357 Mag and 44 Mag boolits. I don't see why it would not work with rifle bullets also.

Nighthunter