From round nose to spitzer bullets

[kimoleto]

I was trying to find some history on how round bullets evolve to pointed bullets. Any direction to articles? internet sites?

[cwtebay]

I don't have sources, but I recall that the French military trials of the 8mm Lebel brought about using pointy bullets instead of flat or round nose bullets. They also came to the conclusion that jacketed bullets outperformed lead at the "new" velocities at which these bullets were being propelled.

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[Winger Ed.]

Jackets came along a little after smokeless powder. It could push a bullet along faster than Lead ones could handle well.

Spitzer points came along after someone figured out they didn't slow down as fast.
That gave them a longer effective range and flatter trajectory than RN or a ball in the same cartridge.

As far as finding articles about that early ammunition development-- that will be rather challenging.
Everybody writes about how weapons developed, but the development of ammo is barely a footnote in history.

The best references to it I've found is in reloading manuals.

[Walks]

The Lebel had a tubular mag. The Spitzers were not introduced into French service until the Berthier came along.

[GregLaROCHE]

Here is some of the basic history, but beware it is Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitzer_(bullet)

[cwtebay]

The Lebel had a tubular mag. The Spitzers were not introduced into French service until the Berthier came along.

It's been my understanding that the groove in the head of the case of the Lebel cartridge was to accept the point of the spitzer behind it in that tubular magazine that you refer to.
It would stand to reason that the French would have been at least one of the first in spitzer development as they came up with a version of smokeless powder pretty close to the starting line.



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[kimoleto]

I read about the French, really interesting

[rintinglen]

Right at the end of the 19th century, the French Army adopted the "Balle D" for the 8 mm Lebel. That was the first general issue use of a spitzer bullet, though there were doubtless other innovators in the private sector whose experiments may have slightly preceded this event. This was quickly copied by Germany, who changed the bullet in the 8 x 57 from a 225 grain round nose jacketed bullet to a ~150 grain spitzer. This change gave greater range and longer barrel life and was swiftly copied by numerous other countries, including the US in 1906 (The 30-06) and the UK in 1910-1911. By the 1st World War, they were standard issue for most belligerents.

[kimoleto]

I was aware of the Mauser employment of spitzer bullets since the 2nd Boer war, mainly in 7x57 and the US .30 - 01, .30 - 03 to .30 - 06 evolution. Never expected a french intervention on the development of the spitzers. Thanks all of you for sharing your knowledge, specially the cartridge photo

[WRideout]

My wife gave me a copy of Phil Sharpe's book Complete Guide to Handloading for Christmas (I love that woman!) It has been out of print for many years, but you can still find copies from a used bookseller. If you like his style of writing, he offers a ton of history on the development of everything related to loaded cartridges. I find it fascinating.

Wayne

[cwtebay]

The Lebel had a tubular mag. The Spitzers were not introduced into French service until the Berthier came along.

Somewhere in my computer photos I have pictures of radiographs I took of various tubular magazine rifles loaded. Per a request from a member I grooved a couple of case heads (similar to the Lebel rounds) and loaded the same cartridges with spitzer bullets. It is remarkable how well that design actually worked! No degree of rattling around or cycling resulted in the point of the following spitzer bullets not being held by that groove.
Granted, it was a Winchester but I think that the concept should be applicable to other tubular magazine systems.
And something my memory is someone used a spiral arrangement of cartridges in a tubular magazine in an attempt to safely use spitzer bullets (Remington maybe??).

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[Wayne Smith]

Something in the back of my mind says the Swiss predated the French, but was that spitzer or rebated base bullets?