.308 Copper Bullets in .318 Mauser

[docone31]

Sounds like paper patched flechette time!
Now, that would be something.

[pdawg_shooter]

Hang on. Let's go back a few steps. He took a hardened steel core and patched them up and they shot just as good? What was the shape of those hardened steel cores? What was many things? I'm not interested in piercing armour but the PRINCIPLE is intriguing! Heck, if'n I were to turn off a few mild steel cores and patch 'em up for target shootin' .... see what I mean? And the shape and patch design might be of value to core casters. And armour piercing would imply high velocity - varminting patched PPCBoos? (Or PPBoos). Zeek, do you you see a whole new field to experiment and play around with?

They were 30cal. He turned them to a point on a lathe. Come to think of it he used a tool post grinder, IIRC. They were .300 dia. and he shot them out of an old M1917.

[Zeek]

. . . Zeek, do you you see a whole new field to experiment and play around with?

Well, if a person needed armor-piercing Boos, for any reason, and had a lathe, files, a torch, and some 5/16" diameter W-1 or O-1 tool steel, it sure wouldn't take long to scratch that itch. The trick would be to turn to a O.D. that is less than the land-to-land (bore) diameter and then patch it up to a bit over bore diameter and size the PPatch down to firing diameter.

BEWARE: often, steel will increase in diameter when it hardens, although that is more common with surface-hardening than all-the-way-through hardening. Still it would be good to RECHECK THE OD before proceeding, given that even 0.001" over the land-to-land might cause barrel damage. Sorry to repeat myself, but, "Better prepared than repaired!"

True armor-piercing capability would need some tempering, perhaps at ~400F (to chisel hardness), so that the Boo-Core would be hard but still tough. Whereas a varmint paper-patched hardened steel projectile (PPHSBoo) would be left full hard, which (in theory) would leave it glass hard (brittle), so that it would explode into shards rather violently upon impact, which would be MOST depressive to the varmint.
Mah!
Zeek

[303Guy]

I was thinking along the lines of turning soft steel Boo cores and patching 'em up. I don't think I'd want anything harder than my barrel steel down the bore just incase the patch rubs through. So for me it would be the harder to machine, soft grade mild steel. The thing is, this could overcome the problem of high velocity lightweight PPBoos in my military 303 Brit bore. Lead is too dense to make a boolit big enough to fit the throat and steel would definately survive the high spin and is pretty well assured of having perfectly distributed mass and wouldn't take long to turn off quite a few cores once set up. Weight tolerances would be far closer than possible with casting lead. (On a digital lathe and great care).

[barrabruce]

Sounds like a good way to make a 410 out of a 45-70 barrel to me
How about a core 0.200" or so maybe even a bunch of pins. You'd have to set them up to align in a mould somehow for a lead coating but hell it may be fun.

Let me know how you go with it.

I thought a ball bearing in a nose of a projo say 250 thou may do the trick.
You'd have all that force behind it as the lead went by to push in into something.



Barra

[barthmonster]

I posted another message about something similar to this. I was wondering if a 30-cal boolit (.309 ?) can be patched and shot in a .303 british (.311) ? Might not be room for 2-wraps after reading this post...