Differences in Bullets?
- Thread starter Tjv787
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- chilliwack BC.
google will probably give you more results as I suspect you will be mercilessly slagged on here.
I'll give you the basic ones. FMJ means full metal jacket, where the jacket fully covers the visible portion of the bullet. BT means boat tail, where the base of the bullet is tapered, for aerodynamics. This also makes it easier to press it into the casing. HP means hollow point. you know what this means. SP mean soft point. usually a small portion of the lead is exposed on the point end of the bullet. this usually is for hunting as it allows expansion. There is also TMJ which means total metal jacket. This is usually for pistol bullets and its for cutting down on lead exposure for use in indoor ranges. Small amounts of lead is aerosolized when the pistol is fired if it is exposed on the base of the bullet. TMJ bullets completely cover the bullet with (usually copper) a metal jacket.
I'll give you the basic ones. FMJ means full metal jacket, where the jacket fully covers the visible portion of the bullet. BT means boat tail, where the base of the bullet is tapered, for aerodynamics. This also makes it easier to press it into the casing. HP means hollow point. you know what this means. SP mean soft point. usually a small portion of the lead is exposed on the point end of the bullet. this usually is for hunting as it allows expansion. There is also TMJ which means total metal jacket. This is usually for pistol bullets and its for cutting down on lead exposure for use in indoor ranges. Small amounts of lead is aerosolized when the pistol is fired if it is exposed on the base of the bullet. TMJ bullets completely cover the bullet with (usually copper) a metal jacket.
hp = hollow point (dum dum)
legiOn means that about the bullet, not you Tjv787. Dum-dum is a hollow point bullet.
Fmj and tmj is legal for hunting in Ontario, but only a sadist would actually hunt with them. They don't expand when entering an animal, and don't cause enough damage to ensure a quick humane kill. They're for punching paper.
Hp is kind of the opposite - they expand too much for most game and won't penetrate and hold together well enough to go deep and hit the vitals. Ok for varmints. Usually OK for fur bearers.
Soft points are for hunting. As well as other modern reinventions of soft points such as ballistic tips that have a pointed plastic tip for in-flight performance (flies like fmj) that disintegrates on contact to expose a lead soft point.
Hp is kind of the opposite - they expand too much for most game and won't penetrate and hold together well enough to go deep and hit the vitals. Ok for varmints. Usually OK for fur bearers.
Soft points are for hunting. As well as other modern reinventions of soft points such as ballistic tips that have a pointed plastic tip for in-flight performance (flies like fmj) that disintegrates on contact to expose a lead soft point.
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Just a minor technicality. "Dum-dum", originally was used to describe bullets that had had a cross pattern, hand cut into the tip, with the expectation that they would fragment on impact into 4 parts, causing a much larger wound channel. As far as I know, true "dum-dum's" are not legal for hunting or legal for anything else, either.
HP means the bullet jacket covers the base and is open at the nose, leaving a hollow point. If the jacket stops short of the lead core, the exposed lead is called a Soft Point. (SP)
HP bullets come in three flavours, determined by jacket thickness and lead hardness.
Match bullets have fairly uniform jacket thickness and harder cores. They do not expand well, nor do they blow up.
Varmint HP bullets have thin jackets and soft cores. They blow up.
Hunting HP bullets have medium hard lead cores and tapered thickness jackets, so the nose section mushrooms and them the bullet carries on. The Sierra HP 223 bullet of 60gr, for example, is a hunting bullet, not a varmint bullet. It is excellent on deer, and has better pentration than the 63gr Sp.
HP bullets come in three flavours, determined by jacket thickness and lead hardness.
Match bullets have fairly uniform jacket thickness and harder cores. They do not expand well, nor do they blow up.
Varmint HP bullets have thin jackets and soft cores. They blow up.
Hunting HP bullets have medium hard lead cores and tapered thickness jackets, so the nose section mushrooms and them the bullet carries on. The Sierra HP 223 bullet of 60gr, for example, is a hunting bullet, not a varmint bullet. It is excellent on deer, and has better pentration than the 63gr Sp.
hometownhero
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Some hp bullets are for match use and not hunting
Different manufacturers have different abbreviations for their bullets. FMJ is a general term used for the full metal jacket, but there are many other abbreviations.
IE: SBT, SST, Amax, Vmax, GMX, OTM
Bullets are manufactured to perform differently. The shooter needs to choose the bullet based on the terminal performance they are looking for. Terminal performance, basically means what it will do when it hits the target. Is the bullet designed to shred on impact? is it meant to stay together and push through heavy muscle and bone? Is it meant to mushroom? Is it a hollow point "looking" bullet, but not meant to expand at all?
As a reloader, I research the intended purpose of a bullet before I make the completed cartridge and shoot it from my gun. I choose what type of bullet I need for the application.
If I am hunting I will use an SST, or a Berger VLD. If I am just cranking rounds out of an AR.. then its full metal jacket.
There is a reason why some ammunition off the shelf cost more than other stuff. It doesn't mean it will shoot better / more accurately out of your gun, but it may mean it is best suited for hunting a moose, rather than punching paper.
IE: SBT, SST, Amax, Vmax, GMX, OTM
Bullets are manufactured to perform differently. The shooter needs to choose the bullet based on the terminal performance they are looking for. Terminal performance, basically means what it will do when it hits the target. Is the bullet designed to shred on impact? is it meant to stay together and push through heavy muscle and bone? Is it meant to mushroom? Is it a hollow point "looking" bullet, but not meant to expand at all?
As a reloader, I research the intended purpose of a bullet before I make the completed cartridge and shoot it from my gun. I choose what type of bullet I need for the application.
If I am hunting I will use an SST, or a Berger VLD. If I am just cranking rounds out of an AR.. then its full metal jacket.
There is a reason why some ammunition off the shelf cost more than other stuff. It doesn't mean it will shoot better / more accurately out of your gun, but it may mean it is best suited for hunting a moose, rather than punching paper.
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- chilliwack BC.
I addressed the HP in my first post.
hoochie, most of those are manufacturer specific, not general ones like fmj etc.
Pretty much any style of bullet can also be a boat tail. Bthp, btfmj, btsp, etc. It's a tapering of the back of the bullet to reduce drag and allow the bullet to fly further, and retain more of its energy at longer ranges. Every bullet has what's called a "ballistic coefficient" - a number expressed as 3 decimal points. This is basically a "score" given to a bullet for its aerodynamic performance. The higher the number, the more aerodynamic the bullet is.
For instance, let's look at 2 different .308s sighted in at 100 yards:
Winchester power point: weight 150 grains, non-boat tail, round lead nose, published ballistic coefficient (bc) of .294
And
Winchester ballistic silver tip: weight 150 grains, boat tail, pointed plastic nose, B.C. of .435
Both bullets will leave the barrel at about the same speed. In fact, the PowerPoint will actually leave 10 fps faster that the silvertip. However, by the time the bullets have flown out to 500 yards, things have changed drastically.
The power point will have dropped 34 inches below your point of aim, while the silver tip only dropped less that 21 inches below your point of aim.
The power point will be traveling at 1492 fps as it crosses the 500 yard mark, while the silver tip is still moving at 1856 fps.
The PowerPoint will still be carrying 742 foot pounds of energy, while the silver tip is now still carrying h 1147 foot pounds of energy.
You can see how the same weight and size bullet fired out of the same gun at the same speed can be drastically different using 2 different bullet shape designs. Enough difference to mean missing by over a foot, or maybe not having enough bullet energy left for an ethical kill.
Dum Dum is a municipality West Bengal (India). During the 19th century the area was home to the Dum Dum Arsenal, a British Royal Artillery armory, where, in the early 1890s, Captain Neville Bertie-Clay developed a bullet with the jacket cut away at the tip to reveal its soft lead core (see hollow-point bullet), known informally as a dum-dum, or more correctly as an expanding bullet.
