Explosive Bullets - How do they work?

Oh, and for more clarity heres what I know.

A 25mm High Explosive projectile (just the bullet flying through the air) is basically a hollow container, about 1 oz, with somthing resembling a primer on the front. It is the impact fuze. It is armed by the spinning of the bullet and fired on impact. This blows the charge inside.

No rocket science.

Armor piercing incidiary trace small arms ammo work more like an armor piercing molotov cocktail.

Its just designed to start fires and does not explode on its own.

I dont know of any HE small amrs ammo aside from 12 ga.
 
There is another type of "exploding" bullet, that is pertinent to pistol bullets. The purpose of an exploding charge on a pistol bullet is to ensure expansion at low velocity. This was accomplished by epoxying a LR primer into the modified hollow nose of the bullet, the idea being that upon impact the primer would explode and begin to open up the bullet. Experimentation ceased in the 1970's as the results could not be made uniform, and bullet technology advanced to the degree that there was no advantage to the process.
 
Quote: "This was accomplished by epoxying a LR primer into the modified hollow nose of the bullet, the idea being that upon impact the primer would explode and begin to open up the bullet. "

I drilled out the nose of a 44 revolver bullet and glued in a RamSet 22 blank. These blanks have a lot of power. I shot it into the block of wood at the back of my loading bench. A small curl of smoke came out of the hole. Don't know what that means.

This was probably one of the dumber things I did.
 
The bullets that were used in the attempted assassination of Ronald Regan were "explosive". I put it in quotes because they did not explode.
 
Canuck223 said:
In all honesty, real explosive bullets don't exist below .50 caliber. When you are talking the 20mm and larger aircraft and helicopter mounted guns, the projectile is large enough to be a miniature version of the artillery shell designs with a thinner skin.

The .303 and larger APIT rounds are primarily for punching holes in gas tanks, and mostly represent pre-WWII thinking.
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They did exist in WWI as 303 Anti zeppelin rounds. The rounds contained TNT with a primer in the tip.
There is a fellow (ammo collector) on Vancouver Island that has them in his collection. They are all quite real too.

The problem was that some of the rounds would not go off properly. or they would explode prematurely.

:eek: THis guys collection is clearly worth $$$$$$s! as he has ammo from WWI that is in extremely good condition.
 
I have seen shotgun shells that are called "bangers". they are used to scare ducks and geese off of unharvested grain fields in western Canada. I don't know if they actually explode but they do make a loud pop once they are out 20 or 30 yards. They used to be handed out by conservation officers to farmers who needed help keeping waterfowl off of their fields. I haven't seen them for years but likely still available.
 
Daehanminkuk said:
They did exist in WWI as 303 Anti zeppelin rounds. The rounds contained TNT with a primer in the tip.
There is a fellow (ammo collector) on Vancouver Island that has them in his collection. They are all quite real too.

The problem was that some of the rounds would not go off properly. or they would explode prematurely.

:eek: THis guys collection is clearly worth $$$$$$s! as he has ammo from WWI that is in extremely good condition.
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It would be interesting to see some of that stuff. TNT is a pretty stable substance as far as high explosives are concerned, it is resilient to temperature and moisture and lasts nearly indefinitely. The problem I see is having enough of the explosive in the relatively small bullet to do much good. The explosive must of been poured in a liquid form inside the jacket, but there must of been some core metal present in order to make the bullet ballistically stable. I suspect the TNT filled the base with a small hollow tube extending from the primer at the nose to the explosive fill. A very rough calculation results in an estimated explosive fill of about 12 grs. I suppose that would give enough of a spark inside a hydrogen filled Zepplin to make things exciting.
 
###XX said:
My room mate and I got to talking about explosive rounds and what use they might have (why they were created to begin with) and the subject quickly changed to how they're made.

I'm very well-aware that they are prohibited and not available to civilians in Canada, but I'm curious nonetheless from a knowledge standpoint.

Does anyone know how exploding bullets are constructed?

Discuss! :)

-###XX
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You shoot'em..they blow up. You go to jail and get banned from cgn.:D
 
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