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Beer_drinker

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Ok so these aren't reloads but I figure this is the best place to ask. I drilled out a few 165gr 30/06 rounds and turned them into 145gr "varmint grenades":D

I took out exactly 20 grains from each bullet but the powder charge remains the same. I don't expect great accuracy but can they damage my barrel or rifle in any way?

hollows2002.jpg
 
Does the jacket cover the base of the bullet? If no lead is showing at the base, I can see no danger in shooting them.
I would load them up to full power for a 145 grain bullet, then hit a can of water, or some other type of liquid and watch it explode!

Edited: I re-read your post and see they were factory loads. So, my above posting is rather meaningless.
Except, I would pull a bullet out, to see if they had a covered base.
Otherwise, just to be super safe, look down the barrel after shooting one. People talk about a jacket sticking in the barrel, under certain circumstances. I have no idea if this could happen, with a lead base, or not.
One time we put a 22 calibre pellet in a primed only, 22 Hornet case, to have a pellet gun. The primer blew the center of the pellet out, leaving the rim of it in the barrel!
 
Very unsafe. There are posts on here about that. One guy said the bullet jacket because it is not "formed" around the hollowed out area can peel back on the way out causing shrapnel, barrel damage and even a catastrophic failure by turning sideways in the barrel. Look how unclean and jagged your holes are. I can see that jacket peeling right off and some sticking and pulling that bullet sideways into your barrel. Not really worth it, even if he is wrong.
 
Well it looks looks like the whole bullet is jacketed but i'll be sure to check the barrel after the first shot. I grabbed this off the winchester site,
softpoint2.jpg



No one has any objections to this little experiment?
 
Prestwich said:
Very unsafe. There are posts on here about that. One guy said the bullet jacket because it is not "formed" around the hollowed out area can peel back on the way out causing shrapnel, barrel damage and even a catastrophic failure by turning sideways in the barrel. Look how unclean and jagged your holes are. I can see that jacket peeling right off and some sticking and pulling that bullet sideways into your barrel. Not really worth it, even if he is wrong.
Click to expand...

Damn... thats what i was worried about, the sides of the cavity are fairly thin at certain points and they might fold back with the pressure...


ahh well, thanks for the warning
 
I would not expect anything bad to happen pressure wise. Long range accuracy will most likely suffer compared to the original bullet due to degrading Ballistic Coefficient of the blunt end. It's cooler to reload lighter bullets in a 30-06 than to modify factory ammo :)
 
I think you will be fine. They were SP to begin with I don't see why they would have an exposed base. You also didn't remove any of the bearing surface, i can't think of how they would tip. At most I think you would see a marginal increase in velocity.
 
I think you'll be fine too. Like the other guys said. Check the barrel after shooting just to make sure. I've fired a few experimentals in my day without any problems. I found some 100 grain "jacketed soft points" which were little more than a 100 grain 308 slug sitting in a copper cup.........out of my 300 win mag with a stiffer than hell load. They weren't bonded copper either. I know this because when I pulled a couple, the cup stayed in in the case neck. It was pretty cool watching them hit 1 gallon plastic jugs of water. I don't know how fast the bullets were moving, but it wasn't slow. As for the water jugs.......vapourized em :D
 
H4831 said:
Except, I would pull a bullet out, to see if they had a covered base.
Otherwise, just to be super safe, look down the barrel after shooting one. People talk about a jacket sticking in the barrel, under certain circumstances. I have no idea if this could happen, with a lead base, or not.
One time we put a 22 calibre pellet in a primed only, 22 Hornet case, to have a pellet gun. The primer blew the center of the pellet out, leaving the rim of it in the barrel!
Click to expand...

There is/was a display of ruptured barrels at Ellwood Epps. One of the barrels is a Lee Enfield that apparently fired a softpoint/hollowpoint made from a FMJ bullet (exposed base). When fired the jacket remained in the barrel. The next shot hit the jacket and KABOOM.

Great display of what not to do.

.
As to the OP, shouldn't be a problem, even if the tip of the jacket fails. What might cause failure is melting of lead inside the cavity when the bullet is accelerating. (think instant high compression raising temp). But even if it does happen, the bullet will still be pushed out of the barrel without any problems.
 
Prestwich said:
Very unsafe. There are posts on here about that. One guy said the bullet jacket because it is not "formed" around the hollowed out area can peel back on the way out causing shrapnel, barrel damage and even a catastrophic failure by turning sideways in the barrel. Look how unclean and jagged your holes are. I can see that jacket peeling right off and some sticking and pulling that bullet sideways into your barrel. Not really worth it, even if he is wrong.
Click to expand...


Whaaaat????!!! :eek: I think we're all a little less smart for having read that...:rolleyes:
 
Prestwich said:
Very unsafe. There are posts on here about that. One guy said the bullet jacket because it is not "formed" around the hollowed out area can peel back on the way out causing shrapnel, barrel damage and even a catastrophic failure by turning sideways in the barrel. Look how unclean and jagged your holes are. I can see that jacket peeling right off and some sticking and pulling that bullet sideways into your barrel. Not really worth it, even if he is wrong.
Click to expand...

Dude... I've never seen such a load of bull#### before!

I wonder if this idiot has ever heard of 3/4 jackets? Swaging?

What kind of moron would think of this crap?
 
Be super-duper careful, the bullet might fragment into free neutrons and cause an instant shower of tachion radiation. The tip may collect any U-238 floating about in the atmosphere and cause localized nuclear cook-offs.

Safety not guaranteed.
 
Ummmm......
what if.... the hole drilled into the bullet is not exactly dead center, and not exactly direct on the center axis into the bullet. In other words the bullet has become unbalanced as in one side is heavier than the opposite side.

I know in the past, from personal experience, that if a bullet is missing material or has a nick in it that has displaced some material it does not shoot where you point it.
 
In statement to the above, I think mythbusters did a test on if a bullet was unbalanced, to see what would happen. I believe( I might be mistaken) that there was no change in flight path. Although it does go against all logic. Anyone to back this up?
 
If it's off balance, it'll wobble. Every bullet is off balance to a certain extent. There's no such thing as the perfect bullet. That's why we have rifled barrels. By spinning the projectile, you spin it around (sort of "around") the heaviest part, but over all, aside from the wobble, the flight path should be fairly consistant. The only real reason for things to go really wrong is if the bullet was so far off center that it decellerated and eventually started tumbling before it got the it's intended target. Figuring out, mathematically just how much imbalance it takes to cause a runaway wobble effect......well, that's way above my pay grade.
 
H4831 is right, as long as the base isn't exposed lead, all will be well. Many moons back we had a hard time getting decent hollow point bullets. My buddy and I were lucky enough to have model makers lathes. We trimmed back and hollowed hundreds of Speer 150grain flat base spire points. They were accurate enough out to 200yds for coyotes and marmots. They weren't nearly as explosive as we hoped for though. There were also a few fliers but not enough to be a problem. We also tried to hollow out some 150grain Remington Kling Kore round nose soft points. At higher velocities these would start to tumble and fly apart 25yards from the muzzle. I suspect the difference is in the hardness of the lead core.

Out of more than a thousand bullets fired, we never had a jacket separation inside of the barrel. In the case of the Remington bullets, I'm sure the barrel actually helped to hold them together until they left the barrel.
 
It is important to use examples correctly. The split barrels at Epps are, as stated, due to the use of FMJ bullets that someone attempted to make into soft nose bullets by cutting off the noses, and having the core shoot out leaving the jacket as a barrle obstruction. Nothing to do with this attempt to hollowpoint these hunting bullets.
I am glad that someone else pointed out the false arguments about bullets doing weird things inside the barrel. While the samples shown in the photo are rough, they may work reasonably well. Unless you did something really bad while drilling and put the bit in at an angle, rather than slighly off centre, the bullet will be OK. Not a preferred course of action, as you would probably be better off to pull the bullets and replace them with 110 or 130 grain bullets. Better to reload your cases with 110 or 130 grain bullets.
 
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