make your own soft point

C

cheeko

CGN Regular
Rating - 100%
10   0   0
can you cut a full metal jacket on the tip and use it for hunting as a soft tip round?

always wondered. Military rounds are cheap. Always wanted to know.


cheeko
 
Would be illegal here in Ontario.
One of my dads friends did it for years with a .303 on moose and deer. He was as cheap as the day is long. Seems like a waste of a shot, as a good bullet is less than a couple of dollars. What would that do to your accuracy? Considering the amount we spend on hunting trips might be better to save money on something else.

Andy
 
todbartell said:
oh its possible

but you may blow your rifle up in the process
​
Click to expand...


X2

Sooner or later the lead core will blow out of the tube you have made by cutting off the tip. This copper tube then will more than likely lodge in the barrel. The next shot after this happens may disassemble your rifle and parts of your anatomy.
 
[QUOTE='Boo]X2

Sooner or later the lead core will blow out of the tube you have made by cutting off the tip. This copper tube will more than likely lodge in the barrel. The next shot after this happens may disassemble your rifle and parts of your anatomy.[/QUOTE]

What Boo said!!!

And yes, there are DOCUMENTED cases of this. Last time this came up, someone posted a pic of a rifle in display (at Elwood Epps store, IIRC) that this had happened to.

Not only htat, but just becasue yo ufile or clip off the points, doesnt' mean it will actually expand liek a hunitng bullet should.

Practice all you want with the FMJ's, and buy a box of hunitng ammo for the hunt. They are not expensive, and it could save your gun and your face.;)
 
Lots of myth here. The fact is that ten of tousands of fmj military have, safely, been converted to soft point bullets by individuals who wanted to make "their own" soft point bullets by cutting the tip off or cutting a "cross" at the bullet tip.

This method of creating an expanding soft point bullet have also often been used illegally by combatants for more effective, terminal killing powers on enemy soldiers, although if cought, is punishable by death.

However, with the plentyfull availability of inexpensive hunting bullets, I see no reason for using, fmj bullets converted to soft point bullets, while hunting big game.
 
I used to belong to a range that insisted upon grinding the tips off fmj to appease the locals. Did a few rounds and found a new range.
 
cool

thanks I always wanted to know. I saw that movie Jaw the other day when the cop was making a cross on the bullet tip and then he poured poison onto the bullet. and then melted wax on top. kewl.
 
cheeko said:
thanks I always wanted to know. I saw that movie Jaw the other day when the cop was making a cross on the bullet tip and then he poured poison onto the bullet. and then melted wax on top. kewl.
Click to expand...


*******WWWWWWWTTTTTTTTTTFFFFFFFFFFF????????????**********
 
Thank god that was a movie Cop and not a real one! Having said that I know a moron who hollowed out the tip of a cast lead .45-70 load and charged it with black powder and epoxied a #11 percussion cap over the charge. You can figure out the theory behind this. Thank god he committed a more serious infraction before he could test them and lost his firearms privileges.

cheers Darryl
 
snowhunter's comment:


"This method of creating an expanding soft point bullet have also often been used illegally by combatants for more effective, terminal killing powers on enemy soldiers, although if cought, is punishable by death."

was certainly never true in any army of the Commonwealth, nor to the best of my knowledge, any other army or armed force in history since SOME nations signed the various Geneva Conventions to which people often refer as "the law(s) of war."

It is against one of the conventions to increase the suffering of an enemy combatant, and a "dum-dum" bullet might be judged to do that. But the 5.56 bullet used by Canada and the US often tumbles or key-holes, which effectively does the same thing as a soft-point or hollow-point bullet. The one Somali shot by Canadian troops had multiple fragments through his skull from a single bullet, for example (results of the autopsy).

There is no death penalty under the Canadian National Defence Act, although we did formerly have offences, such as treason, for which the death penalty could be assigned. The major re-write of the NDA in about 1990 or so removed the death penalty. No offence committed against the Geneva Conventions is or ever was punishable by death.

But filing off FMJ bullets or otherwise altering ANY ammunition might just add your name to the Darwin Awards for removing undesireable DNA from the gene pool......................

Doug
 
Dumdum factory in India was where the .303 dumdums were made for the British, not to be used in European conflicts as decreed by the Haig convention. To improve the killing power of .303 ammo the front portion of the round was made of lighter material aluminum even wood (under the fmj of course) caused the bullet to tumble thru flesh.
 
Note that the bullets used in the Dum Dum Arsenal were nickle-jacked not copper. Nickle is less likely to form a layer of corrosion between itself and the lead core which is what often happens with copper. Also note that they were black-powder loads not the more powerful smokeless being developed at the time. And finally note that there was confusion on exactly what was done to the bullets in order to make them more effective.

From: Everything 2

The term 'dum-dum bullet' is used as slang to describe a variety of bullet types. Unfortunately, there is no 'official' technical definition of a dum-dum, but the purpose, function and history of the bullet can be gleaned from research.
Brief Description

A 'dum dum' bullet is a slang term indicating a type of bullet designed to impart greater 'stopping power' to its target by deforming on impact. There are various means by which a bullet can be designed to do this - hollow point, soft point or soft nose, cross cut. The purpose is the same - to ensure that when the bullet strikes an object, it will 'flatten' or 'mushroom' and hence transfer more kinetic energy to the target material rather than blasting a hole through it. Technically, the true 'dum dum' is a soft-nosed projectile - one in which the metal jacket material of the bullet stops short of the bullet's tip, leaving the soft lead exposed. These bullets are of reduced effectiveness against body armor; since the way modern ballistic armor works is to attempt to spread the force of a bullet's impact rather than allowing it to penetrate, they play to its strengths. They are enormously effective at increasing the lethality of high-velocity, smaller caliber rounds - bullets fired from long ranges, at high speeds, etc. They increase the chance of doing lethal damage with a single hit. Snipers would use them for this reason. Hunters would use them to bring down large game that might otherwise go berserk and run off (or worse, towards the hunter) wounded, if hit with a penetrating projectile. One downside to this is that the deforming lead is more likely to fragment and remain in the target, in small pieces.


History and Origins

What is most well-known about the term is also, actually, usually correct. The name 'dum-dum' is taken from the name of the Dum Dum Arsenal, run by the British Army in the Northeast of India (near Calcutta) in the nineteenth century. In 1888, the British Army adopted the Lee-Metford Mark I rifle - designed by an American, James Paris Lee, with a barrel and rifling system designed by a WIlliam E. Metford. The Mark I, I* and II of this weapon were the last black powder weapons used by the British Army, despite their modern features of a vertical box magazine and bolt action. The more powerful smokeless powder (cordite) was waiting in the wings, but would not hit the stage for a few years yet in wide use. This is of direct importance to our story.

In 1895, there was a coup d'etat in the district of Chitral, in what is now northern Pakistan. The British representative was driven from the area, which had been a British agency since 1889. This, naturally, resulted in the dispatch of an expedition from neighboring India consisting of some 16,000 troops, armed with Lee-Metfords. Although their mission was eventually successful, there were several reports that the new weapons had been not entirely satisfactory at stopping charging Chitrali tribesmen. This was due to two factors, apparently; one, the nickel-jacketed bullet used in the new gun tended to blow 'clean holes' in its targets, with little stopping power; and two, the black-powder charge in the new guns meant their muzzle velocity had not yet achieved the levels seen in more modern weapons, with a correspondingly lower kinetic energy imparted to the bullet.

In response to this, a Captain Clay at the Dum Dum Arsenal (which is where ammunition was produced for local consumption by the India station British) looked at modifying the bullets being issued for the Lee-Metford to make up for this performance gap. According to British sources (and Wikipedia), this bullet was not a hollow-point or cross-cut bullet, but a soft point - that is, the metal jacket was deleted from the very front of the projectile, leaving the lead core exposed. As a result, when the bullet struck and penetrated, the exposed lead nose would deform and flatten, transferring energy to the target more quickly. This modification was apparently only produced for local use, and not in very large numbers. The nickname 'dum-dum bullet,' however, was adopted by the local soldiery to mean a bullet modified to impart greater stopping power.

There apparently was some confusion about the meaning of the term even at the time, or perhaps more than one method was tried; a letter posted to the American Army Navy Journal in 1897 (dated November 20) indicates that the bullet is created in the following fashion: "The nickel jacket of the Lee-Metford bullet is ripped up along its length, leaving the head whole. On the impact of the new bullet, the nickel stripe and the lead spread out like a round fan and naturally cause a dreadful wound, and the person hit is immediately knocked down."

Back in England, meanwhile, the Woolwich Arsenal had been developing a hollow point bullet for the .303 Lee-Metford bullet. This bullet was dubbed the Mark III, and adopted in 1897 - around the same time as the 'dum-dum' became available, but entirely separately, and not due to feedback from the Indian theater. It was not used very long, however, and the Mark IV and Mark V followed quickly due to design flaws, with the Mark V .303 hollow point bullet becoming standard in 1899. This may be the source of some of the confusion between hollow points and dum-dums.


Legal Ramifications

The use of deforming projectiles in warfare has been a hotly-contested practice. One of the first attempts to address their use in war came almost immediately after the results of said use had been seen. At The Hague Convention of 1899, a convention was proposed and enacted in the spirit of the Declaration of St. Petersburg (1868). This new convention read, in part:

The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core, or is pierced with incisions.
The present Declaration is only binding for the Contracting Powers in the case of a war between two or more of them.

It shall cease to be binding from the time when, in a war between the Contracting Parties, one of the belligerents is joined by a non-Contracting Power.

Note that the United States was not a signatory to this document. However, the U.S. did sign on to The Hague Convention of 1907. Article 23 of that document states that "In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden -...To employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering." This depends on whether the use of the dum-dum is 'calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.' Note that originally, it had nothing to do with suffering and everything to do with effectiveness; it could be argued that the much higher lethality of the dum-dum might involve less suffering than the wounds caused by FMJ rounds. However, on such fine points are great drunken arguments and international incidents made. Kaiser Wilhelm wrote President Woodrow Wilson a blistering note regarding the reported use of dum-dum bullets by the Belgian forces during the German invasion of their country in 1914, which the Belgians denied. So the degree to which this prohibition exists beyond its use as a diplomatic lever is uncertain.

It should be noted that, for the most part, modern militaries do, in fact, use fully jacketed bullets. This is not true in all cases, however. For example, in 1985, the U.S. Judge Advocate General issued an opinion which specifically stated that the use of a particular type of bullet (Sierra #2200 'Match King') by snipers, which had an open tip (soft nose), was not in contravention to the Laws of War because the open tip was used to increase accuracy rather than increase suffering or bullet effects, and that comparison of the effects of these bullets to jacketed bullets showed a negligible variation. In addition, since the U.S. has generally considered itself bound by the 1899 document despite not being a formal signatory, it is probably with some sense of delicious irony that an oft-mentioned (but not seen by this author) 1990 document (also purportedly from the JAG, and the same authors therein of the 1985 memo) concluded that in counterterrorist operations, open-tipped bullets were A-OK since the opposing forces were definitely of a 'non-contracting Power.'
Click to expand...
 
Gatehouse said:
What Boo said!!!

And yes, there are DOCUMENTED cases of this. Last time this came up, someone posted a pic of a rifle in display (at Elwood Epps store, IIRC) that this had happened to.

Not only htat, but just becasue yo ufile or clip off the points, doesnt' mean it will actually expand liek a hunitng bullet should.

Practice all you want with the FMJ's, and buy a box of hunitng ammo for the hunt. They are not expensive, and it could save your gun and your face.;)
Click to expand...

According to P.O Ackley, it wont blow you gun up Check out this site, If you get a jacket stuck you will get a slight Ringing in the barrel. It says in barrel obstruction section,
http://www.leverguns.com/articles/taylor/blowups.htm
 
Sometimes half-truths will hurt you.

Ackley did his experiments with the jackets pushed half-way down the barrel, If however the jacket is stuck in the leade, the most likely scenario BTW, the pressure will rise very quickley and the rifle may very well let go.

However in the end it is YOUR rife and YOUR body so do whatever the hell you want.
 
Boo said:
However in the end it is YOUR rife and YOUR body so do whatever the hell you want.
Click to expand...


Dont get me wrong, I am not saying its a good idea, It was just something I came across the other day.
 
*******WWWWWWWTTTTTTTTTTFFFFFFFFFFF????????????*** *******
Click to expand...

hehe.

now - it's been a while since i saw jaws - but what he's talking about is brodie puts what i BELIEVE is fulminated mercury into bullets he's drilled a hollowpoint into. He's making explosive bullets. Now maybe it was poison and i'm remembering it wrong.

Looks good on camera - but any hunter can tell you if you want to stop dangerous game, the last thing you want is your bullet 'blowing up' :) And i have no idea what you'd use for 'fish poison'.

I'm thinkin' just get a nice rigby with good bullets and take the fish seriously :)
 
Nobody makes solid base copper fmj jacket rounds do they, no lead exposed at the base? These would be fine to cut the tip off, but for the cost of ammo why would you waste the time cutting the tips off.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom