Plastic ammo

jordman

jordman

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I have a quick question for some of you guys, with rising prices of copper and led and what not would it be possible to produce ammo with a plastic or partialy plactic shell casing? the price of ammo would plumit if it were possible.
 
It IS possible, and has been done since at least the 1950s, but the military won't drop a bunch of money on it because when you chamber a plastic case in a hot firearm, you end up with a chamber full of melted goo. There are a number of companies that have done plastic ammo for the civilian market as well, but they never really took off to the point where they lasted.
 
I was thinking about that also, shotgun shells are plastic, What if they used some kind of plastic that can take higher heat. Like those plastic spatula's for cooking? What material is that, gotta be something they could try.

Ben
 
Thermoset plastics do not melt like thermoplastics will. Shotgun hulls are likely polyethylene or polypro, both of which have relatively low melt temps. Ever hear of anyone melting a shotgun hull? I haven't. Using polycarbonate, ABS or nylon or some kind of thermoset resin is expensive and probably not worth the trouble. Then there are problems of marketing something new to a collection of generally grumpy old dudes (or grumpy young dudes ;)) who like things just the way they are.
 
Metal prices alone are not the entire story.

I posted this in another thread.

Let's look at this particular box of ammo. Let's use 180gr bullets to get the best metal value for discussion.


Quote:
Originally Posted by ontgunner
I just brought 59lbs of brass casings to the recyler. $1.40/lb


Let's say the price of brass is worth twice what the scrap dealers pay, or $2.40, although new matals are not double what scrap is worth.

So 50 x 70gr (high average) = 3500 or 1/2 a lb.

At $2.80 a lb, there would be $1.40 worth of brass in a box of 40S&W.

Let's do two examples of bullets, because I haven't a clue what the ratio is for jacket material vs. lead core.

For example 1, let's use pure lead. The small percentage of other metals in the lead bullets is irrelevent for this discussion.

So, 180 x 50 = 9000gr or 1.3lbs.

Lead is at about 88¢ a lb today. So for this example the lead is worth $1.14/lb.

In example 2, let's use pure copper bullets. Copper is the most expensive metal in a jacketed bullet and will give us an extreme example to work with.

Copper is about $3.25 a lb(man it's climbing!) today.

So in this example out 1.3lbs of bullets would be worth $4.23 for metal content.

Grand total for lead bullets, $2.54 worth of metals.

Grand total for pure copper extreme bullets, $5.63 worth of metals.

Wait, we are not done yet.

Let's say the price of metals tripled in the last year.

Our lead ammo metal content went up $1.68

Our copper extreme ammo metal content went up $3.72

I would put the actual cost of jacketed 40S&W metal content as having increased a lot closer to about $2.25
Click to expand...

Yes, the price of metal has gone up further since I originally posted that but I bet you would be hard pressed to find $4.00 worth of metal in a box of ammo, even at todays prices.
 
It has been worked on for the last 50 years. The latest venture NATEC, making PCA ammo, was the most promising. They auctioned off their plant a couple weeks ago. You can see how well that went.
 
I read an article on Natec not long ago.
I had not heard until now that they had gone tits-up.
 
I have a box of the 5.7mm Voere caseless in my cartridge collection too.
I am surprised to see it still shown on a website, as I thought it had been dropped a while ago.
 
About ten years ago I heard that some 7.62x39 from the former Czechoslovakia was being sold that had a plastic core for short range or gallery practice, though it otherwise looked like the regular ammo. Apparently the light bullets didn't perform very well at ranges beyond 50m. Perhaps someone here can enlighten us further on the matter?

Regards,

Frank
 
Beadwindow said:
About ten years ago I heard that some 7.62x39 from the former Czechoslovakia was being sold that had a plastic core for short range or gallery practice, though it otherwise looked like the regular ammo. Apparently the light bullets didn't perform very well at ranges beyond 50m. Perhaps someone here can enlighten us further on the matter?

Regards,

Frank
Click to expand...

Yes, those were short range practice rounds.
 
Was that a plastic core, with a light steel jacket?
If so, I have some East German ammo of that type. It doesn't have enough exhaust to cycle an action of a Mini 30
 
Back to the original subject, plastic cased ammo, he is a bit of my collection.
P6040136.jpg


The big rounds in the upper left are dummy training rounds for the wooden double scale Garand training prop used by the US Army. The rounds are double scale 30-06

The big black thing, and the smaller greeen and the white things are "trounds" for the Dardick gun. (Google Dardick for more info) The large one is a dummy in 50 cal, for a USAirforce experimental project.

the red thing beside the trounds is a plastic shotshell for a CO2 powered shotgun.

Below the tapemeasure is mostly blanks and short range training ammo. the big blue ones are 50BMG, one is intact, the other is fired. You can see the bullet part has broken away on the fired one.

To the right and below are various blanks etc.

At the bottom are samples and brochures from USAC and Amtech
 
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