Projectile project!

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mad_machinist

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I interested in making some projectiles... .308, .338, .50, and 20mm rifle rounds. I am curious as to if anyone wants to try out some exotic materials or just want some regular rounds made to reload... looking for peoples thoughts and ideas...
 
mad_machinist said:
I interested in making some projectiles... .308, .338, .50, and 20mm rifle rounds. I am curious as to if anyone wants to try out some exotic materials or just want some regular rounds made to reload... looking for peoples thoughts and ideas...
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I'd be interested in 308, 338 & 50 . in what ever exotic materials you have to offer. :cool:
 
So far some materials that I can think of and you guys can add more are.... copper, brass, bronse, 12L14 steel, 17-4 stainless steel, and beryllium copper (Berllium copper is crazy expensive but if money is not a problem then we can try it out...) your thoughts people?
 
12L14 steel, 17-4 stainless steel,
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Are you talking about turning a bullet out of steel and running it down the bore without any kind of guilding metal jacket?

That might not go so well me thinks.

You know that bullets are swaged into the bore and must be soft enough to deform into the lands and grooves?

Do you really think that a 17-4 stainless bullet is going to do that or will the gun simply explode in your face when the bullet sticks in the throat?

Beryllium Copper may not be the best choice, seeing as the dust and one would assume the vapour is a carcinogen.

There is a reason that bullets have been made from lead and copper for hundreds of years.
 
In addition to the toxicity, Beryllium-Copper is not very dense (8100-8250 kg/m3). Usually you want to use a dense material for bullets, it allows you to make a reasonably heavy bullet in a smaller volume (less drag, easier to spin-stabilize).

some material densities http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_metals.htm

Not-too-hard is also usually desired for bullet materials. Hard materials can improve armor piercing capabilities, the conventional way to make AP bullets is to use a tungsten carbide core inside a conventional lead/copper bullet. Another way to get improved AP characteristics to go to a very high speed bullet design; a side effect of this approach is that the strength and hardness of your bullet material gets less and less important.

A friend of mine pondered the idea of making sub-calibre machined brass darts, fin-stabilized, to be fired from a smoothbore .308 Win using a plastic sabot. Never did get to the test-firing stage, it but I still have a few of his proof-of-concept darts.
 
Well that's why threw out some ideas...I don't know too much about reloading but wish too learn! I was thinking about using 660 bronze this good or bad? If someone has steller projecticle book to read I am all ears! Concept darts sounds cool!
 
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