spaced out wildcat idea

hutchster

hutchster

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I was cruising around the wildcat forums, just lookin, and got thinking!
For starters, i have no experience whatsoever with either wildcats or large bore firearms, but i had this thought...

what if you rechambered a .50 bmg for something like a .22 round ball load, like the old muskets
would the ball fly straight, or would the extreme speed send it off to god knows where
i assume a .22 cal bullet wouldn't stabilize, hence the ball idea.
kinda like a high performance cannon
please dont bash me, this is just a wonky thought i had
 
Cast lead round balls have very little bearing surface with which to engage the rifling, and when fired at velocities much above about 2000 fps, kind of skim past the rifling and knuckleball. That along with (in this case) the immense amount of powder following it, would likely reduce it to lead fragments - a 22 cal round ball only weighs about 20grs to start with for heaven's sake!

A wonky idea yes, but plenty of good ideas started out that way. In this case though, sadly it's still wonky. ;)
 
BMG wildcats do exist, as I said in the 375 Wildcats down in this section, the performance was quite crappy since the bullet was on the verge of disintegration at over 5000FPS.

For a .22 light bullet you would need a very long barrel to get all the energy you can get from the huge amount of powder available in a 50BMG case, as the lightweight bullet doesn't have as much inertia to overcome on the start = faster acceleration = no pressure building. Also, you would need a very slow twist rate.

Theorically, without considering air resistance, bullet construction, barrel limitations, if I apply the energy of a 655 grains .50BMG bullet with a MV of 3100FPS to a 40 grains bullet with a rough thumb's rule, it would make over 12000FPS, I HIGHLY doubt that ANY bullet made from affordable non-space-age material would withstand that...

TheCanuck said:
woooooooo i want in
how about(and this is serious) a 338-30, as in 30mm?
Click to expand...

Hehe, that would be nice! I'd like to see the price of custom dies for this one, and for the reamer.
 
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Modern smokeless powder only expands at a little over 5000 fps, so this is really the maximum speed you can expect from something like this, regardless of how much powder you can pack into a case. And you don't need a 50 BMG and 230 grains of powder to move a 55gr .224 at 5k. the 22 Cheetah (.308, Improved & necked to .224) will do nicely, and with a lot less powder.
 
you might want to do some research into KE weapons.

The idea is that a very small light super tough bullet launched at insane velocities will do immense destruction on hardened targets at long range.

MagLev technology to sabot gunpowder ammo are being tested.

A recent 'rocket' test I saw launched a projectile at many many times faster then the speed of sound. Was used to hammer a very large concrete bunker or something like that.

It worked. The projectile was on a rail sled of all things. Was shaped like a cone. Don't remember what it was made out of but was not very heavy.

Hyper velocity doesn't really work for us as we don't have anyway to produce accurate sabot projectiles. All the stuff I have seen has offered very poor accuracy.

Even the US military has played with saboted rds for rifles and gave up (?). Only the larger diameter stuff like the Abrahms monsters work well.

Most quality VLD bullets don't like going much over 3300fps. Stubbier bullets don't have the BC to maintain the speed so long range effect is not as spectacular.

For civies, we are pretty much at the point of diminishing returns. UNLESS, we can get our hands on the new gen of powders the militaries are playing with.

Jerry
 
mysticplayer said:
Hyper velocity doesn't really work for us as we don't have anyway to produce accurate sabot projectiles. All the stuff I have seen has offered very poor accuracy.

Even the US military has played with saboted rds for rifles and gave up (?). Only the larger diameter stuff like the Abrahms monsters work well.


Jerry
Click to expand...

I recall reading that the USArmy gave up on the 30 cal SLAP rounds (Saboted Light Armour Penetrator) because it did not give much of an increase in penetration over regular AP ammo. They still use 50BMG SLAP though.
Also, accuracy is partly due to the rate of rifling twist, and the twist is based on the PROJECTILE diameter and length, not the bore diameter,which in the case of a saboted round is different , of course. So the barrel has to be matched to a saboted round. Perhaps your combo was mis-matched?

Back to the original post. If you want hyper velocity above all else, try combining a "squeeze-bore" with a sabot! That should jack it up.
 
The 30cal sabot with a 22cal bullet is the most common variety played with. Since its conception many decades ago, accuracy has always been poor.

There are a few companies that have come and gone over the years promoting this concept but no one has figured how to make it work.

Maybe you just need a bigger bore?????

There were a few suggestions that the sabot was not coming off the bullet properly. I never got too carried away with testing.

Jerry
 
mysticplayer said:
For civies, we are pretty much at the point of diminishing returns. UNLESS, we can get our hands on the new gen of powders the militaries are playing with.
Click to expand...
Oh great, now we're going to have "tactical" powder to reload with.
 
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