Turning bullets with gang tooling

[JFettig]

Yesterday I set up my lathe with 3 tools, an angled parting tool which will do all the turning, grooving and cut off, a #0 center drill, and a .0905" drill(I happen to have like 10 of these for no good reason).



I don't have solidworks, autocad or my other drawings here, so I started all over. I drew up a .308 cal bullet by hand, did some number crunching and came up with this:



I'll post a vid later!

Jon

[Brian T]

Pretty sweet looking, please post the results when you shoot some.

What do they ?

[WhisperFan]

How much do they weigh?

[JFettig]

Heres a video of the process, I turned down the rapids, will turn them up and fine tune the program later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZDqe2lJA9c

Not sure how heavy they are yet, probably around 180gr, I don't have my scale here at the shop. They are for my 300/221.

Jon

[JFettig]

I have some results!

I was a nervous wreck, but I checked and rechecked like 9 times, the diameter is exactly .3081"(I think spec is .3080 to .3085).
It sure is nerve wracking..

I loaded it up with 8.0gr of AA#9, 8.2 is maximum for subsonic with a 220gr.
I weighed the bullet, its actually 213gr, not 180 range I thought it would be. 2.200" OAL, the tip was too big to load it any longer.



I have a bunch of catalogs, stuck them in a 24pack cardboard box, wet them down. I didn't give it enough time to soak, the middle of the thick catalog the bullet stuck into was dry.

Anyway, I didn't chronny it or shoot for accuracy, just shot to hit the box full of catalogs. I had some serious doubt that I'd see anything, sure enough it expanded!!!





It only went about 6" deep, it started to tumble, made it about 70 degrees around.

I'm gonna make a tool to skive the inside to create expansion initiation groves. I'll order some coppper, C145(more machinable than C110). If those expansion grooves don't work, I may slot it from the outside.

The cavity was about 2.5" in diameter at its largest point. When I get something down, I'll see if I can shoot some upsets in ballistic gel.

Jon

[Artful]

AWESOME

[JFettig]

I received some 360 brass and C145 copper(some sort of bearing copper, 85% machinability).

I turned some more, in copper and brass. I shot about 8 of them total now, took a little more to work up a load but I don't think I hit it, only hit 1000fps with 8.5gr of AA#9.
The bullets ended up being 200 grains after I made them the correct length with a tip. I tipped them because the huge hollow point will not feed.

These have a little different profile, they are .299" all the way down then have .3078" driving bands, 6 of them that are .05" long. I basically made it like a .299" dia bullet up front, then .308 with grooves and put a rebated boat tail on it(read from another site about how great they are supose to be, we'll see sometime I guess).

I shot one into dry catalogs like I did before, got very similar results, a little more impressive. I then took a water jug, shot through that into the catalogs(could only find one jug). It did not open at all but tumbled. Dissappointed as I was, I took a .020" slotting saw, cut 4 slots in a + shape in the end, put a tip in. I found 4 more jugs. Went clean through the first one at a slight angle, second one exploded really violently, third one bursted relatively violently then the fourth just kind of leaked similar to the first one, I was excited to see that. i found the bullet about 2" behind the fourth jug and to my dissapointment the only bit it opened was from hitting the dirt I'm sure, one petal opened only a hair, the rest unmoved and filled with dirt.

I think that all I can do from here is make it straight sided, huge hollow point with very thin walls and maybe squeeze it back together with some makeshift die.

I think next I'll try to make a match type bullet.

The overall length of the 200gr bullet is 1.71" with a tip, the radius for the ogive is 2.5" and the tip has a flat spot on the end so its not exactly pointed.

I am pretty sure I could make an expanding 200+gr bullet, kind of straight walled and slotted, the only problem is that it won't feed in a semi and probably not in anything actually.

I have pictures that I'll try to remember to post later.

[JFettig]

Here are the pictures that I talked about:
The tipped bullets were a failed attempt to make an expanding subsonic bullet, they did tumble good, the second jug of water exploded violently.







The last ones are some that someone asked me to make for him, he hasn't shot them yet but they are interesting looking anyway.


Jon

[amafrank]

Those are actually looking pretty good. I like the rebated boattail setup you've done and if they are tumbling reliably than why worry about expansion. The tumbling will give you the same effect. It seems that a very long bullet with ultra high revs should tumble and be pretty devastating at some point. I've also seen though that penetration seems to be the rule. We tried some waterjug tests too and most of them were hard to tell if they'd been hit except for the leakage. We hit an 8" walnut tree at 200+ yds and the damn 220gr SMK went right through....
Your hollowpoint and ballistic tip may actually be helping the tumble effect by creating an out of balance situation when any one part bends or deflects. That is better than expansion I think....
Those bullets look like they will travel well and be accurate too though its hard to say looks can give any real truth to that.

Your friends design looks like a .50 bullet I shot a few of once. They were not as accurate as the maker claimed probably due to the slightest alignment problem being accentuated by the shape of the point. Not much there to square things up in a standard throat. Those would probably be great in a specially throated barrel.

Keep up the good work and keep us posted.

Frank

[JFettig]

Actually, I recovered the bullet that exploded the second jug, it had no deformation to it whatsoever. I actually slotted one with a .02" slotting saw and it had no real deformation either(was filled with dirt after it went through all the jugs and bent one petal back a bit).

I'm gonna make some more 175s with my own design, a secant ogive design and shoot them through my .308 and maybe send that guy a few. He's using a 300Win mag.

Jon