Filing an 'X' on a bullet.. My father's tale. Reason?

[Barbi Q]

Maybe some people are losing sight of the fact that there wasn't a wide variety of ammo on the shelves of your local Walmart 50 years ago. There also used to be a glut of cheap surplus ammo (and rifles!) and a country boy might be able to afford an inexpensive rifle and ammo (mail order!) to put meat on the table, even if he couldn't afford that fancy commercial stuff.

[jamisjockey]

Anyone who does this is a complete amateur who doesn't know as much as they think they do and shouldn't even be around firearms - for their own safety.

I disagree. Every moron redneck that removes themself from the gene pool is a step forward for mankind.

[WildBill]

Anyone who does this is a complete amateur who doesn't know as much as they think they do and shouldn't even be around firearms - for their own safety.

I disagree. Every moron redneck that removes themself from the gene pool is a step forward for mankind.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for the gene pool." That doesn't sound quite right.

[MeMelYup]

I can remember my dad cutting 30.06 bullets when I was a kid in the early 1950's. He would go find WWI or WWII surplus. He had a jig that he would lay the bullet in and very carefully cut the tip off about half way between case and tip. He talked about when he was a kid in the 1920-1930 time frame that surplus bullets were a $1 a bag and that was what he used for hunting. His grandpa showed him how to cut the tip.

[SecedeTX]

I just talked to my dad about this subject. Not only did he confirm this, he HAS HIS DADS original Jig to accomplish this. From what he said, these rounds were called "silver tips" (tips were not silver, but alloys). The jig and drill dad has are stamped from Sears and Roebuck (sp?) so they were catalog order kits.

My dad remembers all of the hunters in Mississippi deer hunting with "silver tips" for better stopping power.

Next time I am at dads house, I will either get the Jigs, or pictures.

[KaiserB]

The Mythbusters actually did an episode on this and found the deformation of the bullet did not have the intended effect.

[The Annoyed Man]

I can remember my dad cutting 30.06 bullets when I was a kid in the early 1950's. He would go find WWI or WWII surplus. He had a jig that he would lay the bullet in and very carefully cut the tip off about half way between case and tip. He talked about when he was a kid in the 1920-1930 time frame that surplus bullets were a $1 a bag and that was what he used for hunting. His grandpa showed him how to cut the tip.

So essentially, he was removing approximately 1/3 To 1/2 of the weight from a 147 grain bullet, without changing any of the other variables — powder charge, barrel length, rifling twist rate, etc. The velocity gain would have been impressive. The terminal effect on target would have been interesting, to say the least, assuming that there were no safety issues as AndyC has mentioned.

Some years ago, Remington used to offer in their "Express" line of ammo a load in both .308 and .30-'06 which pushed a saboted 55 grain Speer .223 bullet to tremendous velocities. Unfortunately, accuracy was abysmal, and the loads were eventually dropped from the line. I suspect that cutting off a significant chunk of a .308 diameter 147 grain bullet's mass would produce a similar effect.

I think that one has to accept that folks who did this kind stuff were experimenting, and all experimentation in firearm ammunition carries with it an element of danger. Whether or not their experiments push the technology forward, they do expand the knowledge of what works and what doesn't.

[jamisjockey]

The Mythbusters actually did an episode on this and found the deformation of the bullet did not have the intended effect.

I'm thinking that considering how most surplus weapons were in battle rifle calibers, the X'd or tipped end was all about perception, and that the terminal ballistics of the FMJ round would be enough to do the trick on average North American game animals.

Just because grandpa did it for years, and took a load of deer with it, doesn't mean that the actual X'ing of the bullet is what did the trick. You shoot a milspec .30-06 FMJ at a hundred-fifty pound deer, get good shot placement, I think the deer is going to die.

[WildBill]

The Mythbusters actually did an episode on this and found the deformation of the bullet did not have the intended effect.

I'm thinking that considering how most surplus weapons were in battle rifle calibers, the X'd or tipped end was all about perception, and that the terminal ballistics of the FMJ round would be enough to do the trick on average North American game animals.

Just because grandpa did it for years, and took a load of deer with it, doesn't mean that the actual X'ing of the bullet is what did the trick. You shoot a milspec .30-06 FMJ at a hundred-fifty pound deer, get good shot placement, I think the deer is going to die.

Some people have been known to seat a bullet in backwards.

[ELB]

At the time the Brits were creating their Dum-Dum bullets (late 1890s, I think), militaries were transitioning from low velocity, big fat soft lead bullets powered by black powder to high-velocity, smaller caliber FMJ type ammo in the new bolt-action rifles (e.g. the US going from the .45-70 to the Krag-Joergensen) The old soft lead bullets could not take the higher velocities and leaded the barrels, so the FMJs were used.

However, the Brits (and others) soon noticed that while the new .303 round was more accurate at longer ranges, they also noticed it tended to shoot thru things, leaving a relatively small hole. This was good if it was cover for the enemy, but not so great when shooting charging insurrectionists not behind cover. While getting shot with a highspeed bullet can lead to some ghastly wounds, it apparently was not enough of a sure thing, so the Brits set out to modify the FMJ rounds. The Dum-Dum arsenal produced what amounted to a soft-point bullet by removing the jacketing at the tip, but ended up rejecting this, and came up with some hollowpoint rounds as well. "Dum-Dum" became a slang term referring to expanding bullets. No doubt the individual Tommies (as well as soldiers in other armies) experimented on their own, cutting X's and what not.

At about the same time there were movements afoot to make war more "humane," and in political circles, expanding bullets and the wounds they caused were considered 'beyond the pale' so to speak. It was thought that it was more inhumane to use a "dum-dum'" to tear a big killing hole in a soldier to stop him than a nice neat little wounding hole from an FMJ. The political efforts led to various treaties and conventions regulating warfare, and one of the provisions was to outlaw expanding bullets (for war). I guess the treaty makers never considered that this would just mean that Tommy and his brethren in every army would simply shoot his opponent several times with smaller bullets to get the same effect as an expanding bullet, but there you go. (See Gun, Machine). (These arguments sound familiar, no?)

The FMJ probably suited military purposes just as well since it made the operation of rifles and machine guns more reliable, and since they were smaller rounds, more could be carried, so if the other guy had to be shot a couple more times, well the ammo was available to do it. (This also sounds familiar, doesn't it?).

Interestingly, I think it was also around this time that the first serious techical studies of gunshot wounds were initiated -- driven by the controversies about what type of bullet was best for putting people out of action, militaries and doctors started wondering exactly how gun shot wounds stopped people, and how different bullet types effected this.

As for civilian use, I think others have hit on the main reason -- in the old days, premium hunting ammo was very expensive, and not very many types were available, so I expect lots of guys experimented with surplus military or less expensive civilian FMJ. I doubt anyone on that kind of budget would shoot enough of it to lead up his barrel so much he would get a KB before cleaning the barrel. And there probably were some KBs, but without the internet, they weren't widely reported and recorded.

[tacticool]

Now that we covered that, does anyone want to talk about ringed loads (cut shells) in a shotgun?

[KaiserB]

I smell a dead horse and a ball bat ...

[rbrecount]

Dum-dum bullets were made and used by criminals in Prohibition days, long before there was any fancy ammo such as we have now. The idea was for the round to either spread out or break up, causing even more damage. Street-fighting made short ranges where a Tommy gun was the weapon of choice.