Cold as Ice

...

Kinda makes me think of a mini sized Sabot round..

I'm bored too.. lol


Ls

Fire n Ice

I've taken the opposite interest. I ran across some "flare/Incendiary" rounds at a couple of sites I've visited. I got this crazy idea and asked some of my friends at the local forensics lab. If these rounds perform as advertised, what would be left to analyze? I was informed very forcefully not to pursue the line of thought by the lab guys and the local sheriff. As I see it, there would be no rifling left for identification.

People short on science and physics education are never short on ideas.

Click to expand...

A recent quote I read said "An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take the things he learned in school too seriously."

Use mercury metal cooled via liquid nitrogen.

I think gun powder loses it's power at extremely low temps though. So you might need to find a new form of propellant.

As for handloading it, do it backwards. make a bullet mold that holds an empty case. Fill the mold with liquid mercury, then insert case. Then cool the whole cartridge. Tada, no crimping required, or handling of super cold components.

The base of the bullet might need to be insulated from the burning propellant. The friction of the bullet on the rifling will liquify the surface of the bullet and compromise the torque exerted on the bullet by the rifling.

Therefore, to minimize the heat added to the mercury, I would propose that the barrel of the gun be cooled to liquid nitrogen temps as well. Maybe design the bullet to have a hollow base so that the bullet expands to a tight fit as the outer layers melt off.

Now you have a very complex design problem. Metal properties change at very low temps. The bore diameter may change as the projectile travels down the barrel due to temperature. bullet loses mass as it travels. Parts will be brittle. You have to develop a new kind of propellant or at least completely re-calibrate loadings and charge quantity since power and burn rates are all thrown off.

BTW, mythbusters is a show full of total idiots. They couldn't find their a$$ with both hands.

Here's a thought: If you're just trying to hide rifling marks on a slug, why not go with a smooth barrel and a traditional lead projectile?

Smooth bore musket...DOH!

Frozen water isn't going to work well because the friction would melt it almost instantly. Maybe there's some other kind of frozen chemical that would hold up better. The only practical application other than Spenard in January would be outer space.

I think gun powder loses it's power at extremely low temps though. So you might need to find a new form of propellant

Click to expand...

Denser air will slow down a projectile faster, maybe that's what you're thinking of.

BTW, mythbusters is a show full of total idiots.

Click to expand...

What a profound and witty criticism.

Mythbusters used a small caliber rifle bullet to maximize the probability that it would fail. A large-bore handgun with an ice bullet might have had a chance.

"maybe that's what you're thinking of."

Nope. Burn rates. The frozen chosen 30 carbine snafu.

Where did you hear the performance of the M1 Carbine at Chosin had anything to do with powder burn rates? There may be some variation in burn rates in very extreme cold, but it's not going to be enough to matter on the business end. There is also the effect of denser air. Your contention that powders won't function in deep cold is incorrect. At least not any cold we have on this planet outside of a lab.

Why not freeze something that's not water. and not super cooled. Like a low melting alloy. if it melts around 120 degrees. Rifling would essentially melt off the round, and not reduce integrity much, and no barrel cooling needed, maybe a patch, that's it.

Not so fast guys...

The idea is not totally implausible. During WWII the US and Candian navies experimented with the idea to build an unsinkable aircraft carrier out of ice. Actually the material was called Pykrete. Google it.

Pykrete is a composite material made of approximately 14 percent sawdust or some other form of wood pulp (such as paper) and 86 percent ice by weight. The properties of such a composite were apparently first noted by a couple of researchers at Polytechnic University of New York, and were investigated more thoroughly by Max Perutz. Its use was proposed during World War II by Geoffrey Pyke to the Royal Navy as a candidate material for making a huge, unsinkable aircraft carrier. Pykrete has some interesting properties, notably its relatively slow melting rate (due to low thermal conductivity), and its vastly improved strength and toughness over unmodified (crystalline) ice, actually closer to concrete. Pykrete is slightly more difficult to form than concrete, as it expands during the freezing process, but can be repaired and maintained from the sea's most abundant raw material: water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete

Why not cast a bullet of gallium? It's solid at room temperature but melts at about 85 F. The friction going through the barrel would probably destroy the rifling marks, but it would also melt completely in a body temperature target.

K

Might as well use flavored water while you're at it.

Heck, make it a 12 gauge round and you could shoot popsicles.

Or here's a great idea for a thread..... what caliber ice bullet for snowmen?

using traditional powders you aren't going to launch anything that can't stand up to a few hundred degrees. no ice bullets, no gallium bullets, no pykrete bullets. you best bet for eliminating rifle marks would be a sabot like the .30 cal slap or the 50 cal slap, or even the .30-06 accelerator from remington. of course by the time you are into rifle territory just step up to a copper solid and there would be much less chance of the bullet ever being recovered.

Oh come on! I see this leading right into "Forget the gun! Use the knife, hence no rifling marks." Then you just ditch or destroy the knife. It's amazing how much free time some of you guys have! By now we could have invented cold fusion thus saving the world.

Heck, why not use the cold fusion portable reactor to power the 40w phaser. I bet that wouldn't leave any "rifling marks."

FWIW, I did like the frozen hamber bullet too. Sorry about the earlier rant but ten years my wife suggested the same thing to silence the neighbors' yippy dog. I just rolled my eyes at her and laughed.

a pistol that shoots water?... sounds like a gun powdered super soaker

Why not just use a lithium (or similar metal) bullet? Reacts violently with water. In theory, the rifling marks (along with the bullet) would 'melt' away in the mostly-water human body. I don't know if it's been tried before.

I remeber The Wayans movie, and an ep of Murder She Wrote that used an "Ice Bullets". The CSI ep, it was frozen beef, molded as a bullet. The Bugs that grisom discovered only rescted to dead cattle. Seemed a bit out in left field to me, but I've heard less inteligent questions
How about an Ice dart using compressed air????

A lot of thought
A lot of work
To answer the initial question of the thread
With another question

If you USMDK can invent this idea and patent it...
Who is going to buy it?
What legal purpose can be done with this idea?
Maybe the whole project could be sidestepped by pondering the thought...

Why bother?

Imagine the headlines:
Serial Popsicle Killer Strikes Again!

What about using wax as the shell surrounding the bullet, would that hold up better???

Click to expand...

No.

The temperatures and pressures involved preclude your line of thinking. The plastic sabot, in some form, accomplishes your "goal".

This thread has strayed off topic because the topic is flawed, moot, and done to death.

it's possible from them to need something like this, as to not incriminate America or any other country for that matter.

Click to expand...

Incrimination? The US has shipped millions of service rifles (M1's, M-16's) all around the world... Finding a 5.56 bullet with GI barrel rifling characteristics in some corpse in Romania isn't going to provoke Interpol into a full blown indictment against rogue forces inside USSOCOM...

sorry, what was I saying?...