Legality of home made hollow point

[USAF_Vet]

I read on another forum about someone taking a Dremel to their standard FMJ bullets to make home made hollow points. Considering the price difference, that isn't such a bad idea as long as it's done properly. However, is this legal? How would it effect accuracy? What sort of expansion could one expect?

 

[NavyLCDR]

However, is this legal?

Yes Unless you were buying FMJs, converting them into HPs and selling them for profit. Then you would be a manufacturer of ammunition which would require an FFL.

How would it effect accuracy?

If the cavity is drilled off-center and/or not exactly perpendicular to the centerline of the bullet, I would think the bullet would wobble in flight and be detrimental to accuracy.

What sort of expansion could one expect?

I have no idea. A lot more goes into enhancing expansion than just drilling a hole. Most HPs have scored jackets near the point to enhance expansion. Some have the jacket folded into the cavity, or encasing the cavity completely.

Just doesn't seem worth it to me.

 

[Sam1911]

Another concern is that most hollow-points are built "backward" from how a FMJ is built. That is, with an FMJ, the lead core is pressed into the jacket cup from the rear. With an HP, the lead core is pressed into the jacket cup from the front.

If you drill a hole in an FMJ, you're now making a lead slug inside a hollow copper tube. Some have considered this a serious safety issue due to the possibility of the bullet coming apart inside the barrel -- in other words, squirting the lead core out and leaving the copper jacket behind to cause some serious problems when the next round's fired.

I've never seen it happen, and don't know if or how often it ever did, but I've never been even a little bit tempted to try.

 

[dogtown tom]

not a good idea..........

Most FMJ bullets are a copper jacket with an exposed lead base.
Most HP bullets have a copper jacket with an exposed tip.
Simply put, both are basically a copper "cup" filled with lead during the manufacturing process...but upside down.

You would not be the first to try a homemade hollow point. You would also not be the first to experience a separation of the lead core from the copper jacket.....in the bore....leaving the copper jacket stuck waiting for your next homemade hollow point to come flying through.

Don't make your own HP's.
Don't fill hollow points with mercury, promers, cat poo or match heads.
Don't cut an "X" into lead SP's to enhance "their killing power"
Don't believe everything your read on the internet.

Ammunition makers spend a LOT of time and $$$$ in R&D trying to get the best performance possible out of a little piece of copper and lead. It is highly doubtful that you could match their performance with a Dremel tool and a drill bit.

Sam beat me to it!

 

[Deanimator]

Even if you didn't get a core separation, the thickness of the jacket material in a military FMJ would almost certainly inhibit expansion.

People like Sierra and Speer spend a LOT of time and money designing proper jacket configurations. I guarantee that you will NOT do better with Yugo 7.62x54mm ball and a drill press.

 

[Johnny_Come_Lately]

BTW, before you experiment with those FMJ to HP conversions, can I buy an insurance policy on you??

 

[W.E.G.]

I fail to see the point in it.

FMJ ammo punches paper, and kills, just dandy.

If your game laws prohibit FMJ's, and you're too cheap to buy a box of commercial ammo, you can experiment with modifying ball ammo if you want. Maybe that will appease the game warden. It won't make the ammo any better.

I highly doubt that the jacket will separate from the core on firing if all you did was poke a hole in the front of the slug.

I'd still just spring for a box of Remington Core-Lokt, and call it good.

 

[Craig_AR]

FMJ + Dremel = JHP?

There is a line of thinking, discussed in some newsletter articles from the ACLDN (seee my sig, below), that suggests that personal protection guns and ammunition should always be standard-off-the-shelf commercial products, and never modified. The logic behind this advice has to do with how lawyers will attempt to manipulate juries.
If you are involved in a self-defense shooting, the odds are VERY high that you will be charged, and possibly prosecuted, no matter how "righteous" the shoot. Further, even if you do not face criminal charges, you may be on the receiving end of a civil lawsuit by the attacker or attacker's family. In either situation, the opposing lawyer is going to portray you to the judge and jury as a bloodthirsty monster, who was itching for a fight, looking for an opportunity to shoot someone. Privately modding FMJ into JHP gives them a perfect line of questioning:
Lawyer:"What kind of bullets did you have in your gun?"
You: "Winchester."
Lawyer: "Specifically, was it ball, or hollowpoint, or armor piercing, or exploding ammunition?"
You: "It was hollow point."
Lawyer: "Oh, really! Isn't hollow point designed to inflict even more damage to the body than basic ball ammunition? Isn't hollow point banned by the Geneva Convention on War, since it is considered too cruel for soldiers in combat to use? Did you just go out and buy these hollo point bullets?"
You: "No, I bought full metal jacket ball ammunition, and drilled out the tips of the bullets to make them hollow points."
Lawyer: 'I see! You decided that standard ammunition is just not damaging enough for you! You went out of your way to turn your bullets into more dangerous, more lethal, more cruel projectiles than our soldiers and marines in combat with Al Quaida use? What kind of a sick, cruel, animal are you? How much were you looking forward to making as big and bloody a hole as possible in another human being?"

After the above exchange, things are not looking good for you with the jury!

Or, try this on for size:
Lawyer:"What kind of bullets did you have in your gun?"
You: "Winchester PDX-1, the same bullets used by the XYZ Police Department, and the XXX State Police."

Want to guess how the follow up questions will go from that answer? Obviously, it is best if you can cite usage by the local law enforcement agencies, but any credible LE group will do.

If you are concerned about cost, buy FMJ to shoot at the range, and splurge on quality self defense ammunition to load for your carry and home defense guns. Shoot the self-defense rounds through one or two reloads, once or twice a year, to stay familiar with how it feels. SHoot your FMJ range ammo the rest of the time.

Oh, and if you understand the logic of all the above, consider that it also applies to choice of gun. A tricked out, tacticool super modified, wanna-look-like-an-assault-weapon, gives the opposing lawyer the same game to play, relative to a nice simple revolver or police-carry style semi-auto. Think of the impact on non-gun owner jurors of looking at a Winchester 870 compared to a super duper night-scoped folding stock AR-15 type rifle.

For more discussion and advice this topics and others like it, from experts, lawyers, and experienced self-defense and shooting trainers, and to see the discussions I am referring to , consider joining the ACLDN.

Craig

 

[Double Naught Spy]

If you drill a hole in an FMJ, you're now making a lead slug inside a hollow copper tube. Some have considered this a serious safety issue due to the possibility of the bullet coming apart inside the barrel -- in other words, squirting the lead core out and leaving the copper jacket behind to cause some serious problems when the next round's fired.

Most FMJ bullets are a copper jacket with an exposed lead base.

So you use TMJ ammo.

How would it effect accuracy?

If the cavity is drilled off-center and/or not exactly perpendicular to the centerline of the bullet, I would think the bullet would wobble in flight and be detrimental to accuracy.

For handgun ammo, a slight wobble isn't likely to be significant at handgun ranges where people are already shooting >50-100 MOA or greater at 5-25 feet. Think about it. Say you shoot a 3" group at 3' into your attacker. You shot roughly a 100 MOA group. Maybe you manage a 2 shot group of 12" at 20 feet, then you have a 60 MOA group.

 

[Sam1911]

So you use TMJ ammo.

Ok. Sure. So you go buy TMJ ammo to make hollowpoints out of?

TMJ isn't the same thing as cheap FMJ. Just looking around it seems to be about the same price as the cheaper JHP options -- about 50% more than the cheap FMJ stuff. Seems like it would be disrupting the point of the operation to purchase special ammo to make some other pretty common kind of ammo out of.

It's not like the hollowpoint you produce is going to have the benefits of the best technology that premium (expensive) modern JHPs offer, either.

The expensive premium stuff uses scored, tapered, and/or bonded jackets and such tricks to improve performance. Cutting into a TMJ is just going to produce a so-so JHP for (at best) average performance -- at no savings but lots of work.

 

[bigfatdave]

Ball ammo is not designed to expand, it will not be the carefully formulated lead hardness for that bend-but-not-break feature, the jacket may not allow expansion, etc etc.

So it won't be effective except perhaps cosmetically, if you're making prop ammo then maybe it will look cool in a snapshot.

Ball ammo is not designed to get chopped up and still feed, so unless we're talking about a lever-gun or something, enjoy your malfunctions

But perhaps most importantly, after considering how poorly such a kludge would work if this:
What's your time and safety worth?

Now, about legality and accuracy:
1- Why would it be illegal?
2- How steady is your hand, and what do you mean when you say "accurate"?

 

[ColtPythonElite]

Word has it, guys used to cut an "X" in their semi-wadcutters with a hacksaw to make the bullet spread apart on impact. I don't have a clue if it works or not.

 

[bigfatdave]

Word has it, guys used to cut an "X" in their semi-wadcutters with a hacksaw to make the bullet spread apart on impact. I don't have a clue if it works or not.

Could it work as well as a cheap HP round (Silver Bear, WWB, whatever) AND save money over buying said cheap HP round, assuming you pay yourself minimum wage for the work?

And would it feed, or are we talking revolvers/levers only here?

 

[ColtPythonElite]

I'd guess most of the guys cutting ''X"s were shooting revolvers. I can see in theory why it world work to cause the bullet to expand. Someday when I'm bored, I might give 'em a range test in some wet paper and see what happens.

 

[Bighouse Doc]

And it is just as easy to simply buy a box of Gold-Dots!

This must come from the mall-ninjas listening to old wives tales of GI's cutting the tips from their bullets.

-Doc

 

[Ben86]

Legal? I would think so. Practical. No. Besides it being a lot of trouble, it will most likely not work nearly as well for the above mentioned reasons.

Seriously quality hollowpoints do not cost that much more than fmj. Do yourself a favor and get a box or two of those to use.

 

[kozak6]

They tried it on Box O Truth.

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot32.htm

Why go through all that trouble when nice modern JHP's work so well? It also seems like you are risking a lot of trouble in the courtroom to perhaps literally save a couple bucks.

 

[Sunray]

"...to their standard FMJ bullets..." Their standard FMJ bullets for what? Rifle? Pistol?
"...What sort of expansion could one expect?..." None, if it's a milsurp ball bullet. Jackets are too thick and it just doesn't work. No legalities one way or the other.
It doesn't work anyway. FMJ's have thick jackets. They're not made to expand.
In any case, using a rotary tool isn't accurate in any, way, shape or form. Might as well poke a hole in the jacket with a nail.
"...don't have a clue if it works or not..." No. A hacksaw is even less precise than a rotary tool.

 

[Art Eatman]

Back, I dunno, 35 or 40 years ago anyhow, I read in an article in one of the gunzines that tip-battering in the magazine for soft points won't really hurt hunting accuracy. So, I tried it. By round #5 in my '06, the lead tip was pretty much flat against the copper.

Five-shot one-MOA group.

Leaving out the possibility that enough tip is cut off such that the lead is blown out and the jacket stays in the barrel, the odds are that careful hacksawing of several tips wouldn't make for patterns instead of groups.

Lotsa hassle for little gain, however. Seems like more of a mental masturbation thing than something worth actually doing.

 

[4thPointOfContact]

You can royally <deleted> the tip of a bullet without that much affect on accuracy. The other end is a lot more sensitive.
The base of the bullet, leaving in anything but a perfectly concentric and aligned manner from the crown is not conductive to accuracy.

I've shot soft point bullets from a 30-30 that had the tips almost mangled from being in the tube. All shot to point of aim. Repeating the experiment with the soft point trimmed back even with the copper jacket produced the same result.

I'll note that the newly exposed lead flat-tip was larger in diameter than the primer of the cartridge ahead, so no self-detonation worries there.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Ok. Sure. So you go buy TMJ ammo to make hollowpoints out of?

TMJ isn't the same thing as cheap FMJ. Just looking around it seems to be about the same price as the cheaper JHP options -- about 50% more than the cheap FMJ stuff. Seems like it would be disrupting the point of the operation to purchase special ammo to make some other pretty common kind of ammo out of.

It's not like the hollowpoint you produce is going to have the benefits of the best technology that premium (expensive) modern JHPs offer, either.

The expensive premium stuff uses scored, tapered, and/or bonded jackets and such tricks to improve performance. Cutting into a TMJ is just going to produce a so-so JHP for (at best) average performance -- at no savings but lots of work.

Sorry Sam1911, I didn't recall seeing a single darned thing about being cheap. You had simply mentioned the problem of blowing through the bases and I was offering a solution that would allow for the making of one's own ammo without doing it and suggested TMJ. I suggested TMJ because many folks forget it even exists.

Would I do it? Nope. I would just buy the hollowpoint ammo. I was just trying to be helpful with the problem at hand.

 

[Sam1911]

Gotcha. I was thinking of this from the OP when I said that:

Considering the price difference, that isn't such a bad idea as long as it's done properly.

When the price difference evaporates (or greatly decreases), the small amount of value in the exercise seems to go with it.

 

[Zoogster]

I have shot a variety of modified ammo at various targets.

It is possible to make your own modded forms of ammo including some JHP.


Most of the above repeated danger involving separation with the jacket comes from old rifle rounds used in war, where the front of the bullet was entirely cut off. Tapering is much less on such a rifle round and this does allow the lead to simply be shot out of the copper tube. At rifle velocities the rifling engaging the copper heats up the lead touching the copper, and the drag heats up the soft flat nose of the cut off tip. This softened lead is more likely to separate.
Pistol rounds with the hole or hollow point in the nose of less width than the lead inside the round are very unlikely to separate. You are not simply cutting off the front of the round creating a hollow tube like on the old rifle rounds that gained a bad reputation, it would have to extrude the lead through the smaller copper opening.
Additionally the cutting of the 'X', a common simple mod leaves 4 prongs of copper holding in the lead. Making it even less likely to come apart.


As for performance they do cause more tissue resistance, less tissue flow, creating more damage and less penetration. The however do not uniformly open up like a modern high end JHP. Those with an X cut into them will typically only expand to the depth of the cut, as those petals peel back they increase wounding and reduce penetration, then break off after some time leaving the rest of the solid bullet to continue on its way.






Quality commercial JHP are partially heat treated, scored, and consistent. The jacket is also of a thickness that works well.
The heat treatment allows the metal jacket to bend at predictable locations, not create a random weakest point. The scoring keeps things more uniform and predictable.
They expand more as designed not completely randomly (but still not as uniformly as they do in water tests after impacting bone and other things in a real target that deform them first.)
But they are also designed to be easily mass produced by automated machines.
You can make equal or higher quality individual rounds if you want to spend the time to apply similar technology to your own rounds.
But that won't be done with just a dremel. The time and effort to create such rounds on a small scale is not worth it when they can be readily purchased.



One additional consideration is that you need to pull the bullet before modifying it with a dremel, then put it back in the casing to proper depth.
Using a high rpm dremel on a bullet in a live round will create friction that will transfer a lot of heat to the rest of the round and can cause it to cook off. You may get away with a few but you would eventually get rounds exploding in your face. Don't use power tools on live rounds.


The removed material is giving you a lighter bullet, but the charge was made for a heavier one, so your bullet energy is not optimized.

Finally you need to keep similar overall length, and no burs or new edges along the outside edge of the bullet for reliable feeding. It is not hard to do, but is important.


All said it is a lot easier to simply purchase them.



The guys at the box ' truth did a little write up on the simple X cut in the nose:

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot32.htm

That is about the performance I have had when simply cutting an X into a round. Like I said earlier the petals expand, break off, and the rest of the round continues on as a solid.
It is better than a FMJ but not as good as a commercial hollow point.
You can do more to make them as good or better, but it takes a lot of time and is certainly not cheaper unless you consider your time worthless.

 

[One-Time]

Legality is a non issue save if you were selling ammo. Dont be cheap on a tool or ammo for the same that you may well stake your life on. HP ammo is designed to expand, its engineered to behave a certain way, dont expect the same from modded FMJ ammo.

Sure you could do so, but I wouldnt

 

[Art Eatman]

Whee! Ain't drifting and wandering fun?