The reality of putting a primer inside a bullet

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RyanM

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Took a Berry's 180 gr plated hollowpoint. Drilled out the hollowpoint with a 3/16" drill bit. Inserted CCI small pistol primer. Donned eye and ear protection. Placed a broken 1/16" drill bit, taped to a stick, on the primer. Hit drill bit with hammer. Loud pop, bright flash. Ow, something hot hit my neck. Lots of blood and trip to the emergency room. Okay, that last part didn't actually happen. But something hot did hit my neck.

End result was a bullet with a lot of soot in it and a primer anvil stuck to the bottom, a stick with soot on it, and a drill bit with soot on it. Zero expansion. The hollowpoint cavity is still 0.183" in diameter. After prying out the anvil, though, it does look like there was some flame cutting at the bottom of the hollowpoint. But that's it. The primer cup seems to have disappeared. It may have flown off in one piece, or may have shattered into tiny bits. My bare feet haven't found any fragments yet. The wounding effect added by the tiny blast and possible fragmentation would be negligible, assuming the primer even went off on impact.

Conclusion: "Devastator" bullets may have expanded to a very large diameter, or possibly fragmented, but such performance was only due to the large diameter of the hollowpoint cavity. See test results of same bullet with same size drilled out hollowpoint cavity here.

No, I am not crazy enough to try this again with gunpowder in the bullet. Besides, that would cushion the impact to the primer and keep it from going off.
 
A properly designed HP will do the job just as well .The use of primers in a bullet is not a new idea and they haven't been successful.
 
I'm not advocating putting a primer inside of a HP cavity....but :)

Hitting the the primer at rest proves what?

I believe the issue is what effect the primer would have on that hollow point when it is traveling at more than 1,000 ft per second.

We know that hollowpoints will have the greatest likelihood of expanding when striking a soft gelatinous material. If I were to throw a handful of black cherry Jello at a hollowpoint, I would be as misled by the result as striking a primer inserted in a bullet at rest. And I would waste dessert and have to go to my room.

Having seen Jaws and Chief Brody...
Having ben mor stupider than I am now...

I too tried putting assorted crap in .38 Special hollowpoints when I was 19. My experience shooting with a primer in a hollowpoint showed that hitting an abandoned washing machine it would make a "pop/thunk" sound rather than the ordinary "thunk" on impact. Did the bullet show greater expansion- YES. But I could not convince my buddy to take one for science, so my results are only on hard targets. Wow. Even at 19 I realized I just wasted a perfectly good primer.
 
How about the old story of drilling out the hollow point, filling the cavity with mercury, and soldering over it? I ain't testin' it, can tell you that! Mercury is rather poisonous on its own. I imagine if you actually SHOT someone in self defense with such a bullet and the defense got ahold of the information, they could have a field day with it. :rolleyes:
 
A properly designed HP will do the job just as well .The use of primers in a bullet is not a new idea and they haven't been successful.
Click to expand...

You know that, and I know that, but a lot of people need real empirical evidence for something before they believe it. Maybe the test results will stop someone else from trying it. But I'm not counting on it. Still, blowing stuff up is kinda fun, even if the stuff doesn't actually get blowed up.

RyanM, doing stupid stuff so you don't have to! But you will anyway, even though you no longer have to.

Try a percussion cap and a few granules of FFFg in a dead soft lead bullet???
Click to expand...

I considered trying that (with the bullet wrapped in many layers of rags, and using a longer stick), but I have no black powder. Only smokeless, which wouldn't do much except go "whoosh" and make a fireball. Plus I have no dead soft lead bullets. The Berry's are the softest I got. Send me some FFFg, a soft lead bullet (maybe a .38, so there's even less material around the same size hollowpoint), and a welding mask and I'll see what I can do. :)

Are you NUTS????
just wondering
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Yes, I am nuts! I just like testing these kinds of urban myths, if it seems possible to do so with my budget. plus, I had a couple bullets that had been used for the "does crimp increase or decrease setback?" test, and they were kinda mangled from being chambered many times. So there was really nothing else to use 'em for.

Hitting the the primer at rest proves what?

I believe the issue is what effect the primer would have on that hollow point when it is traveling at more than 1,000 ft per second.
Click to expand...

Which can be determined in this case by hitting it at rest. If a primer goes off on impact with a soft target, it'll do so before it's penetrated more than 1/4", since that's when the primer will be struck. That's before the bullet has started to expand. It's totally illogical to think that the primer would blow up at any time other than when the bullet is at its highest velocity. So that means that whacking a primer in a resting bullet should have the same effect as the primer going off on impact with a soft target, a fraction of a second before the bullet starts to expand. And the test has indicated that all that'll happen is the primer cup will vanish, a bunch of soot will appear, and there'll be a tiny amount of flame cutting on the bottom of the hollowpoint cavity. It won't initiate expansion, nor logically increase expansion, in that case.

How about the old story of drilling out the hollow point, filling the cavity with mercury, and soldering over it? I ain't testin' it, can tell you that! Mercury is rather poisonous on its own. I imagine if you actually SHOT someone in self defense with such a bullet and the defense got ahold of the information, they could have a field day with it.
Click to expand...

Actually, that one former dictator of Finland was shot with one of those, so it's already been tested better than I could. I forget the guy's name, but you could look it up easily. There was no explosion or anything. The mercury formed an extremely brittle amalgam with the lead in the bullet. The bullet struck Mr. Dictator in the belt buckle, shattered into many fragments because the inside was so brittle, and pierced his intestines in several hundred places. He died of peritonitis, moaning "why... why?" over and over. The only proper death for a tyrant.

Sounds pretty similar to the unmodified Berry's plated bullets, actually. Brittle, inelastic material inside the hollowpoint bonded to the lead makes the bullet nose fragment rather than expanding.
 
I do know of one individual who puts human feces in his HPs. He figures that if the projectile doesn't kill the target, the resulting infection might.
Who can say?
~shrugs~

Biker
 
It's a waste of time. I experimented with that 40 years ago.

I experiment with it about 20 years ago and reach the same conclusion.
 
How about the old story of drilling out the hollow point, filling the cavity with mercury, and soldering over it?
Click to expand...

Master Alucard's .454 Casull seems to get the job done on vampires. Don't know about the real world, though.
 
Yup M2 Carbine. I was aware of that. Fact is, I told the guy about that practice and immediately his eyes lit up. :)

Biker
 
C4?

If i understand right C4 will explode under a hard impact, right? If so why not fill the cavity in a HP with it? :evil:
 
Could fill the bullets with OC powder to make the wounds hurt more.

I think next I may test whether or not filling the hollowpoint cavity with vaseline or wax or something will help it expand if the bullet hits clothing first.
 
I did potassium cyanide in a .22 hollowpoint once. It didn't hold a lot, but apparently it don't need to. Shot a feral dog in the butt with it, he ran about 50 yards yappin', stopped, stiffened, and fell over dead. That stuff works!
Click to expand...

Out of curiousity, where on earth did you get potassium cyanide? I thought that was illegal to own in the usa...?
 
I believe one of the Marshall and Sanow (shudder) books showed some test results from "exploding" ammo. The conclusion IIRC was that the net effect when they worked was an earlier and more complete expansion. Probably better for the defender and the target.
 
I do know of one individual who puts human feces in his HPs.
Click to expand...

LOL !!

First , the image of the process is pretty funny, I've been in public rest rooms where it was obvious someone had trouble keeping the load within the size of the stool, so I'll give the guy credit for hitting the little hole in the hollow point !!! LOL !!!!!!! :evil:

Then I have the image of needing a can of lysol or something just to be around this guy when he is carrying a loaded gun !! :neener:
 
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I was going to ignore this, BUT

I see no gigantic problem with dispatching a DANGEROUS feral dog with a *humane* rapid kill with a shot to the head. To deliberately "shoot him in the butt" to hear him yelp and cry in pain, during your chemical toxin experiment is the most dispicable and cowardly, and sleazy act I have heard of in many moons. This is the type of act I found to be typical of the degenerate perverts, commonly referred to as 'antisocial' in the prison I observed last year.

You are the type that gives gunowners and even hunters a bad name to the nonshooting world.

Edited in order to maintain The High Road Mission statement.

Rectodynia
 
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