[Ole1830]

Tried my first ones yesterday. I used my 2 cavity Lee 432" RB mold.

They came out OK. Lots of stickiness in the mold when trying to remove them. Then today I tried using the bull plate sprue lube inside the mold. These ones came out quite a bit better:

When using primers only, they are more accurate than the speer plastic bullets up close (10-15 feet). Haven't tried them past that distance.
I probably wont as these are and indoor-only proposal for me. Lord knows what my neighbors would do if I shot these in my backyard.

If you use these inside the house, be aware you'll need a good backstop (I use a rimfire bullet trap) and very good ventilation (I use a shop vac next to the pistol being fired). Primer smoke has lead in it and it's easy to inhale it if you're not careful.

Take care.

Matt

 

[kdub]

Yes, Matt - I'd say in your particular neighborhood, you really don't want to be blasting away in the back yard. LEO's would most probably be there prior to getting the second shot off!

 

[Farrier Matt]

Matt, thats a pretty cool idea. Ever tried plain old wax? Seems like it might be easier, I dont know.

 

[BrowningBoy710]

ammosmith on youtube makes these for .45 ACP by simply shoving the stick into the case and cutting the end flush. He also reamed the primer pockets out to accept LRM primers, and drilled the flashole out a bit.

care to elaborate a little more on your process? anybody know if this can be applied to rifles? or would the primer not have enough kick to get it outta the ~20" barrel?

 

[Ole1830]

Matt, thats a pretty cool idea. Ever tried plain old wax? Seems like it might be easier, I dont know.

These are super easy to make if you have a cast bullet mold. 3 squirts with my glue gun, wait 20 seconds or so for the glue to cool, then open the mold.

The key to not having them stick is using a lube inside the bullet cavity. Some folks on a website I got this idea from have used Pam cooking spray.

 

[Ole1830]

ammosmith on youtube makes these for .45 ACP by simply shoving the stick into the case and cutting the end flush. He also reamed the primer pockets out to accept LRM primers, and drilled the flashole out a bit.

care to elaborate a little more on your process? anybody know if this can be applied to rifles? or would the primer not have enough kick to get it outta the ~20" barrel?

I'm not sure about rifles but there is one way to find out.

If you drill out the flash holes to 1/8", then the primers won't set back like they do if you don't drill out the flash holes. I've been thinking about/working on a way to separate and designate the cases for glue bullets only, as once you drill out the flash hole, you can't use the case for normal ammo.

 

[Farrier Matt]

Pretty interesting. What kind of power level are you achieving? Paper puncher? Knock a rabbit in the knoggin? Any idea of weight and velocity? Cool idea. I might have to try it. Does it dirty your barrel up very bad?

 

[Ole1830]

Update: They work great in my 1894 .44 Mag carbine.

P.O.I. was actually pretty close to my sight-in point @ 15 feet.

 

[Ole1830]

Pretty interesting. What kind of power level are you achieving? Paper puncher? Knock a rabbit in the knoggin? Any idea of weight and velocity? Cool idea. I might have to try it. Does it dirty your barrel up very bad?

I weighed one and it weighs 10 grains. The speer plastic bullet that I weighed was 19.6 grains for reference. The mold throws a RB approximately 130 grains in lead. I'd say they go at least 500fps as you can't really see them in flight and i've seen the lead round balls in flight before, given that was at a greater distance than 15 feet.

Haven't noticed any strange things in my barrels. The glue seems to stay together and i've shot some of the balls up to 3 times before they started really getting beat up.

 

[Farrier Matt]

Very cool.

 

[Cheezywan]

I tried an old tube of silicone adhesive once. Smoothed it out to about 1/2" thick. Let it dry to rubber. Cut with a empty case (38 special).

It worked! Not all that well though. Wax was better for me.

Cheezywan

 

[imajeep]

im impressed.... MY RAGING BULL IS COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET!!!!!

454 INDOORS!!!!!! YEE HAAW

 

[unclenick]

Matt,

The next step is inclusions. You find a way to trap a bubble in the middle then inject it full of paint. Hmm. Wait a minute. That may have been done already.

Hot melt glue is mainly low density polyethylene with plasticizers. When Merrill Martin was first writing about p-wads 20 years ago as an alternative to gas checks, he was cutting them from 0.060" LDPE sheet and found the slight melted deposit they left in the bore actually seemed to help reduce leading. I doubt you have enough heat for that, but my point is that deposits shouldn't be a worry.

The cases don't need to be strong for this, so you can file notches or flats into the rims.

 

[M1894]

I wanted to use the plastic bullets in my .357 Maximum Martini, but they couldn't make it out the end of a 26" barrel, My solution was to take some cases and re-do the primer pockets to take a 209 shotgun primer, then turn some delrin rods to .356" dia. and shape the nose like a tapered round nose, and drilled a hollow base about 1/4 the length. I think that the High temp hot glue in a hollow base mold would work just as well, and not as labor intensive, just wish I had known about that method first.

 

[sheedy]

Ammosmith on YouTube made the comment of putting a grain to two grains of powder behind the molded glue stick bullet for animal control. I have shot many of the molded glue stick bullets threw my 1911 with just the mag. rifle primer and they work great. Will go almost all the way threw an old pannel door I removed in my basement to use as a back stop from ten to twelve feet away.

 

[Ole1830]

Couple things I've learned since last weekend.

Don't try to shoot a pop can in front of the catch target with one of these. The glue bullet bounces right off the can and flies right back at you.

As my M1894 shoots almost dead on to POI with these, my 2.5" Alaskan prints about 4 inches low.