You learn something new every day.
Hat tip to a reader of the blog, named Robert who first turned me onto this idea of making home made “armor piercing” ammunition.
Then I went looking for instructions and it turns out it’s pretty simple.
How To Make Home-Made Incendiary, “Armor Piercing” Ammo
A reader of this blog left an awesome comment the other day, saying this:
“A little trick for handgun ammo, but don’t know if it would work in rifle ammo. You drill a tiny hole in flat nose ammo, like the FMJ .357 Sig and insert a full length lighter Flint with a drop of crazy glue. I guess a used Flint from a Bic lighter that runs out of fluid would also work too. The Flint when it hits steel will superheat it and be “armor piercing”. I don’t know if there are any laws against it, but if they don’t see it, who cares!”
The truth is that I’ve never heard of this before, so I did a little research and found out that Robert is right.
You can do it!
You’re actually making incendiary ammo when you use this method because the little flint tip ignites. It appears to work similar to armor-piercing ammo.
I’m not sure this is really that useful of a thing to do, if you really needed armor-piercing bullets, so it’s more of a novelty.
Anyways, here’s a youtube video where a guy shows you how he took a rifle bullet with a polymer tip – Hornady A-Max in this case — and after removing the tip, he fills it with loctite to hold the zippo flint:
And in the video below, these guys actually shoot their 7.62×39 bullets with flint tips at a steel target. The truth is that steel target looks pretty thin anyways — and most rifle bullets will penetrate a lot of things based on sheer velocity alone — but it appears the flint tips made them burn right through the steel like they’re supposed to:
Anyways, I haven’t tried this out myself, but it looks like there are people who definitely have.
I couldn’t find anyone trying to use these home-made bullets against body armor, but here’s a cool video from the Demolition Ranch guy showing some Armor Piercing .308 and .50 BMG against AR500 multiple Armor Plates:
Leave a comment if you’ve ever tried making your own, legal, Armor Piercing ammo.
Just Curious. Anyone else getting the same filthy degrading advertising along with Caleb Lee as I am? I am curious if Mr. Lee is aware of the disgusting vomit he is disseminating along with his emails. Seems kind of ignorant to send out emails where in order to read the useful content, wife and kids have to be asked to leave the room
Ive gotten a few comments about this — I’m going to talk to the advertising company. I assume this is about the sidebar adverts here on the blog. They’re not that explicit on my end, but I understand that different visitors get different ones. I’m going to look into it. Thanks for the comment.
Caleb, the ads that I get along with your stuff are from places that I have searched or surfed to before. Google and the other search engines use “targeted” (sorry about the pun) advertising and only show stuff that fits in with what they know that you seem to be interested in based on your browsing habits. I get ads from Sears, Harbor Freight, Honda, Auto Zone, and “efficient solar panels”. Nothing obscene that I have seen. The worst thing I saw was the letter using pretty nasty words.
What would it do if one used a piece of 7018 Welding rod, inserted into the bullet? (Without the coating on the rod.) I have always been curious about this, and you can get it in different sizes.
Thanks for the confirmation of my insight. This is the “Robert” that brought up the Flint in the bullet thingy!
i bought a lot of the old corrosive 7.62 by 39 ammo when it was selling for around $100. solid steel perpetrator. my friend shot it through 2 1/4″ stell plates. i thought that was bad ass. if i need penetration i will use those. i expected the 50 perpetrator to go at least to the 4th i am surprised. i do not think the 308 did much better the 7.62 x 39 solid steel bullet. it has a very hard steel, just trying to hack saw off the tip of the bullet was extremely hard. i guess the difference is the new stuff has a steel inner core and not solid steel like that old stuff they won’t let be imported any more.
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