Pick-Fu wrote:How do I get a 50BMG with steel core rounds????
In the US, if you can legally own firearms, you just buy it. A few states in the US don't allow civilian ownership of 50 cal rifles, but most do. I don't remember if Oregon is one of the bad ones but I'd be kinda surprised if you couldn't have a 50 there.
As for the video, speaking both a gun-person perspective and a lock-person perspective, I'm glad to have seen the video. It was pretty cool. But, from just the gun-person perspective, it also raises some more questions for me.
I'd like to know what type of steel core ammo he used. Based on the deformation of the core when it was visible stuck in the lock, the general availability of the different types of ammo and that he called it FMJ and not AP, I'm guessing he was not shooting armor piercing ammo. Most FMJ 50 BMG ammo is steel core; it's just not a hardened core. Armor piercing ammo also has a steel core but the difference is that AP will have a hardened steel core so it deforms less and penetrates better. There is a reason they don't generally make lead-core ammo when it's scaled up as big as 50 BMG, but my forum posts tend to be overly long as it is so I won't bore you with the specifics.
Surplus 50 ammo is usually either ball (FMJ, usually with a mild steel core) or some kind of specialty round like tracer, AP (armor piercing), API (armor piercing incendiary), APIT (armor piercing incendiary tracer, Raufoss, etc. Anytime you try to make a multi-purpose projectile there is a trade-off involved, as compared to a dedicated round with just one purpose. An API round (as used in the video) is versatile because it has some punch AND an incendiary compound it, but it has less incendiary mixture than a blue-tip incendiary round and the steel penetrator in an API round is not always as big as in a regular AP round (depending on variant and who made it), giving it less "punch".
I would have liked to see how the 833 performed against 50 BMJ AP ammo in addition to the FMJ and API. In any case though, that was a very cool video and I'm glad he took the time to shoot it with as many calibers and bullet types as he did. Thanks for posting the link Riyame. I've wanted to do that experiment for years but couldn't quite bring myself to destroy an 833. I was even more surprised to see he was shooting a functional 833 with keys.
This also makes me wonder how an 833 or 951 would stand up against Raufoss rounds, or the newer higher-yield explosive rounds they have. If anyone ever does that video, I sure hope they take high speed video of the impact itself. Talk about lock AND gun porn...
*EDIT: I see Riyame beat me to the punch as I was typing out my long-winded post. Oh well. I typed all this out so I'm posting this anyway.
Mon Aug 15, 2016 3:54 pm 
