Really Stupid Ideas

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Keith

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I actually knew a really stupid guy who told me this really stupid thing he does with bullets.

He fills hollowpoints with mercury and caps it with melted wax under the theory that the lead becomes liquid and the bullet becomes some sort of super-frangible round...

I did take the time to point out to him that he'd likely be breathing a fine mercury/lead vapor every time he fired one of these. This didn't seem to bother him... but, of course he's already pretty stupid and the heavy metal poisoning could hardly make him worse.

The good news is he no longer lives here and is now down in the lower 48 some place - probably one of your neighbors...

Anybody heard anything dumb enough to match that?

Keith
 
Where did he get that idea, a movie? There's no way anything like that could work. Actually, I have heard that there used to be poisoned bullets back in the early 20th century. They would do something similar - putting chemicals in the hollow tip of a bullet and sealing it. This was before poison bullets were banned by treaty.
 
Actually, I doubt if he's inhaling mercury, unless he's shooting indoors or he's exposing himself while loading 'em. Theory is that they behave like a glaser - the bullet stops, the contents keep going. I've been thinking that it'd be interesting to try shooting an ice-filled and pointed jacket...
 
Hmm I always thought doing that would cause the bullet to explode when compressed....

Wasnt there a media hype about these 'dum dum' bullets some time ago?

PS: I would rather have a bullet filled with a timed fuze HE load like the military uses in their 20-30mm cannon rds. I doubt you could make one small enough for a 9mm though. :D

EDIT: G--DAMN! TFL has some great threads on it. I learned more about mercury in that thread than a whole semester of inorganic chem last year!
 
I don't know where he got the idea - probably from some conspiracy web site.

The same guy shot the tip of his finger off playing with some little pot-metal .25... He said it seemed like a good idea at the time to place his left hand index finger up near the muzzle to steady the little gun...

Keith
 
I just assume that any liquid is going to be ejected at the muzzle from the spinning of the bullet. I don't know, and I'm not crazy enough to experiment and find out!

Keith
 
It likely ain't gonna be going sideways.

"explosive" bullets generally don't work very well. Folks have tried 'em on big game, and discovered that an elephant with a dinner-plate size chunk of muscle blown out of his side is a very _angry_ elephant.

I remembered someone said they were going to try gluing a primer into a hollowpoint...
 
Put a glass of water on a potters spinning thingy and then turn it on. I suspect you'll be wet if you're standing next to it. The centrifugal force (methinks) would throw the water from the container.

Keith
 
I remembered someone said they were going to try gluing a primer into a hollowpoint...
Click to expand...

FWIW...a BB glued to a shotgun shell primer will fit exactly into a sawed off crossbow bolt half filled with blackpowder.

Misspent youth and run on sentences...

!BANG!

:evil:
 
Where did he get that idea, a movie?
Click to expand...

I have a vague memory of seeing Charles Bronson filling hollowpoints with mercury and capping it over in a similar manner in some movie. It's been many years, so I couldn't tell you what movie.
 
Wuz it a Bronson movie...


Er wuz it Day of the Jackal, where the assasin buys some "mercury" bullets from his supplier? They never did make clear if that was actually mercury liquid filled bullet or if they were filled with mercury FULMINATE, which is explosive.

Liquid mercury is not explosive.
 
How about drilling military 45acp ball out, inserting a 22 blank in the hole so the primer faces front and then shoot mag after mag of these full auto from a M3 Greasegun. :rolleyes:
I had a boy swear they used to do this "in the Nam". He even had all his fingers and toes, and a bunch more silly storys. I'll bet you boys can shoot a whole mag of tracers from an M14 on full auto into 4" at 100 meters, cant ya? I know I can! :D
 
Man, that'd take a heap of drilling. Where'd they get the time?


Oh, I see. They did that in between their ultra-top-secret missions to Beijing, right?

Right.



If only these make-it-up-as-you-go superheroes knew how stupid they look with their stories....
 
Ummm, yeah...that would be great...(obscure "Office Space" reference).

Does this fool realize what a civil suit attorney would do to him if he actually shot a BG with those things? Geez, some people are actually paranoid about getting sued for HPs, much less poisoned ammo...:rolleyes:
 
There was a CSI show where some guy made a bullet out of frozen hamburger meat and shot someone. They found the dna didn't match during the autopsie and caught the guy. It looks to me like the frozen meat bullet would thaw out really fast. Seemed kinda far fetched to me.
 
The mercury in the EXPLODING bullet was from the book Day of the Jackal and it was mercury fulminate that was put in the hollow point of a bullet. Fulminate of mercury is what primers in 22lr were made of at on time. Mercury fulminate is very explosive and will explode when placed under pressure or from a sudden impact.
 
Those "snapper caps" that you throw on the ground (or your buddy's head) to make them explode are typically silver fulminate and some coarse sand.
 
Breathing vaporized Mercury is very hazardous but a lot of people have ingested liquid mercury from broken medical thermometers with no immediate health repercussions, 10 years down the road who knows.

I have heard of people filling the shot part of shot gun shells with rock salt to shoot nuisance dogs. Which I kinda thought was stupid theres still plenty of tissue damage and an infection is just as likely with rock salt and of course it inhumane and illegal.
 
FWIW...a BB glued to a shotgun shell primer will fit exactly into a sawed off crossbow bolt half filled with blackpowder.

Misspent youth and run on sentences...

!BANG!

:evil:
Click to expand...

also works with a model rocket engine and some glued on fins

Misspent youth here too (mom's amazed I still have all 10 fingers) :neener:
 
Salt is much less dense than lead and will not penetrate significantly except at VERY close ranges.

A salt infused wound is going to be painful, but not particularly likely to get infected--at least not for awhile.

Not recommending the practice, BTW.
 
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