Why haven't we heard of...

B

BillCA

New member
While cleaning out some old ammo boxes the other day I came across some stashed away Remington .30-06 "Accelerator" rounds. These were .55gr .223 rounds in a plastic sabot loaded into the .30-06 case. That got me to thinking.

With the advent of the .460 and .500 S&W Mag, has anyone attempted to use a sabot with, say, a .357 bullet? Or a 255gr .45 bullet in a sabot in the .500 Mag? It would be pretty interesting to see what kind of velocity and accuracy you could get out those combinations.
 
J

JohnKSa

Administrator
There's a practical limit on velocity imposed by the characteristics of gunpowder. That limit is right around 5,000fps. Before you get there, it starts being hard to get standard jacketed bullets to hold together, and if you can, the barrel life is dismally short.

AND, muzzle blast & recoil can get to be problematic.

People do that sort of thing, but there are reasons that the resulting experiments don't make it to the commercial market.
 
B

BillCA

New member
The solid copper is a good idea....

Now... let's see... a .500 Magnum with a 12 gr sabot holding a 52 gr .223 bullet and... hmmm... :rolleyes: That oughta come out of the barrel as plasma. :eek:

We could certainly bottleneck it to .45, although historically bottle neck rounds haven't worked well in revolvers (i.e. .22 Jet, .22 Hornet). But putting that 230gr .45 slug into a sabot and pushing it ahead of a .500 Mag powder charge is likely to garner some serious gee whiz at the muzzle!
 
O

oldbillthundercheif

Moderator
Why would you want to use a revolver for this anyway?

I have never been a big fan of the Desert Eagle, but a .50 AE necked down to .357 loaded with the X-bullet or a copper solid would be extremely entertaining.

Hmmmm... the .357 Retardo-Mag. Sounds like a winner. :)
 
S

Socrates

Moderator
Gary Reeder, in his blog, is trying to neck down the 500 S&W
to 454, so he can get the ballistics of the 454, or better, but with much less pressure, and use heavier bullets(that last part is my idea. He didn't say that), and, much less recoil.

Haven't checked to see how it's coming, but, it makes a bit of sense...

S
 
B

BillCA

New member
I still like the sabot concept since it doesn't require dealing with a bottle-necked case in a wheelgun. In a semiauto the bottlenecked rounds are not a serious problem.

As to why, why not? It could be fun. We could take an example from the 7.62 x 25mm and load a 7.62 bullet in .50 caliber sabot and see if it works. Then we'd have the 7.62 x OhMyGawd! :D
 
H

Hotdog1911

New member
There isn't anything new here.

Hate to break the bad news but you might as well hear it from a friendly.

Hello Bill from Kalif.,

I know the accelerators you refererred to were emtpy accelerator boxes, right. (notice a period instead of question mark) Accelerator rounds, if I'm not mistaken, are, along with alot of other things, illegal in Kalifornia. Find the reference in the 12020 section of your favorite 'KA' 'pee-nal' code.

When the accelerator round is fired, the bullet, surrounded by a plastic sleeve, is left with no identifiable striations on it; the striations are left on the plastic sleeve that doesn't travel very far from muzzel after ignition. The sabot projectile never touches the inside of the barrel. The accelerators never caught any commercial firearm success, but the ideal did transfer over to other applications.

U.S. Military tanks use this same idea. The metal compond they use on their sabots are a much harder steel than the steel the inside of the barrel is made out of. If there were no sleeve surrounding the sabot the hardend steel of the sabot would strip the rifling out of the cannon on the first shot. "So remember all you KA national guard units, keepyer tanks..."

As far as barrel life goes...it is the forcing cone on the revolver and the throat on semiauto pistol that get the destructive heat treatment when using high preasure cartridges.Remember; with gunpowder high preasure is high heat. Ya, the lands and grooves won't last forever, but it's the forward chamber area that takes most of the heat & beating. On some firearm models you can fix the forcing cone/throat problem without replacing the barrel.

As for L & H #12's reply; back in the day when I was just a pup...Some boywonder type already tried it. If you havn't heard about it yet don't worry; it's a good idication of its commercial success. Now back to business.

Take your favorite Smith M27, M28, N frame Smith & Weasal, or Ruglee equvilent and give it to boywonder. He will bore 44 magnum chambers in your cylinder, then he will bottleneck or wildcat a 44 Remington Magnum case down to 35 caliber. ( 38 specials & 357 mags are 35 caliber) Now the case looks alittle weird and is infact missing about 47% of the needed chamber support . No sweat. Boywonder invented a plastic sleeve to put over the individual reformed case(s) for the needed chamber support. Very impressive bullet velocity with matching penetration. But who knows what happens to 'wildcating.' No loading data, blown-up guns, missing body parts......I don't really know if it is actully 47% or not. It just sounded good at the time.
 
K

KD5NRH

New member
So, let's see...

.50BMG necked down to .17Remington, and make a derringer to shoot it...

No need to hit; the muzzle flash should be lethal.
 
S

Socrates

Moderator
Bill:
I test shot a Sabot round in the early 80's, for Ballistic Research Incorporated. 500 grain, 45 caliber sabot, designed as a sabot should be, out of a 12 gauge shotgun. 1800 fps, and, they made an excellent stopping round. A properly designed sabot does not need revolutions to stabalize it. That's the problem with the Accelerator sabots, and, I think that's why they never really caught on. Not that accurate.
S
 
J

JohnKSa

Administrator
U.S. Military tanks use this same idea. The metal compond they use on their sabots are a much harder steel than the steel the inside of the barrel is made out of. If there were no sleeve surrounding the sabot the hardend steel of the sabot would strip the rifling out of the cannon on the first shot.
Click to expand...
The Abram tank rounds use sabots, but not to prevent rifling damage--because there is no rifling in the M1A1 tank gun. The rounds are fin stabilized, not spin stabilized.
 
S

Socrates

Moderator
HMMMM. We shot sabots out of the 105's in about 82. They were used only for practice, on other tanks, long since dead, at Hunter Liget. The fun was watching the tracers in the tail of the sabots, as, at night, or twilight, they went flat 5 miles, through a tank, then bounced another 10-15 miles after hitting the hill side.

IIRC we had two real rounds: armour piercing and HE.
I thought the barrels had rifling, since they were super accurate, and, the rounds went out at near 3000 fps. Range was 27 miles, but, my recollection was long ago...

The new, armour piercing sabots move at near 5000 fps, and, they have all kinds of tricks to defeat enemy armour.

S
 
O

oldbillthundercheif

Moderator
Yeah, but the 105mm gun in the first-run M1 was rifled. I think that's what Socrates had experience with in 82. When did they do the A1 upgrade? I know it was pre-gulf war 1... mabey around 88 or 89?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top