anyone here made anything of the sort ???

better piercing values, poisoned, shattering, exploding... share your stories with me please

My grandfather gave me some 4.5mm (.175 i believe) pellets which had a needle stuck through it.
100% kill rate on pigeons and small animals at distance to 30m with 170m/s airrifle.

Accuracy is somewhat compromised because fixing the needle perfectly straight and in the middle is difficult.

I was thinking about adding some KMnO4/Al/S flash in the opening in the back of the pellets to increase muzzle velocity. Any ideas?

duno thats why im asking... im thinkin bout gettin a webley... either way im spending a couple hundred on the sucker

what im really after is ideas on pellets that perform better penetration wise.... ideas on exploding pellets is fine however id rather not go near making any sort of illegal munition. plus it would end up damage the rifle

I was thinking along the lines of replacing the tips of the pellets with some kind of hardened steel (?). I say this because the tips of the pellets do not make contact with the barrel at all, so if i didnt want to risk damaging an expensive rifle i would go along those lines...

| \,,;'.
|.......|> (tip)
|_/``;.'

Sorry for the BullShi diagram... the rear section of the pellet on cathes the air which is released upon firing. The area behind the tip on the brand pellets i use dont actually have the same diameter as the rear part so it doesnt make contact with the barrel. I was thinking of just replacing this front area with a harder kind of metal. has anyone tried anything like this before ? Would it give any better kind of penetration

<small>[ April 02, 2002, 02:51 AM: Message edited by: Azazel ]</small>

ohhhh by the way im concerned with penetration because the more the penetration the bigger the target i can take down. at the moment all the rifle will drop is a small rabbit but if i wanted to take down something slightly larger i most likely will just cause the poor creature a fatal injury. i dont like letting things suffer. but i dont want to go shooting them with powder rifles mainly because the air rifle is .22 cal anyway.

I used to have these grey and rather weak and heavy lead pellets, but now i have light and shiny (like aluminium) ones which are harder. The brand is Diana.

About your point, it looks like a good idea to me, it's the same principle as the needle in mine.

If you're going to buy one, buy a 320 m/s rifle, if possible with a scope. Walther has a 2-9x42 illuminated reticle for a very cheap price. I say this because with my 170m/s bullet drop is already substantial over distances more than 20m.

ok cool thanks for the advice my friend...

i have seen one which takes my fancy... Cometa Fenix 400
it has 320 m/s velocity after firing YAY

its in my price range too... i think the webley rifles are rather costly. i would prefer to buy a .308 for the cost of the webley

You can get lead-free air rifle pellets that are an alloy of bismuth I think, surrounded by a hard rubber jacket that engages with the rifling. These deform much less on impact, because they are much harder than lead. So you should get better penetration.
Whatever you do, don't do any modifications to pellets yourself; you'll probably end up ruining the rifling.

ohh, you poor brits and underagers....

Vulture, no cartridges in the world use flash for a reason, its extremly unpredictable and might generate enough heat to melt something important.

As kids our favorite way to cause destruction was to over pressurize, and overload our guns, 6-7 BBs or pellets pumped 25 times would kill anything up to the size of a fox. But 'one shot and run away' kinda died out with the civil war.

As for poisons ricin always comes to mind, if you can get even a single grain of the poison in a hollowpoint air-rifle pellet, then that is plenty enough to kill your prey. Of course ricin is slow acting and equally as dangerous to its maker. Something else is needed to make air-rifles into weapons...

fullauto.

I beileve that 10-20 BBs in someones face would be equal in destructive force to any commerically made cartridge, a single squeeze and the man is on the ground in agony, a few more bursts into a temple, jugular, or eyeball and its all over.

You could even aim for his crotch :)

I know no cartridge comes with flash, i just needed a composition that will ignite reliabely in the rifle.

what displeases me about semi-automatic Pellet guns is:

They have a low capacity for Ammo(8-10 rounds is the most I have seen)

12g CO2 canisters only have so much in them(12g is my guess)

Your first few shots will be alright but then I can start to trace the pellets path with my Eye(slows down).

CO2 Will only be so powerful. Where as you can over Preasurize the Pump style(the one I have is a cross man).

Plus I find Semi-Auto in Pellet guns to be not accurate(Action doesn't cycle smooth enough for my liking).

The above may sound very lame to the rest of you but are enough reason for me.

Also A nice pellet pistol for me is about 1/2 he cost of a .22LR(Rifle Or Pistol). I might aswell spend a little more and get something that will have something behind it.

Putting any kind of homemade projectile into anything put a cheap air rifle is a waste. You'll more than likely damage the rifle. Steel contacting the rifling will scratch and damage it - the rifling in an air rifle is much finer and more delicate than in a firearm barrel. Also, a projectile that is too light or ill fitting will cause piston slam if the gun is a springer, likewise an overly tight or heavy projectile will cause piston bounce, both are bad. Homemade pellets will also be widly inaccurate and unpredictable.

If you want a kind of sabot round, try Prometheus pellets, they're like MrCool described - an alloy dart in a nylon sabot.

More penetration doesn't mean you have more killing power. You'll likely have *less* stopping power due to over-penetration and also a much smaller wound channel - bad if you trying to kill by rapid blood pressure drop i.e throat/neck shot.

CO2 airguns are generally underpowered because the tiny CO2 reservior (it is actually only 12gm), chills rapidly when gas is discharged from it, lowering it's internal pressure.

I believe that some tests were done by one of the American airgun manufacturers (might have been crossman) whereby a quantity of nitrocellulose was placed into the tail of a pellet and fired from a spring/piston gun, the heat upon firing ignited the NC. I believe they had good results upto 2000-3000fps, although I doubt the pellet touched the rifling at those kind of speeds.

If you really want more power than you might as well throw a 22LR into the breach...

Anthony, how hard is it to get two .22/.177 springs into a springer? I don't want the off chance of it flying out and giving me a eyeball poke.

And is there much increase is velocity? I'm thinking about adding a new spring to a Hatson Mod 40.

What does 12gm mean?

12 grams of CO₂ in a cartridge.

They make pointed metal darts that fit in pellet guns. I will pick some up today, snap some pics, and if anyone wants them I'll mail them tomorrow.

I hate to pass on anecdotal heresay information, but a friend used to put a drop of diesel behind the pellet. He reckoned it worked like a diesel engine - compression ignition. I would like to point out that neither he nor I had any means of quantitatvely testing this (although it DID produce blue smoke from the barrel) and take no responsibility for your bitter disappointment when fuck all exciting happens when you try it.

Self modified pellets with pins in would be soooooo inaccurate unless you were a rock steady engineer. Prometheus discarding sabot pellets rock, but are slow to reload.

In the words of Swiss Tony:

"Getting the best from your air rifle is very much like making love to a beautiful woman:

First you've gotta have everything well oiled.

Then, when it's nice and slippery, you pump up your weapon.

Carefully, open the breech, and check there's nothing in the way.

Slide in your projectile and carefully take aim from behind.

Reach round for her trigger and gently squeeze, until.........POP

You shoot your load all over her tits."

I don't think the last bit really fitted that well, but I suddenly lost me weaponry motivation and panicked into writing it.

RTC, I'd say near impossible - presuming you could compress them into the action and fit the end cap, they would almost certainly be already coil-bound, so you wouldn't be able to cock the gun. Generally throwing a bigger spring tends to raise power a bit (few ft/lb) but accuracy goes to pot, the gun jumps all over the place when fired and it is eventually destroyed by the extra shock it takes during a firing cycle.

Those darts might be the same as the ones you see used with Gat guns, they're generally not recomended for rifled barrels because the part which contacts the barrel is steel.

Diesel does indeed work. I've used a drop of gun oil before through the transfer port and it gives a few ft/lb boost for about 3-4 shots. The more volatile the fuel, the greater the effect - petrol or nitromethane should be funny...

Nice work Arkangel:) Would they be blue/greater/lesser spotted tits?

As long as I have some tits to aim at, I'm not at all fussed what variety they are, so long as they are not attached to some lard arsed builder!

Steel darts are bad if they're the ones Anthony describes, as they're hard on rifling, AND have this ridiculous coloured fluffy tail that really slows them down. Only useful for a dartboard.

Someone in the thread mentioned sticking a .22 LR down the spout, and that leads onto the question about converting a brocock. Anyone spent time looking at one yet? I think it would be a dumbass thing to do, as it's prison time, however, their .38 BACS air system looks really interesting in general - you can have a 6 round revolver with speedloader, or check out the fox - totally day of the jackal rifle! <a href="http://www.profhk.com/product/brocock/fox.htm" target="_blank">http://www.profhk.com/product/brocock/fox.htm</a>

they make ones called "bolts" (like in a cross bow) and they are the same as the darts ony they have a plastic back with little fins. im sure they have a mutch better velocity.

An aquaintance of mine had a crossman CO2 BB pistol that he had modified by stretching the internal spring to twice it's original lentgh and reinstalling. It could shoot a .177 pellet fast enough to knock over a standard red brick at 40+ feet. A BB would puncture a steel wheelbarrow at 20 feet.

'course, you only got about 8-10 shots per CO2 powerlet before you had to replace it, compared to the usual 60+.

I don't know the exact model number, but it was an all black plastic, with a slide that you pulled straight back for every shot. There was no magazine, and it was a long barrel style, like a target pistol.

It can't shot pellets as is. We had to remove the barrel to manually load each pellet and reinstall the barrel in the pistol to do so.

This thing killed pigeons with one shot out of tall trees, and easily busted thick spotlight bulbs on roofs. What could you do with that... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

Though it was LOUD compared to a regular air pistol. More comparable to a .22.

I've been wondering about this for a while: just how harmful to the air rifle is overpumping it? It seems that a lot of people do that without trouble, yet the air rifle company strongly advises against overpumping it... Any idea just how much of an increase in velocity can be attained? My gun is supposed to be pumped a maximum of 10 times, and has a velocity of about 800ft/sec.

The maximum you're going to get is the speed of sound (1,100 FPS or less). But, what if you used a lighter gas than air? Like helium? The light gas guns like the military experiment with use helium and hydrogen to accelerate the slugs to 10,000+ M/S. Perhaps it's the very low density and increased mach speed of light gases.

I think the air-gun manufacturers recommend against overpumping because of the wear and tear on the seals and valves. Plus possible injury if the gun ruptures.

Yes. Arkangel, I think the Brocock system is great. Damned expensive though.They used to sell a canegun that used the bac 38 system. Do you know if they still do, and if so where I could view it? I recently read a book about airguns wherein the author said that he had designed an injector to feed light oil into the compression chamber of a springer, to boost the velocity, by diesel action. It shouldn't be to hard to build something like that. My personal project for an airgun is to design and build a 44 cal. walkingstick airgun circa turn of the century . These things were supposed to be able to take down deer.

The Fox I mentioned above is a skeleton gun, not sure if you checked out the link, but it's super thin. Am going to have to take a look at one.

You can definitely go over Mach1, indeed a lot of tweakers have troube keeping it under. Generally though you don't get supersonic airguns as if the pellet drops below mach1 downrange, the shockwave from going supersonic smacks it in the arse and accuracy goes to pot.

Some people do charge their Precharged pneumatic guns with Helium, IIRC it doubles power output.

A couple of hundred years ago, airguns were a more prestigious and feared weapon than powder arms. Some of the colonialists that went to America took .44 air rifles, with power compareable to that of a modern .45ACP cartridge, they used them to take buffalo. Apparently they scared they put the heebijeebies up the Indians - firesticks with no fire:)

Yes. Arkangel, that fox rifle looks like it would be very easy to modify into what I want. However the one I saw, was actually disguised as a cane. Has anyone seen a good simple inline valve design for a walking stick airgun? THANKS.

If you're making a single shot, why not try using a frangible valve?

A small disc of tempered glass is the "valve", and a ceramic striker (or spring loaded center punch) is the "trigger". When the striker hits the glass, it instantly shatters, releasing the pressure. Easily replaced, and can hold thousands of PSI of pressure in small sizes.

Great idea,

The Brocock system uses a .38 cartridge, which acts as a mini reservoir of air, and holds the .22 pellet. The crims here are converting them to take a .22 LR shell, probably by replacing the BACS cartridge with a machined sleeve (external dimensions the same as a .38 shell) into which they pop the .22 round. I'm not sure how the firing mechanism works, as .22LR is rimfire, but if you could overpressure the BACS system using a glass seal as you describe, it would power the gun up, without it leaving firing residue on the gun. The only thing is you'd probably get a lot of glass up the barrel, which might cause problems for the next round.

Nothing a ramrod couldn't take care of.

I doubt there'd be any glass left in the barrel since it's own momentum would likely carry it out.

You could always add a tuff of cotton into the cartridge that should "swab" out the barrel when fired.

I was looking at the BAC site, and it looks like an interesting piece of equipment. The .22 especially. I could see pulling the bullets from real .22 rimfire ammo, and loading the bullets into the BAC cartridges. Then the piggies are looking for a rimfire gun, not an airgun.

The Fox rifle has a moderator (AKA silencer). How effective are the silencers for british air-rifles? Because we can't own silencers of any sort in the US without an ATF permit.

If they make it so quiet that you can't hear it past a few yards, than that'd be perfect for taking out lights. US SWAT teams are buying more and more silenced weapons for that very purpose.

It also looks like it'd be good training equipment for crims. You can practice your disarming, concealment, CQB, and other pistolcraft tactics without having to use up valuable and rare illegal handgun ammo in practice.

I wonder, does the 9mm version eject the cartridges automatically? Or is it manually cocked after every shot?

How much pressure can the BAC cartridges hold? I've seen air-powered military simulator rounds similar to this that hold several thousand PSI and can fire lethal rounds.

If the BAC can hold that kind of pressure, than you'd need something like a SCUBA tank compressor to get that level of air pressure.

But then you'd have a lethal .22 pistol that uses residue free air and common .22 pellets.

<small>[ April 03, 2002, 01:57 PM: Message edited by: nbk2000 ]</small>

Or how about something like the old fashioned soda bottles, where you had a marble held in place in the neck by the pressure? You could use the principle with a small bb in the neck of your pressure vessel, and pushing against it vented the gas

Ah, but the more pressure, and the smaller the surface it's applied against, the more force it takes to overcome it.

It could be nearly impossible to move the BB if you have it under a lot of pressure, which is the whole point.

The glass will shatter with equal ease, whether it's sitting in your hand, or holding thousands of PSI of pressure.

The frangible valve idea came from a military light gas gun design I saw somewhere. Though they use metal plates and det-cord.

The greater the pressure, the GREATER the area it's applied against, surely? That's why I said a small bb, although I do take your point. I had in mind some kind of lever/cam in the trigger mechanism, something like the 1st/2nd pressure of a normal rifle trigger, but with the 1st pressure doing most of the work, and the 2nd cracking the valve with a relatively light squeeze. I agree though, that a frangible disc is a better idea. I still think there would be a debris problem, especially in a .177 or .22 barrel of any length.

Got any linkd to that gas weapon you described?

Thank you all very much for the ideas. Yes arkangel the marble/soda bottle valve is what I am looking at now, however it requires the gas to make a 90 deg. turn in my design, which I am trying to avoid. Also I have some doubts about a decent valve material for use at these pressures (500 psi).
NBK I can think of several ways to apply your frangible disk idea. However I would prefer this project to be multi shot. Thanks for the info!

Real crims in the UK just buy an illegally imported firearm handgun for a fraction of the price of a Brocock + conversion, reliability and safety costs.

BACs work at around 200-230 bar IIRC, you can use a driver's bottle, a stirrup pump or a hand pump to pressurise them. The pumps are made for the purpose and special high-pressure jobbies, not your average bike pump.

I like the frangible glass valve idea. Does the striker hit in the glass from behind? If so this would require the striker mechanism to be on the high pressure side, so how do you seal it seeing as you need something running to outside of the pressure chamber for a trigger. I guess you could use a solenoid to hit the glass meaning you'd only need to run a wire or two to the outside world. But at several thousand PSI sealing even a wire sound difficult.

The BACS cartridge is made of a couple of parts, and you could probably do the same thing with the frangible seal - a pressure chamber at the rear, with the bullet (if it is one "cartridge" assembly) at the fron end. The hammer would push the pressure chamber forward, fracturing the disc on an internal "anvil" arrangement.

Don't know if that makes any sense?

Hmmm these Sabot rounds sound like my kinda thing...thanx for the info guys
if you go ahead and buy darts for your air rifle make sure u get high quality brand that doesnt leave traces of material in the barrel after a number of shots. my friend and i found colored hairs in the barrel after shooting. later we were both told that the particular brand was cheap... cant remember which though was long time ago.

Webley make these really cool air rifles. They have this one semi auto called the Webley Axsor... you can pump it 80 times i think and it has an 8 shot mag. Very expensive air rifle though wouldnt wana mess with its springs.

I like NBK's idea of having a glass piece that would shatter. But instead of hitting it with a hammer maybe you could set off a small charge of BP in the air chamber. It would overpressurized the chamber and shattered the glass, as long as that was the weakest part. This way you could dispense with the hammer mechanism and use a sparking thing.
I read somewhere that shooters sometimes put a grain of BP into the chamber, behind the pellet. This might put some residue on your barrel or damage a weak barrel. Flash probably wouldn't be a good idea unless you had a hefty barrel for the same reason it isn't used for a propellant in lift or guns. It burns too fast which would damage or blow up the barrel instead of providing an even pressure for acceleration.
BP would probably be better than diesel since you could use it for both CO2 and pump guns. If your using a CO2 gun then the diesel, nitromethane or whatever wouldn't be able to burn (no availabel oxygen right?) thought it would burn fine in an air powered gun.

Low explosives like BP/NC etc or flammable liquids diesel/NM etc won't work in CO2, precharged or pump-up (multi stroke pneumatic) since there's no heat during the firing cycles to ignite them. In fact the rapidly expanding gas cools the gun. The air in the chamber of a spring/piston gun becomes rapidly heated because it is rapidly compressed by the spring.

Might be interesting to cast some BP/dextrin or NC into the tails of pellets and fire them from a cheap springer.

The Axsor (or "'acksaw") is a precharged pneumatic, you fill the chamber on the gun with compressed air with either a diver's bottle or and external and then you've got enough air in the gun for a days shooting, without having to pump up or cock a spring/gas ram between shots or change CO2 capsules every 10 shots (realistic if you want useable power). You must be kidding about the "Very expensive air rifle" though, as precharged goes, that's a really cheapy! In fact it's cheap as far as a nice springer goes too... Ask MrCool how much his SLR (springer) was:)

Using BP would defeat the whole purpose of using air in the first place, wouldn't it? :rolleyes:

Though maybe a very small explosive charge (like AP) could be used to drive a ceramic fragment against the tempered glass disc to shatter it, rather than having a mechanical hammer.

The frangible disc would be shattered by an external striker since internal raises too many problems of effective sealing.

I don't have any URLs for the gas gun, but a Google search should reveal it.

Personally, I would turn the whole concept with the glass disk around. When I first saw the brocock cartridge system I thought "gee I can build those" I would build them in 2 pieces out of brass. The idea being just a subminiature exaust valve phenumatc rifle (digaphram type) with the glass disk in place of the primer in the cartridge. ( I originally thought to use the bb idea ) so that when it is broken it lowers the pressure on the back side of the digaphram. I will attempt to build one of these out of tubing this week, and let you know how it goes.

Has anyine got any pic/plans/patents or anything for the old air guns - I love the idea of an air gun that can take out a buffalo. Those things sound insane!
But keep all the ideas flowing - I think there should be more interest in air powered guns - they cant ban air - you dont need a licence for it and you dont have to be 18 to buy it :p
FS

Ever since I realized that using 12gr Co2 cartridges in my spudgun would cost around $10,000 dollars a year I knew I had to find a better way.

I've been conducting experiments that I'm going to post about if I ever have a sucessful one.

My first Idea is really simple, bakingsoda and Vinegar, cheap, easy to get in large quantities, and both are non-toxic. A setup would be simple, a presure chamber would be set up with a large valve at its top, a tube, coming out of the side of the pressure chamber, will go through the side of another pressure chamber. This Chamber will be filled with water, and the tube from the pressure chamber will rest at its bottom, and the Co2 will bubble through the water, cleaning it, where it will then be collected at the top of the chamber.

In use, the pressure generator would be connected to a thoroughly cleaned propane tank (the threads on the tank itself are 3/4" mnpt) after sufficient pressure has been generated, first a valve leading to the propane tank will be shut off, then the valve on top of the pressure chamber will be slowly 'cracked' open, and then a main shut off valve will turn off the air going to the water-filled pressure chamber, and the top valve will be (slowly) fully opened so the chamber can be cleaned and used again.

Also another large valve could be connected to the bottom of the pressure chamber, it could then be opened and a cup of water could flush out all reactant.

A bonus about this is that it could also be used to generate O2, by the common reaction of H2O2 and Mno2.

The other idea isnt mine, its actually the way Co2 was originally discovered.

in the 1700s Joseph Black discovered that by heating Limestone (CaCO3) Co2 was generated, he then discovered that by taking the residue left over (quicklime CaO), and dissolving it in water to make limewater, and then bubbling CO2 through it, the original amount of CaCO3 he started with would be his end result!

What I'm not sure of is, after the CO2 reacts with the limewater, is there still any CO2 left? What other gas's (if any) are generated by the reaction? If the answers are yes and none, a *ahem* "perpetual Co2 generator" could be created.

Frangible glass valves could actually be in a cartrige itself, exact amounts of reactants could be sealed in the pressure chamber, hell you could even add water to baking soda then compress it in a star press to make little prefectly measured cylinders of the reactant, these would also take longer to dissolve and therefore slower to react, giving you plenty of time to screw the thing together and seal it.

Unfortunatly all those steel pressure vessels would get expensive.

If you have access to steel nipples and endcaps, it wouldnt be too hard to design and build a nelson valve, if I'm still up after I get back from a party tonight, I'll upload pics of a makeshift nelson valve, and post them here.

I love pnuematics :)

You'd want to avoid any trace of water when working with CO2 because it dissolves 400 volumes of CO2 for every 1 of water. So you'd waste a LOT of CO2 saturating the water.

A fire extinguisher shell will hold at least 200 PSI. And they're free for the stealing.

I think you could make the little pressure shells, using a glass disk in place of the primer. Just whack it with your "firing" pin, and divert the exhausted air to propel the bullet. I don't see any reason why you can't have a screen or such to retain the glass fragments in the shell.

Wonder if you could build a shell that has two reactive chemicals seperated by the glass disk that, when broken, would create an explosion to propell the bullet. I'd think H2SO4 + water = steam.

I take it that loading up with dry ice is a really bad idea.

Having the glass disk in the place of a primer makes it easier to "fire", but makes it much harder to divert the gas, plus you'd have the projectile loaded seperately somewhere else. If you're going to do that, you might as well pre load the projectile, then have the glass disk at the front of the pressure cartridge, and then the hammer bangs the whole thing forward onto an anvil (external to the cartridge) and off it goes.

They can't ban air, true (although there were recent calls for it in the uk) , but they can regulate power. If you're going to power something up (and I too would love to see design for a buffalo killer), it would be a VERY good idea to be able to have it set at two power levels, one legal, the other lethal. And make sure it isn't obvious how you change it! :cool:

Lo again :)
I think you missed my point Arkangel. They cant ban Air. and if they tried I think wed all have more things to worry bout - unless your planning to evolve gills.
As for legalities - who really gives a fuck! the therad was about improvise munitions for air rifles - now Im not sure about your local laws but shooting any kind of explosive or poison tipped dart out of an air rifle would contrivine a few of them.
In Australia - you need a licence for any firearm - that includes air rifles - we can even have airsoft - and from all the checking ive done you need a licence for a paintball gun too. if you wanted a pistol - even a cheap nasty singleshot airpistol you need to join a pistol club - wait for a year - get a pistol licence, then a permit to purchase and then you can buy one, oh I forgot to mention the inspection the piggies have to do on your residence and safe.
If you are going to make any kind of firearm, its a fairly safe bet that its illegal, regardless of how powerful it is. So why not make it really powerful!
and if you can buy low powered air guns, why wouldnt you just buy one of those and work on making it shoot harder, if thats really what your after. Be damned if Id go to the trouble I have if I could buy it off the shelf.
Anyway - the point I was making is that air is a cheap easy medium for projectile launching and the people who will see the most benifit from it are those who cant buy factory ammo or reloading supplies. Some survivalist (who can see beyond the need for lots of flash'n'fancy AKmp5MIAr97magnum style guns (with all the extras of course)also see great potential in air weapons. Not only is the propellant naturally abundent - you can shoot almost any projectile you want to if you vary the design enough.
Personally Im working (slowly)on a pumpup pneumatic designed to fire 1.5v (AA) batteries (cast lead will also be used). The (theoretical) benifit of this is that a bore that isze allows for a range of projectiles, including shot. Id like to see a coroner scratching his head, wondering how john doe got an everready lodged in his chest <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

anyway - I do have a little idea for an improvised round for an air rifle, based mainly upon NBK's fetish with horse shit <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />
Now as a kid I discovered that stock feed pellets fit nicely in the barrel of my little air gun - Id sit there with a handful of pellets and shoot for a couple of hours at targets or those horrid parrots that stole all my fruit, cleaning the barrel only involved shooting a couple of lead pellets through it after I was done. Now the point is that these little pellets held together faily well, werent too inaccurate and still flew hard enough to dent a soft drink can.
So why not make a pellet out of horse shit, iron filings and possibly a binder (dextrin? not sure what would work best here) in a mould and a press (Id make a mould with a point for penetration) The theory is that some of it gets under the skin - at best not enough to warrant a visit to the doc, and make the target thing it was in insect. but even if the pellet penetrated, it would fragment all the way through the wound - leving little bits of shit and shit encrusted iron filings everywhere - Do you think a surgeon would get it all? And id assume ballistics would have a hard time tracing a round like that.
later
FS

I'm sorry, Arkangel. I don't think I explained what I'm doing very well. I was talking about building a bac 38 cartridge, The projectile is contained in the front of the round, And the glass disk at the rear is not to vent the compressed gas. just to lower the pressure behind the diaphram valve to let it open venting the gas to the front, propelling the round out of the barrel. On the above post. I think that ground glass would work well in place of the iron fillings also. I read a book by Dean Ing ( soft target?) Where the villain uses something similar That is impregnated with the acid that is the main component of ant venom to disable people (PAIN ?). I always thought this might work pretty good. By the way, here is something about a large calliber air rifle <a href="http://www.history.rochester.edu/appleton/a/airgun.html" target="_blank">www.history.rochester.edu/appleton/a/airgun.html</a>

<small>[ April 06, 2002, 01:30 PM: Message edited by: johnn 99 ]</small>

You mean like formic acid or something.

im aussie too... dag nam gun laws... it breaks balls down here getting a gun licence. i got one. i dont fool around though and make improvised munitions. im just interested in all of these topics. information is power is what most ppl would agree. i have actually been on the forum for a long time, well before it was changed in 2000, i have gone under the names boba_fett and now azazel. In all of those years i havnt tried many things Cough*ap*cough. But i dont think local law can put what used to be a 12 year old in jail for trying anything of that sort. Im currently studying chemisty under my science degree at uni and i find this forum to be a most excellent way of studying the laws of chem in a fun way. Hell even the techniques to making some things can improve greatly ones skills in the lab. anyways...

I didnt know that you could purchase air soft in australia with a gun licence. In what state have you seen them on sale. I would like to purchase one if thats the case and practice my plinking skills on full automatic... hehe nah i really want an mp5 look-alike :)

i have also gone around lookin for sabot rounds for an air rifle and the guys at the stores just ask why would i want that... C$#k S@#$*rs
god damnit

i use 4.5 mm pellets for my airrifle..
here the link:
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/evilpics2000/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/evilpics2000/index.html</a>
(NBK, oke)
Cya

<small>[ April 07, 2002, 05:50 AM: Message edited by: mr.evil ]</small>

People need to realize that geoshitties...I mean geocities <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> doesn't allow linking to pictures or files from outside sources. Thus, you picture doesn't show up here.

In the future, just post the link so we can cut and paste it without having to right click on the red X box, OK?

BTW, a picture of a pellet tin does nothing to help eleveate this discussion. :rolleyes:

Az - Sorry for the confusion - Airsoft are illegal imports here - but I dare say you could get one if you acquired an armourers licence.. maybe. But all that does is make them expensive. What I want to know is how an airsoft gun works so I can make my very own AEG :D
Oh - and I have found that a lot of places in the states will ship stuff too you - but if customs nabs it then youve done your money - and if you were silly you might get a nasty visit. They consider the auto airsoft guns to be that same as a machine gun and will prosecute accordingly.
But if all you want is a springer pistol then you might get lucky as they are shipped as toys, and as such you can plead ignorance.

Now for todays idea - a small steel bb set in the business end of a lead pellet should help it expand more and cause more damage - the same idea is used in normal bullets with pretty good results - why not in an air rifle.
FS

If I lived in a country as fucked as that, I'd be on the next boat out of there, money or no money!

I grew up around guns, knifes, improvised shit, from sharp sticks to improvised shotguns.

If someone took away my right to buy pellet guns, that'd make me hit the roof!

If your country get's any more backwards it'll be eating it's own arse!

I never thought that a country with more fucked up gun laws than the UK existed, but live and learn...

Speaking of adding a BB to a lead pellet, that reminds me of some pellets I saw in my local gun shop. They were a lead pellet with a steel ball inside the lead in the head. I can't remember what they were called but there was a description on the tin which read something to the effect of: "a hard hitting lead pellet with a heart of steel".

hey anthony,
were it cannisters with an round red top? the local gunshop is gone now, so i can't take a picture of it... i thought they were called:
Fireshots or so... anyway something with 'fire'

Cya

Mr.Evil & Anthony
<a href="http://www.pyramidair.com/cgi-bin/pellet.pl?pellet_id=56&img=champion_fireball177.jpg&ht=205&wd=200" target="_blank">Steel Pellet</a>
PyramidAir.com is a great and reliable airgun sight btw.
The steel tipped pellets look wicked, i'm probably going to buy a pack soon, probably great for busting windows.

Hello,
hey, i've been right! on the cannister it sais "Fireball"
i think that pellets are very good to penetrate things... i will search the city, if i can found those things :)

Cya

hello.

i've been planing to make a cast for something like this:

<img src="http://home.no.net/gjalring/sp/shot.gif" alt="" />

it would be about twice as long as an normal airgun pellet

The steel tipped bullets are simply nylon bullets tipped with some steel. It makes them lighter so the V0 gets a bit higher. I don't like them it no energi on them.

Kvitekrist: If you make a bullet twise as long as a normal one it will simply drop out of the barrel since it will be to heavy.

If you want something with power buy a weably tracker, I've had one for about three years(don't use it anymore since I bought a .22LR).
Magpies and crows are no problem at all, I've even shot to badgers with it, They where shot in a trap but still and they died from a single shot.

They're probably the ones, the name "Champion" rings a bell, they must have redone the packaging though. Those aren't nylon, they're lead, I'm 99% sure of this because of two things: Nylon isn't metallic grey/silver in colour and those pellets are 10.5gr, whilst most lead .177 pellets are 8-9gr. That means they're also have good energy retention so should be good for window busting. One thing I have noticed about glazing pane glass is that when shot it doesn't tend to shatter, but rather the pellet punches a small through it and cracks the surrounding area. Possibly a frangible pellet would have better effects?

Edit: Someone asked how quiet silenced air rifles are. They can be very effective, I've fired silenced, precharged pneumatics and if it's a good silencer then due to the lack of recoil and a smooth trigger, you often don't realise that the gun has fired until you hear the pellet hit the target. I doubt someone a few yards downrange would hear anything.

<small>[ April 07, 2002, 11:53 PM: Message edited by: Anthony ]</small>

Kvitekrist, the main problem with your design isn't weight. Although that is always a factor in a weapon with such limited power. The real problem, is to much surface area touching the barrel and creating drag. That is why the diablo shape of pellet replaced strate sided rounds in the first place. You might try taking 2 of the pointed pellets, and glueing the skirt of one to the nose of the other. BTW I just blew an O-ring out on my crossman 600 doing something similar.

I asked about the silenced airguns. It's good to know they're silent enough for night work.

The steel tipped pellets ARE good for shooting windows, car windshields, and spotlight bulbs. I know because I've done these things with them.

However, they don't have accuracy worth a shit out past 10 yards. Either too much drag from the shape, or uneven weight distribution. Whatever the reason, you've got to be up close and personal with the target to get good accuracy.

Lo again
Australia does have its advantages - it is the land of WIDE OPEN SPACES after all :)
and as everyone should know by now prohabiton doesnt work - guns are there if you want them. In the case of air guns, I see a birght future in home made weapons. To all those who poopoo the use of homemade guns for anything serious - it all comes down to how well they are made - even factory guns jam and fall to bits sometimies - if you make it yourself you can be confident about the workmanship - and you know how well you can make something.
But I digress.
I really dont think the secret to drastically increasing an pellet guns effectiveness lies in the pellet - Think more on how to improve the gun.
The barrel just isnt big enough to shoot an effective load. But if your desperate you could try some thin metal tubing filled with something sensitive and capped with a small rifle primer - as mentioned these fit nicely in .177 air guns - tassles at the other end to stabalise in flight and youve got your self an exploding arrow - but it would be easier to scale it up and use a bow or a crossbow
An arrow like this could also be capped with a little wax and filled with a liquid - poison - tranq - narcotic whatever - but I doubt youd have the accuracy required to be effective.
In the end the best way to increas your damage with a air rifle is shot placement. If your going to spend up on the rifle - get a good one with a good scope - chose a good pellet and stick with it and nothing else - then practice.
I used to shoot 2cm groups at 35m with the cheap open sight break barrel springer I got for christmas when I was 11 (best damn christmas presant I ever got) Mind you that was after multiple thousand rounds - I loved that little gun, and it showed in the results - with open sights I could hit targets reliably to about 50m or a door at about 200m (not that it was effective at that range - but thats not the point) - simply coz Id shot it so much It was almost an extension of my body (melodramatic I know, but how else do you describe it) -But I expect everyone is the same with their favorite piece.
Remeber - Head shots will kill bunnies!

i have interests in crossbows and hunting bows... from my experience they are not anything i would use to fire an improvised projectile...
1. they take to damn long to load. especially if u use cross bows... even hunting bows take ages b/cos u may have to use u wrist pully thingamajig.
2. the accuracy over longer distances is greatly reduced for larger weight loads... as it is hunting bows only have a decent shot from a max of 40 m away from target... and thats with a lightweight arrow with a teenie weenie arrow tip... if u want to use expanding heads u compromise a few meters...

fhark it i think i will stick to a rocket launcher haha jk :p

How about a rocket boosted arrow? Something with an inertia activate powder train delay to fire the rocket motor say 5 M after you lauch it.

There was a technology developed on the early 70's called ballistic innoculation. Basically, they made a hard pill in the shape of an airgun pellet. The components were the sam as used in the common aspirin (minus the aspirin, of course). They are used here in the western states to vaccinate wild game (principally elk). Though they've been in use for over twenty years, it's been a very low profile affair. I've got a couple of .25 pellets a friend sent. They look similar to the old Whitworth hexagonal bullet and are made to fit a special airgun. You could probably think of a few things to press into pellets. I'm working on a set of dies to press the pellets, for an upcoming book. If anyone's interested, there were several patents issued in the 70's for them. If memory serves, 3M was the primary assignee.

--------------------
"To paraphrase Aristotle; life is a gas"
-Gidget

<small>[ April 10, 2002, 03:10 AM: Message edited by: nbk2000 ]</small>

I shoot strike anywear matches out of my bb gun at hard objects from 10 feet and they explode nicley with a flash and a crack. Not realy a weapon, but entertaining.

Does it not gunk up the barrle?

Nope, they just drop right in.

Well I have succeeded in making explosive air rifle ammunition, it was much easier than expected. I used AP as the explosive and Remington pointed 4.5 mm lead pellets. I drilled out the inside of the pellet from the flared end. I first used a 1/8 inch drill bit to hollow out the first few mm's, I then used a 3/32 bit as the diameter got smaller, and then finished with a 1/16 drill bit which I drilled all the way through the tip of the pellet.

I then proceeded to fire the pellets from my pneumatic airgun at both a hardwood plywood board and a coffee can. I also fired unmodified pellets for comparison purposes. Here are the results:

The explosive pellet put a hole of 20mm diameter in the can, the unmodified pellet made a hole of 8mm. Looking inside the coffee can the explosive pellet was shattered into many small pieces, the other one hit the other side of the coffee can made a dent and was in one piece inside.

The explosive pellet put an 8mm diameter hole in the plywood, and only penetrated about 5mm. The non explosive pellet put a hole 5mm wide and penetrated about 10mm into the wood.

I will run tests on whether it detonates when hitting a softer target like some meat or something.

Well I shot a few of my rounds at some oranges. 3 out of 5 detonated, however I am not sure if they detonated on impact with the orange or the board which the orange was in front of, it would appear that they detonated on the orange by the way the remnants of the orange looked, but I am not sure. I will do more tests tomorrow when everyone isn't asleep.

UPDATE: Shot at oranges on stand, detonated 100% of the time. Started casting my own pellets and filling them with explosives(for bigger charge) 1 out of 2 worked. I have discovered that the key ingredient for detonation is for the rear of the pellets to be glued, this makes it so that the AP cannot move back thus lessening shock of impact.

well if you want to get a higher velocity with a spring air rifle you could put a pellet in your breach and push it 1cm deeper with a needle or something, then put in a drop of ether and put another pellet in youre rifle, close it and fire.
I haven't tried it myself but i've heard it a couple of times from other people, try it at youre own risk.

A drop of pretty much anything flammable behind the pellet or into the transfer port will increase power due to dieseling. It won't turn an airgun into a .22 rimfire though.

I'd just like to remind everyone not to try knowledgehungry's explosive pellet idea in a spring/piston gun - at least not without some adaption. The exposed AP at the rear of the pellet will ignite on firing and the pellet will detonate in the breach. This is due to the heat generated when the spring compresses the air in the chamber.

A trick that uses this effect is to place a small amount of nitrocellulose in the rear of a pellet and fire from a springer.

I read this on a air-rifle site a while back, but supposedly bars of soap are good for ammo comparison when trying to see what it will do to the internals of your living target ie; hunting small game.

I've been considering getting a pellet/BB repeater for some time, any one got any suggestions.? right now I'm looking at the Daisy Powerline 880.

I live in australia too.
Our gun laws may suck, but guns arent exactly hard to get (illegaly that is).
I make my own pneumatic weapons with PVC pipe (much like spudguns).
I have made a rifle that stores about 10L of air @ 150psi, and fires projectiles about 15mm in width.
I'm not sure on the muzzle energy of the weapon, but it can fire special homemade ammunition through a car door from about 20 metres away @ 120psi.
After buying all the parts (pipe, solenoid, etc.) it cost less than $100 Australian to build, and the local police don't really give a shit about 'spudguns'.
The only unfrotunate thing is that, unless i carry my 1.0kg air tank, i have to manually pump it up, which takes about 30s.

I am working on designs for a smaller, more powerful pneumatic weapon to be powered on some kind of gas generating chemical reaction and have been thinking about decomposition of concentrated H2O2.

to Skean Dhu: I think that gelatine is standard material when it comes to testing of what projectile would do to body, but soap isn't bad idea although it's density and viscosity can be very diferent but then again velocity, mass, contact surface, balistic properties, material strength of air rifle projectile is diferent from the standard weapon so it may be best choice for simulation task.

to wrythawk or Anthony: it does make sense what you write but does that pellet actualy get to the target or explode? Is it posible to cover the rear side of pellet with nitrocellulose varnish to get the same effect?

to cyclonite4: good work. decomposition of H2O2 can make a lot of gas but is also little unpredictable as you go to higher concentration. What % of H2O2 you planed to use? And what kind of catalyst? Water extract of raw finely choped potato can do the job but I doubt it will improve recharging tank time.

to knowledghungry: I apologise if I didn't understand corectly what you done... you made a hole in the pellet form the front to bottom to fill it with AP, then you glue the rear end (bottom) to avoid AP ignite inside the rifle but on the contact with target? Please confirm or correct me.

You are more or less correct, however I glue the end not to prevent ignition, but to ensure detonation on impact. If there is nothing in the rear of the pellet the AP can fly out the back on impact rather than detonating.

to futi: no the pellet won't explode on target, te flammable liquid will combust in the barrel and will incease the pellets speed.
but why would you make a .177 pellet explode the hole in the back is to small I think to do decent damage, maybe fill them up with mercury :d
if you want an airgun to kill a buffalo with take a look at shin sung career rifles
http://www.asportingchance.org/excerpts/shinsung.html
it isn't getting any better than that :d

I was actually thinking like this, rather than have a refill source, power the cannon DIRECTLY (Well not directly, but hold the pressure developed behind a solenoid, or use a high concentration to propel it by the fast formation of O2, with the projectile blocking the barrel) on the H2O2. I got the idea when reading about H2O2 propelled rockets at some site (can't remember URL). As a catalyst is concerned, I was thinking about KMnO4 (a tad unsuitable for my current design ideas), MnO2, or Silver (MnO2 preferrable). Basically the reaction would be started by forcing the H2O2 to contact with the MnO2. For H2O2 concentration, I would experiment, starting from lower concentrations, and keep upping it until i find suitable power (of course i would do calc. with pv=nRT so as to make sure i dont have too much pressure from a given amount of H2O2).

I can get a 15% H2O2 solution very cheaply from my pool store, so I would start with that and see how i go. The only problems I can see is the effort in concentrating H2O2, and not being able to predict how exothermic the decomposition would be (in concentrated amounts). I will post results here whn I have finished, and when I get my website up I will put information on pneumatic weaponry there.

I just fired one of my completed rifles (cost me $5 in parts, the rest was 'acquired') and it pushed a marble (15mm bore) @ 90 psi, straight through 10 layers of folded up cardboard boxes, and (unexpectedly) through 2 high-density (i don't know what material is but its strong) fences, and because I couldn't find the marble after, I assumed it fragemented into many small parts, infact, I am suprised it didnt shatter after hitting the first fence.

I am working on making larger rounds by casting pellets myself, this worked reasonably well for me I just need to tweak it. I want an exploding pellet because .177 pellets are so weak and I want something that will take down squirrels a little quicker, I don't like making them suffer. Also my larger rounds might have some home defense uses.

cyclonite4, don't forget that marbles are designed to be thrown, and to hit concrete, other glass marbles, etc. They are toughened glass, quite often. It wouldn't be a suprise if it simply carried on through then rolled away, since it is far tougher than the targets you shot. Shooting it at a steel or ceramic plate would be a way to get it to shatter, though even thin steel is likely to not be hard enough.

Sounds cool, anyway. Was this the H2O2 powered version?

SWIM once fired some 30mm marbles from an aircannon, the target was some 20mm particle board, the marbles (as expected) passed through it completely undamaged. They blew some very nice holes in it though :D

I once shot a glass marble at a brick wall with a sling shot and was astonished to hear it whistle past my ear after it bounced off the wall and came straight back at me.
Be careful of hard projectiles together with a hard target.

just a little historic background info :d
did you know that airrifles already existed in the time that napoleon was concering big parts of europe?
the airrifles in those days were used as sniper rifles because they were more accurate than blackpowder rifles, and also they didn't produce smoke,muzzle flash or a lot of noise.
anyone who was cought with an airrifle got killed immediatily.
so airrifles have been fearsome weapons, so with modern technology they could be even more powerfull.
but .117 is just to small to kill something of decent size, I'd rather use blackpowder rifle calibers like .50 .577 .600 ... these have much more impact power and have enough room to fill with explosives ;)
just my 2cts

greetz

Well, I am so impressed with the marble's performance, it's now my standard ammo, the great thing is that the air rifle/cannon is so simple and made from the same parts as a spudgun.
No, this was not the H2O2 version, it should be much more powerful :D. This was a simple pump-up style pneumatic charged to 90psi.

I just found a huge marble lying around that fits my somewhat large 40mm aircannon, so I'm gonna see what that does. :P

I wonder if i could put a hole in a car :D.

You could also make a rifle grenade like in Band of brothers.
It is nothing more then a impact detonition grenade with a stick attached that fits into the barrel.

--------------------------------- |���������������|
===================|xx The Grenade xx|
--------------------------------- |_______________|

Oke now the --'s is the barrel of the gun and the =='s is the stick of the grenade.
The stick will also bring balance to the grenade when it falls from the air so it will land on its nose.

Ps. This thing will NOT SHOOT STRAIGHT!!!

Cyclonite,

Probably!

Are the plans anywhere?

You won't find the plans anywhere on the net right now, because they are self designed, but once I finish the basic framework of my website, and find a decent host, I will put them up for all to see. Also I might need to get another camera because the current one I have (a webcam actually) takes REALLY shitty photos.

Noone here knows of a decent, free website host do they, the best I've found so far is Freewebs :(

Does any body know what kind of energy improvement you get from putting nitrocellulose behind the pellet in a spring air gun? Anthony maybe? I know it "works", but does anyone know how well? If not, I will try to find out.

Thanks

My reference for this is long gone, but definitely supersonic. I recall the figure of 2000fps+.

The limit will be either the mechanical strength of the gun, or the pellet breaking apart. I wouldn't expect much in the way of accuracy though - airgun pellets are not designed to go supersonic!