These were a gift from a buddy that is a sniper on a large metropolitan SWAT team. He says they don't exist and I don't have them, and never heard of them. The Carbide bullet is 55 grains and measures .17 at the top of the sabot jacket. I am going to chrono them this week-end.
Sort of reminds me of the "accelorators", but instead of a plastic sabot, this one uses a metal one.. Let us know how it performs ??
Looks remarkably like the .50 BMG SLAP round. Don't shoot it through anything with a muzzle brake, you may not have a muzzle brake afterwards!
You should not shoot these through weapons with flash suppressors. If I remember correctly, the U.S. Marines lost a few M14 rifles by shooting these rounds a while back.
you can make your own if you make a bullet out of carbide drill rod, use a diamond cutting disks to turn the point on the round and cut to length.(turn= cut on a lathe so it is perfectly centered) At 55g the round it should have about the same ballistics as a normal 55g round. I have not seen any 17 to 22 sabot cups for sale, if you know where some are for sale please post.
Yeah definately make sure you're not shooting through a brake. That will yield 'less than desirable' results! Let us know how they perform. Curious to see what kind of muzzle velocity (consistent) they produce with the plastic sabots. Curious about accuracy too. Would love to get ahold of a couple thousand in .308 to really accuracy test them. But not at anywhere close to $10/rnd! Jeebus! Those are .223 correct? Byte
Hear is where I bought mine, they even have some 50bmg SLAP's for sale with alot of other neto stuffhttp://cranetechnologiesinc.com/308_SLAP.htm
If they are 55g bullets they still need to spin at the rate for a 55g and not a 147g nato 7.62 bullet. do you know what the twist rates are that are ok for a 55g that you may see in a 7.62x51 barrel? I have 22 to 30 cal cups, I will have to try to turn some carbide down to .223 and see how they shoot. I may play with making some 17 to 22 cups for the .223 shells.
You are correct, the spin is weight and caliber dependent. 55 gr 5.56 (regardless of the sabot diameter) will do fine between 1:7 and 1:12. Best will probably be 1:9, but I can't confirm that.
What is the advantage of a tungsten-carbide round? Seems terribly britle to me. I've managed to destroy a lot of carbide inserts cutting on a lathe. Once I dropped a box of 10, and that was costly. I've seen some tough metals in cast nickle rich steels though! Bill
the springfield armory M1A barrel has a 1 in 11" twist so if the carbide bullet was 55g it should be ok but it is on the end of what 55g bullet will be stablized by, but a 45g or so may be a bit better. if you had that in the 308 sabot load it should be a screamer, and shoot threw a heavy steel plate.
