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Posted: 2/5/2007 7:49:38 PM EDT
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A recent trip to Thunder Ranch introduced me to frangible ammo. Hadn't given it much thought, but see some benefits to those compressed copper rounds. Who are the manufacturers / resellers? Is anyone using it for home defense? |
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I wouldn't use it for home defense. Frangibles are intended for training. Besides, lightweight SP or HP bullets will fragment quite well at high velocity, and will probably cost less. Plus, frangibles are designed to go poof against hard objects like steel plates, but I do not know if they will fragment in tissue or not. If not, then they are more likely to 'thru n thru' an attacker than M193 or M855 FMJs. I haven't personally seen any gel tests of frangibles as of yet though, so I am not sure. Anyone else hear know if any frangibles have been tested in ballistic gel? Edit- I forgot to mention, American Ammunition(headstamp reads A-MERC) makes the cheapest frangibles on the market, but, even though they supposedly use IMI bullets, DO NOT BUY ANY FRANGIBLES MADE BY AMERICAN AMMUNITION!!! At best they are crap, at worst, they will blow up your firearm. |
| Ammoman has some USGI frangibles. They use 50gr projectile with copper jacket and has exposed "frangible tip". Bullet is long (1") and will require 1/7 rifling twist to stablize. The other manufacture who makes farngible is PMC in their PMC green line of ammo. 40gr frangible projectile that has no copper jacket and will guarantee to foul up your barrel even only few rounds are fired. Have not tried the American Ammunition frangible, but I don't want to try anything coming from them anyway. |
Yeah I saw ammomans frangible bullets and the ad claimed they were good for varmints or self-defense. What do you think? |
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I got a case of Remington frangible .223 and saw it was a copper plated sintered compressed round of some type of metal. I wouldn't shoot it in my gun, I used a city gun and fouled it badly with that 200 rounds. I thought I would never get the copper out of that barrel. The Winchester round has been observed breaking the tip off during the feeding process. Use at your own risk.... Mick A27257 |
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Federal Frangibles (like AMMOMAN's) are not as wimpy as you might think. They Darn near penetrate a 1/4" mild steel plate that I had... Much more damage than a pistol round would do. They will go through wood (2X4) and stay intact to strike a target. They only penetrate one gallon water jug and fragment into oblivion. If you were to get shot by a frangible, you'd be in bad shape, Jethro. It would probably leave a vicious but shallow wound. I wouldn't really recommend them for Home Defense. |
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Leave the frangible for training, but only use good frangible for training. Saw Engle Ballistics' frangible shot at AR500 from about 10 yards. No plate dimpling if the plate was free-hanging or spring-backed, minor deformation of front plate if steel was fixed. Good poop. Some frangible has a really pointy tip (so does the Engle IIRC, but it is one exception to what is going to follow), and since piercing steel is a kinetic mechanical function, the pointy tip will actually push a divot in the steel as the rest of the bullet smashes into it. Not as bad as SS109, but worse than M118. Funny. I was once told that frangible was originally designed for shoot-houses with steel armored walls covered in either plywood or rubber, with a slight stand-off between the initial impact media (plywood or rubber). There was not a whole lot of concern with splash since the initial impact media also served to contain the 20 degree splash pattern of the impacting round. The problem was with the SS109 penetrator. It was possible that after a few rounds hit the same area, the bullets would start to pop out the other side. I am sure that the "few rounds" translated more to hundreds than to dozens, but that ain't that many runs through a house. If anyone has any definate historical data about the creation of frangible ammo, I would really like to know, like I said, I can't confirm the story I was told. |
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Here are pics of the 556NT1 ammo from Federal. Note on the military box on the left that the are marked "Reduced Ricochet Low Penetration" which would be a clue that it is for the shoot house use that you mention, Failure2Stop. But it's actual designation as "NT" (Non Toxic) is a little puzzling. Perhaps that is for the confines of the shoot house too.... Not well ventalated and such. 
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Here is a good article on Frangible ammunition. We have to use frangible ammo at one of the ranges we qualify at because they don't allow lead bullets. |
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Thanks - great feedback. I believe the Non Toxic designation indicates no lead in the bullet or primer. ICC has some ballistic data here www.iccammo.com/ballistics.html They also have some interesting video's on their website; www.iccammo.com/videos/protocols.mpg At 5:42, it's a bit long. Interesting demonstration of ballistic gelatin and CQB training on steel. At 3:20, they begin the CQB on steel. Very interesting to see a full auto AR15 on steel at < 1'. (4:15) In 2006 we made the trip to Thunder Ranch. In 3 days we shot ~1,000 rounds of the Federal R2LP without an issue. |
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Here's a thread that just started over at M4Carbine about Frangible Ammunition. M4Carbine |
Yes! The round although only 50 grains, is VERY LONG!! Nearly the length of M856 tracer. 1/9 will stabilize it enough for short range use... which is the whole idea of using a low richochet bullet. I haven't tried 1/9 out far enough to see what distance it will stabilize to. |
Same for me with my 1:12, I forgot how long this bullet is. I get some key holes at 25 yds with my 1:9 barrels. |
Didn't know. Kinda worthless for us here...ammo bought for department DRMO M16A1s. Great. |
| I’ve shot a few thousand frangible bullets and training is about the only serious use I have for them. I’ve used 9mm, 357 Sig, .40, .45 & 223. I live near the factory where most of the bullets are made. (http://sinterfire.com/) I’ve been to several of their Law Enforcement shoots where they shoot ballistic gel. When the bullets work the wound channel looks like one shot with a Glaser Safety Slug. Shallow penetration with small pieces of bullet going around 6-7 inches. When it didn’t work it was the same as a FMJ bullet. The factory range has a shale backstops in it’s bays. You can pick up intact frangible bullets by the handful at the back of the lanes. The owner of Sinterfire bragged about how good his bullets penetrated auto glass but refused to demonstrate it to us. I went to a junkyard & picked up a windshield and a couple car doors and shot them with several caliber frangible bullets. There was no penetration of the doors and on the windshield I placed a piece of heavy cardboard 2 feet behind it and no small pieces of bullet made it through the cardboard. Another day at an indoor IDPA shoot a group of us were waiting our turn when a frangible .45 acp bullet bounced back into the wall beside us. This was after going through a ½” piece of plywood, striking the steel backstop and coming back through the plywood and it was still intact. The factory videos look good and I’ve seen it done in person but remember it’s against flat, hardened steel targets in a controlled environment. I do carry a frangible round with me at work to dispatch deer hit by cars still on the roadway. I figure it’s safer to have a chance of the bullet breaking up than no chance at all with a Gold Dot. So far I’ve shot about 10 deer with them in .357 Sig and haven’t had a bullet exit a white tail deer skull. Frangible bullets started out as and should stay target rounds. |
Plan was for familiarity training with the road guys on ARs. Allow them to manipulate the ARs, load, unload, etc. then fire a very short COF given the short 15 yard indoor range we have. A couple times a year get them to a 100 yard range for further distance training. But with bullets impacting SIDEWAYS at 15 yards kinda defeats the purpose....just bought 1K of the things.... On a positive note, they work great in my pers owned and duty carried Colt.... |
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An important thing to consider is that Frangible bullets both have a bullet that is designed to break apart, but part of the equasion is driving that bullet very fast. Unconfirmed(by my own eyes, IE RUMINT) reports from the thread over on M4C had a very low round count burning out a barrel. I just shot a couple hundred rounds of AA40, Dont know how "Accurate" the round was, but was hitting chest and head plates at 60 yards with it out of a 10.5 upper. I did not want to shoot to many of them due to the possible early burnout of barrels. |
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