Will the solid copper alloy bullets ……..

[762willdo]

like the varmint grenade etc. come apart as easily as jacketed bullets if spun to fast……
What say you all

 

[CJ6]

The varmint grenade is not solid copper. They have a powdered copper/zinc core.

 

[Capt. Oblivious]

No solid copper wont

 

[dellet]

Depends on the bullet design.

A solid copper target bullet, no.

An expanding hunting or self defense bullet, possibly. It won’t “explode” in flight, but the petals can open up. 350,000 rpm creates a lot of stress.

Subsonic bullets shot faster than designed is the best example. But bullets designed for a 1/10 twist shot in a 1/5 can be interesting.

 

[762willdo]

I have some 50grn varmint grenades and a 7 twist 22-250AI I wanted to try and was wondering if I was wasting my time……

 

[RegionRat]

I have some 50grn varmint grenades and a 7 twist 22-250AI I wanted to try and was wondering if I was wasting my time……

I have managed to blow up varmint bullets in 7 twist. I was only testing some firing pin spring changes and my only concern was ignition, but many of the 40 and 50 VMax rounds turned into a grey puff just beyond the muzzle, and those were only 223 velocity. YMMV

 

[big5ifty]

Not at all.

 

[ronemus]

Copper alloy bullets come in a wide variety of types. Monolithic high-BC target bullets won't expand in the normal sense - they are literally solid and it would take an impact on armor plate to deform then. Sintered cores have already been described above. Copper hunting/defense bullets are designed to fracture or expand, and would be expected to behave like their lead-cored brethren; these could come apart if spun too fast. There isn't a magic solution and you have to respect the design intent.

 

[Ned Ludd]

The reason a bullet comes apart when spun too fast is failure of the jacket. In some cases, friction from land engravement of the bullet bearing surface can actually cause the surface of the lead core underneath to melt. The melted lead from the core will find a crack or pinhole in the jacket and spew out, sometimes leaving what have been called "comet tails" on the target around the bullet hole if the distance is sufficiently short that the bullet/jacket hasn't completely come apart before hitting the target. Because they don't have a jacket or a lead core, monolithic copper solids will not undergo that particular process when pushed hard and/or overspun. That is not to say there isn't some rate of spin that could cause a copper monolithic to come apart. Everything has a breaking point. Realistically though, we are probably not pushing or spinning copper solid bullets fast enough to reach that point.