Mystery object

On another forum someone has found this in his Dad's old tool box. These are the pictures they posted.

It looks like a bullet, except for the radial cut near the blunt end.

Any ideas what it could be - something from a workshop machine or device? A plumb bob? If anyone knows I will pass the information on.

Thanks in advance.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 05/03/2022 10:26:34

Almost certainly started life as a rifle bullet . 0.375" is the calibre for a Winchester or several other hunting rifles.

Why the groove - to hang from a cord as a trophy?

It has been through a rifled barrel so is a projectile. Likely .300 calibre.

Definitely a bullet that someone has taken a hacksaw to. Dave W

Might be possible to identify the make of the bullet and the rifle from which it was fired it by:

• weighing the bullet
• measuring the length and ogive (pointy curve)
• counting the number of rifling marks
• noting if the rifling is left or right-hand twist

Another clue: the pink stripes suggest Copper.

Dave

Many years ago I visited a house locally (norfolk) and was shown a bucket well filled with bullets, most if not all were 1/2" machine gun and armour piercing ! I was given some and told to skim off the front, pointy bit, brass, remove the lubricant, lead, and then use as a dot punch ! 30 years later I'm still using them, they don't go blunt ! The ones with a small hole in the blunt end were tracer rounds ! Where had they come from ? The gunnery ranges at Snettisham Beach, IF you want something larger go to Holme beach - still littered with 6Lber shells ! Noel.

Hmm certainly a bullet. Likely from a rifle, but unusually pointed. Looks old. Despite "375" and "38" being common caliber / cartridge designations, most are for pistols. Of the rifle "38" "375" calibers few of the bullet diameters are actually 0.375". Possibly a odd european 9.5mm.
The "obvious" 375 Winchester is unlkely becaus it as A: modern (late 1970s) and B: has to use flat or hollow nose bullets as the rifles used tubular magazines. Stacking pointed centerfire rounds end to end is not a good idea.

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 05/03/2022 13:04:29

Agreed 'tis a bullet by all appearances, but an odd one.

From the shape you might call it a boattailed spire point. But most spire point bullets are softnosed hunting projectiles and usually short, light and flatbased to allow a high velocity and flat trajectory over shortish ranges with light recoil - for smaller targets, sometimes 'varmints'.

This ain't none o' those things. It's got to weigh about 300 grains, and if those rifling marks (note the left-hand twist) are real - they're not especially clear in either pic - then it's been fired into something providing very light and uniform resistance to bring it to a halt without severe scoring and/or distortion. .303 full metal jackets typically bend double or even snap in two in range sandtraps as they topple and try to turn over under deceleration. Perhaps this particular bullet flew a full trajectory in air and only hit the ground spent with little energy remaining.

Left hand twist is a characteristic of 303 and some other British calibres of late C19 and early C20 - I don't know whether Holland and Holland used it in their .375" Magnum big-game rifles, but I doubt a modern (almost certainly US or perhaps Czech) maker would do so.

Is there anything hard, like tungsten carbide, at the bottom of that saw cut?

Edited By Mick B1 on 05/03/2022 14:00:05

Something soft to slow it down, water!

Something soft to slow it down, water!

Yes I agree that it is the head of a bullet. But I do not think it has been fired the marks on it are too straight and are more consistent with it being pulled from the casing.

Might the slot be the result of a hacksaw being used to release it from the propellant case ? Noel.

I’m certainly not a centre-fire expert, but I am in agreement with Derek. Not fired, copper jacketed, lead mostly and weight would need adjustment for the missing saw cut.

0.375 is a common size and certainly not 0.303. Could even have been for a rifle or shotgun/rifle, for game hunting.

Likely suspended as a bob weight by someone in the past. Certainly nothing mysterious about it except for the gun that would have used it.

Possibly experimentally test fired in a lab to avoid damage, perhaps to confirm bullets weren't being mangled inside the barrel. The saw cut might be part of an investigation, though I don't see any reason for it.

Dave

Could be left over from the Zulu Wars ? Who knows ?

No chance. 1879. Brass-cartridge, breech-loading rifles were in use, but blunt round-nosed, paper-patched lead slugs of .450" calibre and upwards - and the brass was rolled foil 'n' coil, not solid-drawn. Nothing like the bullet shown.

But Derek Lane could be right - oddly, my phone shows the OP pics more clearly than my monitor, and they could be extraction scores from pulling the bullet. There are a few ways of doing that without mangling the ogive and bearing surface with pliers. I'm wondering if the hacksaw cut allowed the case body to be broken away, and the bullet was then driven from the remains of the neck by a punch from behind, into a 3/8" drilled hole to retain the the neck

There's an MTAC 352 grain match bullet that looks quite a lot like it, but that has a tiny hollow point (not intended for expansion) whereas this one looks to have a small spherical rad on the nose. I think it's a pretty modern target bullet.

Edited By Mick B1 on 05/03/2022 17:30:42

I have found 303's in sand traps that are still straight, maybe they were fired at 1000 yards, or maybe the dampness of the sand was a factor.

That one looks like a boat tail spitzer with a solid nose.

Edited By old mart on 05/03/2022 20:26:53

Regards to the groove round the base of the bullet. I have a couple of inert .303 bullets ammunition and both of the bullets have a groove near the base. As regards to the boat tail if you Google ".303 inch Ball Mark VI to VIIIz & L1A1" you will find an explanation. I vaguely remember reading that .303 machine gun rounds for aircraft had a boat tail end and should not be fired in .303 rifles as the charge was too powerful.

Hope this is useful.

Oh dear, new problem: is the bullet fired or not? Derek might well be right! Searching internet Images failed to find a good photo of actual grooves in a bullet of comparable condition. Only clean shots of tidy grooves in undamaged shiny new bullets, and untidy close ups of bullets mangled by hitting something. Any chance of several well focussed pictures of the object next to a scale?

My interest in guns is the development of artillery up to WW2 and I have to rely on the unreliable web because I don't have any technical books covering small-arms. However, the form of the bullet is 'modern', 1900 or later. It looks like the standard G7 form described in Wikepedia's article on External Ballistics:

Wikipedia's source is here and it says 'The standard that bears the closest resemblance to most modern long range bullets is the G7 standard.' I think G7 form confirms Mick's view that the object is a modern target bullet, where 'modern' means any time from the early 20th Century up to today. Wikipedia's source also mentions the book 'Applied Ballistics For Long Range Shooting', which contains 'experimentally measured Ballistic Coefficient (BC) data for over 175 long range bullets of all popular brands'. Given the weight and dimensions might be possible to identify the bullet from the book.

Dave

I thought it departed from G7 profile in that the pointy bit ahead of the bearing surface, or most of it, appears to be a simple cone, not the G7's 10-calibre radius. That's why I called it a spire point. I think it's more modern than early C20 and may be quite recent, as interest in long bullets with high sectional density for long-range target shooting seems (to me at any rate) to have developed more strongly in the last 20 or 30 years.

In a normal-weight rifle in .375 H&H, it's likely to produce fierce recoil.