Experimenting With Sub-Caliber Rounds

[ForeveraCadet]

Hello, one day in my random browsing of YouTube I came across a slow motion video of a APFSDS (Armor piercing discarding sabot) round fired at slow motion. The thought of having a much smaller version that could maybe penetrate a 2x4 intrigued me. Needless to say after an hour I came up with a silly method. My sabot, a large nail with duct tape fins worked great when fired out of a 1.5in PVC at 100psi, but the problem was that my simple method of a cloth did not work well over longer ranges.

The cloth measured 3in by 8in and was folded in half long ways and then once again in half to form a 1.5in by 4in cloth with the round in the center. The cloth would often stick onto the round and travel with it, severly limiting its potential. While still fun to make pieces of wood explode at short range, I wanted more. After around 2 hours I had a better idea as my nail would no longer do.

The nail would often bend upon impact and would not fully penetrate. I went further and used a steel eye ring, cut off the eye, used a bench grinder to crudely get rid of the threads. I added four fins to the back and it weighed in at 81 grams to 69 of the nail, perfect. Now for the hard part. I used a drill boring tool to get a 1.5in diameter by 1.5in height wooden dowel. I drilled it to fit my new round and cut it in half. The next step was to make it a tight fit with some duct tape and add a for sure method of making it separate from the round.

To do this, I put a few strips of duct tape that was around half an inch higher than the petals so that upon exiting the barrel it would have to split off. All in a days work but I knew that the petals would fly off of the round and it wouldn’t work, sure enough. When fired, the petals flew away to visit grandma’s house and the beautiful round went a stunning 6 feet.

What have you done for petals on a sub caliber round?

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

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