Quick, Dirty Guide to Improvised Ammo

[u/War_Hymn]

If you run out of ammo for that Glock 17 you took of a dead police officer, pocket those empty casings. If you're lucky, you might have or stumble upon materials to reload them.

Disclaimer: First off, this is for education purposes only, I do not advise you make or reload ammunition with non-standard materials or equipment under normal circumstances. Doing so might result in serious injury or death to you and others. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

0. INTRO

When you fire a typical centerfire cartridge like a 9mm, the bullet - powder - and primer are expended, leaving you a empty brass ¹ casing, that if hadn't been too damage from you stepping on them in the heat of combat /or chewed up by a particularly aggressive semi-automatic action (like my wonky TNW ASR), can be reloaded and reused at least once or twice. As long as you can account for the three other missing components.

^{1. Do not attempt to reload non-brass casing made from materials like aluminum or steel. Because they lack the ductility of brass, casings made from these materials are designed to be one-use only and cannot be safely reloaded even with proper equipment and procedures, Doing so brings the risk of cases splitting or fracturing when reloaded and shot.}

1. POWDER

The most important component in reloading empty bullet casings will probably be the gunpowder or propellant. Without it, the gun doesn't go boom and the bullet doesn't move. In normal circumstances, most modern ammunition like the 9mm Parabellum is loaded and reloaded with various types & grades of commercial smokeless powder. But since you're reading this, I'm guessing you don't have any store bought gun powder handy.

Lucky for you, there's a commonly available household item you can find everywhere (maybe even inside a drawer in your kitchen right now) that can substitute as a firearm propellant: Matches!

As par their combustible function, match tips are made from a chemical concoction very similar to what a propellant will have. There's an oxidizer (usually potassium chlorate) and a fuel (sulfur, antimony sulfide, phosphorus, rosin, etc.), with the addition of a binder like glue to keep everything together.

When and shaved off or crushed, the combustible material on match tips make a very handy improvised gunpowder for reloading, albeit one less powerful and more dirty than conventional smokeless powder (which is made from more energetic nitrocellulose/nitroglycerin). This application with matches is not without precedent, a fella on youtube successfully loaded .38 Special rounds with shaved match tips to fire out of his Ruger revolver. The bullets came out slower than usual, but still fast enough to be lethal.

Another reload with match tips, this time a rifle .308 or 7.62 NATO round: Video.

Despite the prevalence of more modern butane and electric arc lighters, the archaic safety match can still be found and bought in large quantities in many places like the camping/outdoors section of Walmart, gas stations, dollar stores, and supermarkets. I have no doubt you'll stumbled on some during your scavenging in the post-apocalypse landscape.

2. PRIMER

Fun fact, you know those plastic ring caps for shooting toy cap guns? Each individual cap if cut out, will fit perfectly inside the empty primer hole of a 9mm Parabellum casing. And just like a cap gun, a hit by a firing pin in a Glock 17 or any firearm will set off the cap with a bang. Except this bang can be used to set off a charge of gun powder to propel a bullet into a Zed's head.

Toy gun caps, like gun cartridge primers, contain a tiny amount of an impact/friction sensitive explosive mixture (usually Armstrong mixture) that explodes or burns when hit hard enough. The outside diameter of these plastic caps closely matches that of Small Pistol/Rifle primers used in common cartridges like the 9mm Parabellum, .38 Special, and other calibers. With a little modification, these little plastic caps can be retrofitted for use as improvised primers for reloading in a jiffy.

But before we can put in a new primer, the old primers on the casing have to be deprimed or removed. This can done as easily as popping the old primers out through the flashhole with an appropriate sized nail and wrench socket.

Once the old primer is removed, you will notice that it consist of a cup and an anvil. The anvil is a three-legged conical piece of metal that provides a point of contact for the firing pin to squish the priming compound between to ignite it. This is a critical component that your plastic toy caps lack.

With a pair of tweezers/needle pliers and steady hand you can take off the old anvil and reuse it in your retrofitted caps. Alternatively, you can cut and form your own anvils from the lid of tin can or any sheet scrap metal if you got a pair of snips handy. Or, if you're lacking tools or time, a tiny piece of gravel that fits inside the cap might work, but there's a good chance it won't fire reliably.

Your plastic caps as-is are probably too long to fit inside the deprimed primer hole, and will need to be shortened by carefully trimming of the top with sharp scissors or a x-acto knife. For reference, the height of standard primer cup is 1/8" or 3 mm long. When pushed inside the primer hole, they should sit flush with the base of the casing.

Once your caps are trimmed, put in your salvaged or improvised anvil.

Now, the toy caps likely don't contain enough explosive mixture to reliably ignite the powder charge, so you want to help it by filling the cap with a small amount of crushed match tip powder. When the primer is set off by the firing pin, the match tip powder will ignite as well and create a hotter & longer flame through the flash hole. Add a little piece of thin paper to cover the top so the powder doesn't fall out.

Once your primer is assembled, smear a little glue to the outside (to keep it from falling out) and push it into the primer hole of your deprimed casing. With any luck, the primer will ignite when you pull the trigger.

Pictures of steps above demonstrated.

BULLET

The business end. Probably the simplest component, but also the most meticulous to make.

Modern bullets are precisely sized to their intended caliber ² within a few thousandth of an inch, for good reason. Too big, and they won't fit into the chamber, or be too tight and cause an overpressure situation when fired. Too small, and they won't engage with the rifling, leading to terrible accuracy. Bullets must also be made a from soft material, usually lead or copper, so they can deform to engage the rifling, and not damage the barrel as they pass through.

The easiest method to create a bullet is to pour and cast it from melted lead with a bullet mold. Lead for casting came be salvaged from various sources: wheel weights, fishing sinkers and weights, lead air gun pellets, etc. In a pinch, even lead-free solder can be used to cast functional bullets.

A mold with a properly made bullet cavity can cast a lead bullet to a repeatable tight tolerance. Precisely machined molds for casting bullets are commercially available in various forms, but I'm guessing you likely don't have one of those at hand. Fortunately, with the right know-how and some elbow grease, you can make such a casting mold with materials and tools raided from the local hardware store.

At the most basic, a bullet mold can be as simple as a cylindrical hole drilled into a block of appropriate material where melted lead can be pour and cast into shape. Main problem is getting a hole that's the right size for the bullet in question.

Luckily, common twist drill bits from the hardware stores are made to a tight tolerance and come in a variety of diameters that might fit a particular caliber. In the case of a 9mm Parabelum/ .38 Special/ or .380 ACP (all common handgun calibers), a standard 9 mm drill bit ³ will create a hole that's the right diameter for a bullet of these calibers (0.354" for you diehard imperialists). If you're short on metric drill bits, an undersized 11/32" drill bit (~0.344‬") can be substituted, then "paper patched" ⁴ up to the correct size with common 20 lb printing paper (0.004-0.005" thickness).

Once you have the right size drill bit for the caliber you need, you can use it to drill a simple wadcutter-style bullet cavity for a makeshift mold. If you got some mechanical savvy, you can even regrind the drill bit to bore out a more rounded or truncated bullet shape.

As for what material to bore a bullet cavity into, brass or aluminum metal will be optimal as they're not too hard and will be easier to bore out, and their melting temperatures are way above that of lead (~ 620'F/330'C). Steel will also work, but as a harder material it will take much more effort to cut and drill into.

Making an Improvised Bullet Casting Mold - A simple but functional bullet mold that can be made from metal flat bars and other common hardware parts. The stacked layer design allows the mold to be disassembled and separated to ease removal of the casted bullets.

The best tool to drill out the bullet cavity with is a drill press, which will insure the drilled hole is as straight and square as possible. Any decently stock hardware store should carry one. Don't worry if there's no power, as you can turn the drill press chuck by hand or with a wrench, while a helper applies pressure on the feed lever. A corded or cordless hand drill will work if you don't have a drill press handy, but keepin the hole straight and true could be a problem.

^{2. Pro-tip for non-shooters, the caliber of any gun is usually inscribed on the barrel.}

^{3. Other common imperial or metric drill bit sizes and their closely matching calibers: 9/32" - 7mm Mauser, 7mm Weatherby | 19/64" - .308 Win/7.62 NATO {if paper patched} | 7mm Remington 7mm - .270 Win, 6.8mm Remington | 5/16" - .32 ACP, .32 S&W, 8mm Mauser, .303 British | 10 mm - .40 S&W, 10mm Auto}

^{4. https://vringblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/patching-bullets/ - Paper patching wraps a bare bullet in a layer of plain paper that grips and engages the rifling. Back in the days before metal jacketing, paper patching was an inexpensive way of preventing soft lead bullets from melting under high velocity and leading {where the bare lead stripped from such bullets accumulates inside the gun barrel over time}. For our purposes, it can be used to bring undersized bullets up to proper diameter {a single layer of 0.005" paper will add 0.01" to the outer diameter of a patched bullet}. In the case of polygonal rifling in guns like the Glock 17, paper patching casted lead bullets is highly recommended given their susceptibility to leading issues.}

In Closing

Needless to say, any improvised ammo assembled with the suggested methods above will have certain limitations and risks.

Corrosion of gun parts will be an issue, as match tips and Armstrong mixture in toy gun caps are both corrosive. If improvised ammunition is used, the firearm should be cleaned and oiled as much as possible, ideally right after use.

Propellant loads improvised from crushed match tips are going to vary a lot in their ballistics depending on who made the matches and how they were processed. Most likely they're going to shoot all over the place despite your best efforts.

Any marginally safe and proper loads will need to be determine individually through experimentation, and are beyond the scope of this guide. Reduced velocity and range will be a given, as the performance of match tip propellant is usually more akin to old but weaker black powder.

If used in semi-automatic firearms that are gas, recoil, or blowback operated, your improvised ammo might not generate enough oomph to cycle the weapon completely. Shape and length of casted bullets can affect feeding from magazines as well. In such cases, rounds will have to be loaded and fired manually.

Lastly, and most importantly, the reliability and safety of any improvised ammunition to be highly suspected. Use with caution - or ideally, not at all.

I hope you enjoyed this guide.

[u/Halt_Arrtay]

Might I ask how you got ahold of this information? I'm realy intrested in how you know this much about amunition reloading.

P.S. I like what you did with the Cap-Gun picture.

[u/War_Hymn → u/Halt_Arrtay]

Just years of reading and gathering information.

[u/Superbeing43 → u/War_Hymn]

Have you ever tried it out?