So, a soldier showed up today with a badly corroded 50 caliber cartridge. It still had a live primer and powder in it. He began to try to pull the bullet with his Gerber tool, and I suggested that might not be the smartest activity in the world. He shrugged me off and I left the area. He managed to pull the bullet, and then set the powder on fire. Yeah, not the brightest bulb here.

I decided to try and look up some incidents where people have sustained injuries pulling bullets without the proper tools-I know that I've seen them before. All I found though were anecdotal reports like "My friends buddy lost an eye that way"...nothing reliable.

Now I'm fairly certain this wasn't a smart thing to do-but I'd love some backup.

Not bullet pulling, but somewhere I have a newspaper clipping, courtesy of my Grandmother who saved EVERYTHING, about my Dad when he was a boy. He found an old shell (don't know what kind, he said it was an artillery shell) and decided to take it apart, all went well until he stuck a screwdriver thru the primer and burned himself. This probably happened sometime in the 1920's or early 1930's.

I can remember pulling the bullets from .22 cartridges to play with the powder. I used pliers but found it too labor intensive to be worth the effort.
Still have both eyes and all my fingers.
I don't see any inherent danger in using a multi-tool on a .50 caliber cartridge. It's not like it's filled with nitro-glycerin.

Not bullet pulling, but when I saw this one, I laughed my ass off.

http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2010/0 ... ber-round/

Be sure to click the link on that page to see the non-blurred pic.

And the money quote:



I pull 5.56 bullets with a Gerber all the time at the range. With a .50, I'm not going to risk the above injury.

I don't really see how you could injure yourself pulling the bullet unless in trying you managed to slip and hit the primer or your hand on something hard and pointy. Just seems like it wouldn't be worth the effort.

I often use a hammer type kinetic puller. No problems so far. I also knock out live primers with the de-capping pin.
Lighting powder on fire is one of the privleges of being a boy.

My best bud in theater did it all the time. He collected the powder from at least 2 rounds per mission over the course of 9 months. When we finished our TOA we lit it off as our fireworks celebration.

Provided it's not an incendiary round.

You may need to seek out another forum for that backup - one where a keen spirit of adventure, a well-developed independent streak, and notable lapses in good judgement are not requirements for posting.

This was my thoguht as well, the only danger would be if it was an Incendiary or HE round.

Alright then, it seems maybe I was being a little uptight. As far as I could tell, this wasn't an incendiary round. Now I'm feeling a bit silly. Happens to the best of us some days.

Thanks guys!

Wait if I'm not mistaken aren't you an officer?

Don't bash yourself up about it mate. If you don't ever mess with ammo (or hang around those that do) you are never going to be the one everbody talks about. You know, that guy in the cautionary tale. It was 'probably' safe...but a badly corroded round? That set my spider senses off, you had no idea why it was corroded. Time, water, battery acid??? Who knows.

Think I would have followed you out the door too.

Cheers - Rusty

My rule of thumb for safe activities is: as long as it's NOT preceded by the phrase "hold my beer" and "watch this", it should be good-to-go.

Let this be a lesson to all. A .50 cal round does not a hammer make.

Nope. I'm a lowly E-4 68 Whiskey. I *might* get my E-5 when I get back, but medics require about 200 more points than most MOS's so I'm not at that point yet.

Can you still get points for completing correspondence courses and other approved training (with more points for higher grades)?

Mike, I believe so, but I haven't had good (reliable and regular) internet/computer access until recently, and this is a temporary location. If I find I'm going to be here more permanently I might give it another shot. I've still got 3 more years, and I'm planning to be back in school when I return-that was the plan before I was offered deployment anyhow.

Consider yourself lucky, when I was doing my correspondence courses, there was no Internet - it was ALL BY MAIL.

I knew a young company commander once who disassembled a 105mm HEAT shell with a hacksaw and a pair of channel-lock pliers. I didn't go back into his TOC for weeks.

All of my correspondence courses were done by... correspondence and the US Mail.

Just damn...... That is incredibly stupid.

As a kid I spent many hours with pliers on .22's to harvest the powder. Two things about that:
1 - If I had thought about the fact that Grandpa had cans and cans and cans of the stuff, I would have driven him crazy with my pyromania.
2 - Knowing now what I didn't then about ammunition, it's a bit of a miracle that I never discharged one of those rimfires while monkeying with it!

If it was me, I'd use a pipe cutter, and cut the case just above the neck/shoulder junction, with the cartridge standing up.


HTRN