Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Question: Why Aren't Sabots Accurate and Used More?

Sabots should be the best idea since sliced bread. Consider that if you take a .300 magnum case and straighten it out to .458, you get 2.21 times the force pushing on the bullet ((.458*.458)/(.308*.308)). You will get tremendously higher velocity, provided you can seal the .458 bore with the .308 bullet. Thus a lightweight plastic sabot should allow you to shoot a .308 165 grain bullet from a .458 faster than from any .308 diameter bore.

Further, with different sized sabot/bullet combinations, you should be able to shoot .224 55 grain bullets faster than 4000 fps, .264 bullets faster than a .264 Winchester, and so forth up to .458 grain elephant bullets at .458 velocities. All with one rifle.

The military uses sabots for artillery. Shotgun slugs with sabots are very common. Yet the only commercial rifle-caliber attempt I know about consisted of .224 bullets with sabots fired from 30-06 and 30-30 cases. They were very inaccurate and I don't think are made any more.

So how come someone can't come up with an ACCURATE sabot/bullet combination and make all current rifles and cartridges obsolete?

Indy,

Consider that is what jacketed bullets essentially are or were in their infancy.

I think there is definitely the possibility, but why? You are dealing with even greater un-balance issues, not to mention cost. You must not have to buy ridiculously priced shotgun sabots for your rifled shotgun; if you did you would think otherwise.

Factory ammo barely makes straight ammo as it is, throwing more stuff into the equation, it ain't gonna get straighter without higher$ QC.

There is the 160gr. Barnes bullet for the 338 (for varminting?), 250's for big stuff. 30 cal is covered pretty well too. Come to think of it the 224 cals make dandy deer guns. Its pretty much already out there to a degree, but "shoeless".

Indy,

The sabot would have to be made of unobtanium.

The military sabots are not plastic, and they are funded by OPM (Other Peoples' Money). The military has figured out how to launch fin-stabilized projectiles from smooth tubes. Unfortunately this technology has not scaled down to small caliber rifles.

The most work has been done since Remington's Accelerators (.30-30, .308, .30-'06) has been with pistol bullets in plastic sabots for muzzleloaders. I have shot the single sabot loads, and also some dual-sabot, sabot in sabot, to get smaller bullets from a .50" ML. Accuracy will suffer with these if the barrel is too hot. Remington also reportedly used a special powder. You can also shoot these rigs from a Savage ML with smokeless powder.

Much more work needs to be done to make this concept work.

Besides rifle loonies don't want to be limited to one rifle.

jim

My personal take on the subject having fired only about 40 Rem Accelerators before giving up on them. I beleive the tremendous pressures in a rifle as opposed to shotguns really swedge the sabot tightly on the sub caliber projectile which in turn makes it hard to be discarded. From what I could see, the sabots were at far different drop off points, some almost out to 100 yards. I am sure a stuck on sabot does nothing good for the sub caliber round and definatly will affect its trajectory.

I have a hard time believing that both sides of the two-piece sabots peel away at exactly the same instant, which to me would throw things out of whack. By the same token, it is difficult for me to believe that all the fingers of the Accelerator-type sabots peel back at the same exact moment either. Just thoughts from a perpetually confused mind.

hey
Try paper patching. Its a sabot you will be surprised at the results.
BB

"Tremendously" I doubt; "more" is certain. Yes, at the moment of peak pressure, you get about 2.2 times the acceleration, but this acceleration must fall off much more rapidly. The .458 also sweeps out 2.2 times as much volume, volume which must be filled with new gases if the pressure--and thus the acceleration--is to be kept up. Unfortunately, the case isn't any bigger so you don't have an extra supply of propellant grains to provide the gases needed.

Look at it this way. Both cartridges have the same amount of propellant. This means the same amount of energy is available for transfer as kinetic energy to the bullet. Since the peak pressure is the same for both, the only way to increase the efficiency of this energy transfer is to up the expansion ratio the gases undergo. This the sabot does nicely, and this is why sabot rounds have higher speeds. If you play around with a Powley Computer (or any of the more capable internal ballistics software) you'll find the sabot of your example gives you something over 10% more fps, which isn't quite "tremendous."

Actually, the very first Remington Accelerators shot pretty well, at least in .30-06. They sent me a case of them when the round first appeared in the late 1970's, and they shot about like standard ammo in the two .30-06's I had then, a sporterized 1917 Enfield and a Remington 760 pump--about an inch for 3-shot groups in the '17 and about 1.5" in the 760. I had a heck of a lot of fun shooting running jackrabbits with the Accelerators in the 760.

But accuracy of later lots was not nearly as good. What did they do differently in the first batch? I dunno, but suspect it was a "pre-production" lot, not mass-produced as much as the later stuff. So the potential is there....

In 1987, I bought 20 rounds of Remington Accelerator sabots and 20 rounds of Federal Premium 168-grain ammo for my brand new 30-06. At 100 yards, both types of ammunition grouped within a couple of inches. Since this was my first experience with a big game hunting rifle, I felt satisfied that I could aim well enough to hunt at that distance.

Later that day, I decided to use the 200-yard range. All of the 168-grain bullets grouped within a few inches. Half of the Accelerators could not hit the paper target. Some of the Accelerators that did hit the paper impacted sideways as evidenced by the elongated holes. Since then, I�ve never entertained the thought of using Accelerators for varmint hunting.

I have no idea why the Accelerators were so inaccurate at longer distances. Obviously, the army�s tank corps has solved the sabot accuracy problem but that technology hasn�t reached us yet.

With conventional powders sabots are about the only direction to
move with interior ballistics. The larger diameter captures more force from the pressure. This results in higher acceleration of the lighter bullet. The over the counter bullets seem to shoot ok (usually). I have tried a 45 ge 22 bullet in a Webley MKVI,
not a great combination. There is room for improvement with these thinga.
good luck!

Has anybody tried the 30 cal sabots loaded with 22 cal bullets. They are readily available from EA Brown. In fact, I have a bunch in my basement but have never gotten around to checking them out.