Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire WTH?! .308 burns right thru 3/8" AR-500?!?!

Hey guys,

Thought I'd post pics of what happened out shooting with a friend today.

I had previously bought some of the AR500 steel plates for shooting and so far they have held up perfect and been quite fun to blaze away at. They've been hit to date with .22LR, .45 ACP, 6.5-284, 7-08, .308 Win, .35 Whelen and .375 H&H at ranges from 20 yds to 500 with no ill effects.

Today my buddy and I took his young nephew out for his first time shooting (he did quite well on the .22 and .45 ACP). We set up at about 100 yds with the .308 to see if he wanted to try something bigger but he wasn't down with that for today so we threw a few down range and then moved back to what ended up being 170 yds.

After my strap came loose on one side we walked down to replace it and noticed three clean holes right through the plate! Two other shots dimpled the plate significantly. They were not there from the 90 yd shots.

He was shooting that Australian ADI surplus ammo he picked up years ago on the cheap. It comes in little blister packs of 5 rounds and says "7.62 Ball, F4, AFF, 31.12.90AB" on the packs. I think they are supposed be in the 147gr range.

Anyway, after seeing the holes in my AR500 plates we went and looked at the bullets more carefully and could see what appears to be a slight visual difference in the tips. The only thing we could surmise is some type of AP round mixed in? Perhaps this is why the lots were sold as surplus? That's the only explanation we could think of.

We had fired about 50 rounds last week at ranges from 150-325 yds and had no dimples whatsoever with the same ammo from the same box; hence, our total surprise at the perforating abilities of said ammo!

Anyone had this experience with military surplus ammo? We were a bit bummed to see the AR500 plate pierced so easily (and cleanly) out of the 'lowly' .308 Win. I did remark that if "Red Dawn' ever comes to pass he has his APC ammo! Ahh, a child of the Cold War era!

We were shooting under high tension power lines so I told him perhaps it realigned the molecular structure in the steel and we best wear out foil helmets!

Seriously, anyone have any theories? It HAS to be different bullets even though they look, outwardly, almost identical, right?

Here are some pics--notice how clean they punched through-like a plasma cutter.

Note last pic--you can see this 'difference' in many of the bullets now that we are looking for it. We quit shooting at the plate so can't confirm if the different looking ammo is the culprit.

Gotta be some unmarked AP stuff mixed in there. I've heard of other folks' AR-500 gettin swiss-cheesed by AP before anybody knew what was up.

Yep, must be some AP in there. Hope you can find a way to reliably differentiate them before your targets look like Swiss cheese!

I had some ADI .303 British ammo years ago. The seller told me it was armor-piercing before I bought it so I was not surprised at that, but I was surprised that there was no paint codes on the bullets like the US and many other countries used. All my ammo looked just like a FMJ too.

I recall that ammo was loaded HOT too -- those Aussies don't fool around!

John

I haven't done a lot of steel shooting, but I have learned that a .22-250 launching 50 grain varmint bullets will easily hole 1/4" steel plate at 100 yards. Equally interesting - there were paper targets nearby, with little gray streaks all over them. I finally realized it was molten metal from the plate strikes.

It looks to me like the round on the right has had a painted tip removed. I would suspect it was a black tipped AP round. Never played around with trying this but perhaps a compass would react to the hard core.

Weld two togather then see what happends

Maybe check the remaining rounds with a magnet to see if some attract the magnet & some don't?

Please elaborate on "molten metal" from hitting the plates????????

Your sure they didn't come from the 22LR

+1 on the magnet! We have one on a long handle at our range & check ALL military ammo. So far our plates are lasting 2x - 3x longer than before. It also makes picking up those dang steel cases real easy


Scott

Wish I had a photo of them, it took me a while to figure out what they were. Most of the gray streaks were 1/16 to 1/8" wide, and a few inches long. If you've seen any of those high-speed photos of bullets splattering on steel, I believe it was the lead core of the bullets melting under the impact, and being turned into small molten droplets. The paper target was a foot or two behind the steel plates, and 3-4 feet to the side.

If you watch this video, at 2:00 you will see a few cases where lead clearly looks like it is turning to liquid after a strike.

The other key question is, how well does this Aussie ammo shoot? I may want some

Fire another round with one of the "suspect" rounds and then you gonna know.

I got a bit of time to pull the bullets and weigh and measure them. Of course, this is just a sample of one each but the suspected AP round weighed in at exactly 144 gr and the other at 143.5. The 'AP' round was also .01" longer from the base of the bullet to the ogive.

Assuming those discrepancies would hold over a larger sample, they are definitely different somehow (although I don't know the tolerances on mil-spec ammo).

I couldn't find a strong enough magnet to test at home so I'll try work tomorrow.

Instead of cheesing out our plates we'll just save that ammo for really tough stuff--you know, clay pigeons!

P.S. I'll have to chrono these out of curiosity to see what they're running. Both cases had 44.0 gr of what looked like RL15.

The legs of my stand are peppered with bullet frags (streaks) and the sandbags I was using to help hold my stand actually got shredded from shrapnel off the plates! I am going to make some new ones out of old inner tubes--they should hold up better.

It doesn't look like a AP 7.62 hole. No doubt you were shooting a .308 but it doesn't look like the hole AP makes in AR500. imho

I've some 'speriments with various ammo and metal...AP sheds it's gown and the penetration hole is sub-caliber. Its different when it comes to high velocity, blended metal projectiles of light weight.

AR500 is a better steel than just mild plate....

But I used to shoot 90 fmj in 243 for turkeys... it would blow right though 3/8 plate steel I had cut out for plates... I was young, but easily amazed..

Holes don't look like 50 AP rounds through 1 inch plate that I have shot before.

They don't call them high powered rifles for nuthin!

Alan

For what its worth; great shooting!

I've used this stuff, but not on plates. The only thing odd about it for me was occasionally you'd come accross a hot load. Bang...Bang...BLAM!...Bang, type thing. It was occasional enough to make me not buy anymore.