Has anyone ever tried loading wooden bullets? I thought about using some for practice. I would use a light load with Alox coated hollow base wadcutters. Any thoughts other than I have lost my mind!

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Tom
NRA Pistol Inst

I think those were very popular in Transylvania a while back.

Not wooden, but wax bullets used to be very popular for practice in the home

There were primer powered and good for 10 feet or so

I would think they would make great tracers when they catch fire!

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Tom
NRA Pistol Inst

I have a bunch of 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser practice ammo that indeed has a wooden tip....doesn't burn up when fired.....I have been pulling the bullets, dumping the powder, re-sizing them and shooting them in my 1896 Gustav Mauser....works great for me!

Randy

They cost a wooden nickle for a dozen.

Yes, they were. My buddy and I used wax bullets for quick draw stuff with our gunfighter style belts and holsters and single action revolvers back in the early 70s. We had a lot of fun. Plus, you just melted the fired bullets down, reformed them, and used 'em over and over. Kinda like casting lead bullets except without the lead hazards.

plastic training bullets
I once used these and now consider them as dangerous as the real thing and like the above posters prefer wax.
Remember Mr. JE Hexum "accidently" killed himself with the cork wad from a "blank".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon-Erik_Hexum

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Nemo

Is this for practice? I'd be a little concerned about the density of wooden projectiles. Obviously they aren't going to penetrate like lead, but they would still probably have more penetration than you might want.

Midway sells these rubber bullets that you shoot out of regular brass with just a primer as the propellent.

X-Ring Rubber Bullets 38 Cal (357 to 358 Diameter) Box of 50

Japanese and Germans both used wooden bullets during WWII. I'd always assumed it was because of shortages of materials but I've also read that wooden bullets would splinter and cause untreatable wounds. The wood was supposedly treated with chemicals that caused added pain.

Wooden bullets were for training not combat use.

They Swedes had an adapter that fit over the muzzle and shredded the bullets when fired.

Actually these rubber bullets work best when the primer flash hole has been drilled out. I have used the Speer plastic bullets and case. I think that they are less trouble than the rubber bullets and are accurate at short distances. Way back in the day, I shot a large dog in the hip with a .38 SPL Speer plastic. The dog wouldn't go away from my property and was intent on getting into my fenced back yard. After trying just about everything to scare it away, I shot it. It didn't do any damage, (the bullet bounced off) but it did the trick. Today the police would be called, the news media would be hounding me (pun intended) and the animal freaks would be picketing my house.

I think Gun Digest (the annual publication) carried an article on wooden
bullets in an issue many years ago.
Might be worth looking for.

In the little town I grew up in our postmaster was a disabled vet
of WW2, Italy. He was shot with wooden bullet. When I was kid
I herd that enemy caught with wood or clay bullets would be shot
on spot.

There were also used to propel rifle grenades.

ABOUT 20 YEARS AGO THERE WAS A INFLUX OF 308 WITH WOOD BULLETS. THEY WERE SOLD AS BLANKS. WOOD BULLET WAS TO DISINTEGRATE AS IT LEFT THE BARREL. MAN THEY WERE CHEAP. WE BOUGHT THEM IN GREAT QUANTITY. PULLED THE BULLETS WITH PLIERS AND DUMPED THE POWDER. WE THAN HAD VIRGIN BOXER PRIMED BRASS FOR AN HOUR'S WORK AND IF I REMEMBER RIGHT $39 PER K. WE PUT THE BLACK POWDER ON THE LAWN. JP

"Wooden" bullets were not used as anti-personnel rounds. Instead, these were blanks and the bullet-like tip insured easier chambering. They were used primarily to launch rifle grenades and while a blank cartridge can inflict serious and even fatal wounds up close, they were not used in place of conventional cartridges.

All military cartridges I know of loaded with wooden bullets were intended for use as blanks or for rifle grenades. The Danish Schouboe Automatic Pistol of the early 20th Century used an 11.35mm jacketed wooden-core bullet at a very high velocity. It wasn't too successful.

"When I was kid I herd that enemy caught with wood or clay bullets would be shot on spot."

At least in the Pacific theater, it was a common practice for U. S. forces to shoot captured Japanese soldiers on the spot, no matter what ammunition they had on them. Taking prisoners was frowned upon. Ask any Pacific vet.

I have some wooden dowel hardwood rods close to .358 in size. I thought of using them for practice bullets. I would use 3 GRS. of bullseye with a hollow base wadcutter. I didn't know if I should make the bullets undersize or stick to .358 in my 38 special guns.
My buddy suggested filling the hollow base with phosphorus or powdered magnesium for a tracer bullet! I would think that is a little illegal!

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Tom
NRA Pistol Inst

Well before I figured out a powder load for something like that, I would weigh different lengths that appear to be about the right projectile length and see what you have.

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14 S&W Revs none with locks!

There was an article on using wooden bullets in revolvers. It was in American Hangunner or Guns magazine back in the 1980s. It was titled "Dracula Droppers"! I think they used Oak dowels and they got some pretty awesome velocities!
I may still have the back issued stored away.....

Long. long ago I made up some 8mm Mauser cartridges using blank fire powder taken from .30-'06 military blank cartridges and wooden plugs cut from arrow shafts using a hacksaw, which were about the right diameter. They were fired in a bring-back 98K Mauser I had at the time. I remember the wooden bullets seemed to break up before they ever reached the target which was not that far away, maybe 25 feet or so.

I would think if I kept the velocity low, maybe 800fps or less then maybe the bullet will stay together. If not it would make a nasty shotgun!

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Tom
NRA Pistol Inst

I used magnum primers and was really surprised at how powerful they were. I set up enough layers of cardboard in my house to stop a flat nosed plastic bullet, or so I thought. Put some good dents in the sheet rock. I don't know about deadly, unless they hit a vulnerable spot, but I know they would HURT.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Guns magazine Dec. 1984 had the article on "Dracula Droppers"
I just dug it up reading it again. Using oak it lists a 17 gr. 44 magnum @3427 fps.using 20 grs. of WW231 powder.
The article had data for 38 special. 44 magnum, & 45 acp(didn't cycle in autos)

If I was inclined to make such a bullet then I wood (pun intended) lathe turn bullets made from Epe' a very dense brazillian hardwood that should hold up with a coating placed on the outside. It certainly "wood" be lethal especially with a flat on the nose.

One problem with lightweight wooden bullets of any length is that they are unlikely to be stable when fired from typical slow-twist barrels, and beyond fairly short distances you will have trouble hitting anything. I would imagine the ballistic drag coefficient would approach zero.

Wasn't there a GI who took like a thousand Japanese prisoners

"Wasn't there a GI who took like a thousand Japanese prisoners?"


I have no idea. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japane...n_World_War_II

My cousin was shot with a wooden bullet by a Japanese soldier during WWII. Surgeons gave him the bullet he kept it for years, lost it when his house burned down.

There was a guy who was American but was adopted and raised by Japanese family. He served in the Pacific and after seeing his friend get killed he went out and killed as many Japanese as he could, often by himself. Later he took a General and his whole division prisoners. ...by himself. It was something like that. Let me see if I can find the info

Here you go. Guy Gabaldon.

Japanese, they were ordered by their superiors on Saipan to kill seven American Marines or soldiers for every soldier they lost, or commit suicide

Gabaldon was reprimanded by his superior officers, and threatened with a court-martial for leaving his post. However, according to him the next night he went out and did it again. He carefully approached a cave, shot the enemy guards outside, moved off to one side of the cave, and yelled in Japanese, "You're surrounded and have no choice but to surrender. Come out, and you will not be killed! I assure you will be well-treated. We do not want to kill you!"
The next morning he says he returned with 50 Japanese prisoners. As a result, Gabaldon was permitted by his commanding officer to act as a "lone wolf" operator

July 8, Gabaldon captured two more enemy guards. He convinced one of them to return to his cave, with an offering of surrender. Shortly thereafter, a Japanese officer showed up. After speaking to Gabaldon, the officer accepted the conditions of surrender—and over eight hundred Japanese soldiers and civilians surrendered to Gabaldon, who turned them over to the U.S. military authorities. For his exploits, according to Gabaldon, he became known asThe Pied Piper of Saipan

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Gabaldon

My father was given an old black powder 45-70 that had the bullet molds and some other equipment but I was to young to remember what it was. It also had some wooden bullets and a few cartridges loaded with them. The bullets were hollow with thin walls and filled with lead shot.

You beat me to it

Look's like this..
Swedish rifles 1894 to 1960

Were wood bullets particularly damaging?

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Due to outrage and the fact that there were no facilities for the American soldiers, much less Japanese prisoners, they were shot even if they DIDN'T have any ammo on them. It happened in Europe at certain times too, for the same reasons. There were vets in a documentary telling these stories after years of silence and they were in agony living with the fact that, at least at one time, they had become like animals. Another blow to the 'romance' of war.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Growing up in the 1950s, I came to know quite a few vets who served in the Pacific and heard stories of brutality most would hardly believe. Later in life, for several years in the 1970s I had a good friend who had spent three years island-hopping in the Pacific campaign as a Navy Corpsman who hit the beaches with the Marines on numerous invasions, including Tarawa and Iwo Jima. The stories I heard from him surpassed anything I have ever read. According to him, living captured Japanese prisoners just didn't exist, at least not very long. In the rare instances when some enemy soldiers were captured, they were questioned to get whatever intelligence they could provide, then taken over the hill to be shot or get their throats cut - just like ISIS does now. He had what would today be called PTSD, but he and I got along very well, as I think I was about the only one who would listen to him, and he really needed someone who would listen non-judgmentally.

Man, I just wanted to do some target practice!

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Tom
NRA Pistol Inst

If you really want to hit something when you target practice, then I'd go another route. What's wrong with cast or swaged lead bullets?

I have plenty of them. But I also have some wood dowell rods laying around. I just wanted to know if anyone has tried making and shooting wood bullets and how it turned out.

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Tom
NRA Pistol Inst

Experienced soldiers had probably seen men killed by surrendering or "dead" Japanese soldiers who suddenly pulled out a hand grenade. It was also common to make sure the dead were really dead after a firefight.

I have a cannon with a 1.5 inch bore. I use a piece of doll rod that is 1.25 inch dia. about 3 inches long for a projectile. It goes about 100 feet and is turned into tooth picks. The charge behind it is 3oz. of black powder. It makes a really good kaboom.

My father, who served in the south Pacific, said that this was the case. He also said that he saw a lot of Japanese soldiers who had put a grenade to their head to commit suicide, as well as, a rifle. As for wooden bullets, I'd say fugedabouit!