HA2 11.5 – Lead Core and Brass Jacket
Lunch went in casual atmosphere. The menu was noddle soup prepared by Takeo. He use rice noddle and combined it with chicken stock. As for the topping, he used soft-boiled egg, fried tofu, shitake mushroom, enoki mushroom, slices of chicken breast, and lot of kimchi. It’s simple but very delicious and filling menu. Not to mention the three were starving.
Then, a moment after the three started their lunch Shizuka opened a conversation, “Hide, do our military personnel collects cartridge from their firearm training because they want to reload it?”
Hide calmly replied, “Special force and clandestine unit will use some of it for ammo recycling class, and send the rest to ammo manufacture the military has contract with.”
“Do you mean they don’t recycle every single cartridge they used?”
“No, and they also select the people who will attend the recycling class with a super strict criteria.”
“Why do they employ a strict selection?”
“To prevent uncontrolled circulation of firearm and its ammunition to the smallest potential.”
“I see,” Shizuka put a slice of fried tofu into her mouth before asking another question, “How do they carry the class?”
“They will give a 4-man recycling team about 2-3 tons used-cartridge, and asks them to reload or re-manufacture it into ready-to-use ammo in one month.
They took the syllabus from similar class in Americ JFK Special Warfare Center and School. It’s just that in JFK SWCS everyone can attend the class as long as they pass the screening test, and each student has to produce only a few hundreds improvised rounds.”
After nodding her head Shizuka said, “2-3 tons of cartridges will produce ten thousands of ammo.”
“Yeah, but they will use it only in training and can’t store it for more than six months.”
“They use it only in training?” Shizuka asked as she curiously looked at Hide.
Hide nodded a few times before explaining, “There is mandatory law that demands our military to use only standard issued weapon, ammo, and equipment in their operation. They can slightly bend this law in firearm training for special force and elite infantry unit, but breach it in a regular operation will send someone to martial court.”
“So, it’s only to increase the amount of firearm training.”
“Yes, but the main reason is actually,” Hide gulped down a piece of chicken meat he just chewed before continuing, “to prepare our country in case we have to conduct guerrilla warfare against invading force that defeats our military conventionally.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
In this kind of environment, improvised ammo, improvised weapon, improvised explosive and even improvised soldier will be vital to keep the fighting goes on.”
“Does our country really have a possibility where we have to carry guerrilla warfare against invading force? Isn’t our country has lot of powerful allies who will help us in case a war break out?”
“Well, who know if one day alien invade our country and our allies have some more important things to do. It’s better to be prepared rather than to regret later.”
“I see,” Shizuka calmly said.
Takeo who so far was only listening to the conversation decided to ask, “Hide, if we can recycle our ammo, then can we say we don’t need to buy ammo again?”
“You are partially correct,” Hide calmly replied. “It’s true that ammo recycling will enable us to train our marksmanship as much as we need without burning too much money, or leaving distinct trails from too many ammo transactions.
However, the amount of our ammo is still too small. We will need another big purchase to ensure we have enough. We will also include some barrels and kits in this purchase, and the main goal from our first small job is to fund this purchase.”
Takeo nodded and calmly said, “I see.”
“I will explain the detail for our first small job later. For now, let’s focus on ammo recycling.”
““Understood,”” Takeo and Shizuka replied at the same time.
---
After the lunch, Hide, Takeo, and Shizuka took their time to relax their mind for around 20 minutes. After that, they returned to firearm workshop to put together the lead core and the jacket into a projectile.
Setting the pressing machine to produce the desired projectile was still too complicated for Takeo and Shizuka. Not to mention, some type of projectile required the use of different dies in turn.
For now, Hide just wanted to produce the simplest projectile, 9 mm Para round nose, flat base, and full metal jacket. Even so, he had to sacrifice five pieces of jacket and lead core in the process. Some had the jacket split or cracked because the pressure was too strong, while some other had the lead core didn’t bounding properly with the jacket because the pressure was too weak. But in the end, he managed to find the correct set up.
After inspecting the sixth projectile he had just produced and didn’t found any defect, Hide handed it over to Takeo. “This is 9 mm Para round nose, flat base, and full metal jacket projectile.”
Takeo inspected the bullet for a moment, and when he found that he could see the lead in the base of the projectile he immediately asked, “Why the jacket doesn’t wrapped around the lead at the base of the projectile?”
“Because it’s the true form of full metal jacket projectile,” Hide calmly replied. “The jacket will fully wrap around the top and side part of the lead core, but let the base open. The purpose is to enhance the possibility for the projectile to split, expand, or fragment when it hit the target.”
Shizuka tilted her head before asking, “Do you mean the projectile that totally being wrapping around by its jacket, like the one we see in movie is not full metal jacket round?”
“That kind of projectile is total metal jacket round, usually is being used in .45 ACP or bigger caliber that emphasizes penetrating aspect.”
“I see,” Shizuka nodding her head before asking. “By using this firearm workshop, can we make total metal jacket projectile?”
“This firearm workshop is not just ordinary workshop. It can enable us to reverse engineer any existing projectile,” Hide happily replied. “Flat base, boat tail, concave base… Full metal jacket, total metal jacket, non-jacketed… round nose, hollow point, plastic tipped, open tip, spoon tip…. Lead core, leadless, steel core, tungsten core, depleted uranium core.
Heck, we can even reverse engineer the damnable projectile invented by Carlos the Jackal, but for now let’s stick to the basic.”
“Hide, I don’t fully get your point,” Shizuka weakly said, “but I get it that this firearm workshop is amazing.”
“That’s more than enough. Now, it’s your turn to put the lead core and the jacket together,” Hide calmly said. “Let’s start from Takeo.”
“Okay.”
Without delay Takeo sat in front of pressing machine. Hide then taught him the trick. Once the pressing machine was being setting properly, it would be very easy to seat the lead core into the jacket. The only thing that Takeo had to watch out was that he couldn’t apply too much lube on the jacket’s surface. A bit of touch using the tip of his finger was more than enough.
At the same time, he had to ensure the jacket interior and the lead core had no lube on it, or the lead would spin when he pressed it, and as a result the lead wouldn’t properly bonded with the jacket.
“Any question?” Hide casually asked.
“No,” Takeo calmly replied.
“You can start then.”
“Okay.”
After taking a deep breath Takeo immediately put a lead core into a brass jacket. After carefully applying the lube on the lower half of the jacket surface, he then put it into pressing die before pulling the lever all the way down until its lowest position. Hide then checked the result and he found that it was a good projectile without defect.
“Makes another fourteen projectiles before switching with Shizuka.”
“Okay.”
One by one Takeo then produced the projectile before switching with Shizuka. Pretty similar to Takeo, Shizuka didn’t find any difficulty and finished her share in no time. After that, Hide took the two to recycle the primer cups they previously collected from the cartridge.
*****