Guns & Ammo Traders

For those of you casting your own bullets, try this sometime to create your own armor piercing rounds with a simple solution: Tungsten Carbide tire studs.

I suggested this years ago to a friend who was into reloading, and he tried it & it worked. He was reloading .45 ACP slugs and inserting one of these aluminum jacketed tire studs into hollow points. Without looking into it too far, I'm guessing he used somewhere between a #12 and a #16 tire stud. Once completed, it will drive a .45 ACP hollow point through a 1/4" to 1/2" thick piece of steel plate; depending on the size of stud you use and the load you use. The length of the carbide rod inside the aluminum jacketed sheath is the length of the stud or in layman's terms, 12 to 16/32 long. They make them even longer for big truck tires, but they aren't pictured in this chart. The thing you need to remember is, you cannot alter the weight of the round much or it won't work to your expectations. The tungsten carbide rod itself is around 1/8" thick, but it is incased in the aluminum sheath which is about 1/4" in diameter. I'm wondering how well this would work with high powered rifle rounds?

*Tungsten Carbide is the hardest steel you can find on the planet, which makes it the perfect addition for Armor Piercing bullets.

Check it out. Google tungsten carbide. The only metal harder is titanium, and you can't afford to use that in a bullet.

I think this video pretty much proves my point about tungsten carbide:

STRONGEST .50 Cal Rounds vs Tungsten Cube! ft.
https://youtu.be/QmLjMz6UNBE?si=ouLJgzbug8qgiJKX

Once upon a time you could buy just the rod without the aluminum jackets at Grainger. I just checked and there is still a list, but I think tire studs already outweigh the nearest best alternative.

Fractional-Inch Carbide Drill Bit Blanks
https://www.grainger.com/category/machining/drilling-holemaking/holemaking-blanks/drill-bit-blanks?searchQuery=Fractional-Inch+Carbide+Drill+Bit+Bla

Ignore the "Whoops, we couldn't find that." It takes you to a list of all the sizes and lengths that are available, along with the price lists for them.

Tire studs and accessories in bulk from Myers Tire Supply
https://www.myerstiresupply.com/search-results?searchtext=tire+studs+in+bulk&searchmode=anyword

I wouldn't invest a lot of money into it until you perfect it in a couple of loads for a .45 ACP first, or possibly a 9mm, .38 or .357 hollow point.

Once you succeed in that, go into the larger bore rifle hollow points. I'm thinking maybe a .30/.30 Winchester bullet first and so on. I'd bet a .30/06 round would be the bomb! You could blow a hole all the way through a grizzly bear with that kind of load!