Ammunition Q & A

[Incitatus]

It is great to see the interest here.  I contacted a good buddy at Atlas Ammunition, Don, who promised that he would show up here to answer any questions that you might have.  So, use this thread for your questions that you might want to pose to him.

[SHOOTALL]

Act like we know nothing ( which is true for me ) and tell us where do you start as far as getting ammo and reloading ammo . It looks like it would be fun to shoot .

[Rickk]

A rundown on how to load Atlas cases would be good. They are cheap enough, but I personally didn't have the greatest luck with them.

[Incitatus]

There are basically 3 flavors of ammunition that are readily available:

- exploding projectiles.  Like the firework aerial bombs  or mortars.  They are regulated as to the charge that they can contain for non-licensed use

- flares.  Single burst, comets, multiple burst.  

- smoke.  All sorts of colors.

These can generally be found in 37mm and 26.5mm.  12ga comes in a number of interesting loads but we have decided to not produce adapters.  Reason is it is way easy for someone to bore them out to the full length of a shotgun shell.  You then have manufactured a shotgun which is regulated.  While we might argue about the exact nature of the BATF regs, it is pretty darn clear that they don't want you creating un registered weapons (see the long discussions re. the Thompson-Center pistols on this site).  We made a business decision that we will not jeopardize our business by enabling clearly illegal behavior.

You can take a look on the Atlas Ammo site to see the range of loads that are available. /www.atlasammo.com

There are also many loads designed primarily for law enforcement and the military.  You can see what these things look like on the ALS site  http://www.alstechnologies.com/index.php?page=products

[Incitatus]

A rundown on how to load Atlas cases would be good. They are cheap enough, but I personally didn't have the greatest luck with them.

I will defer to Don but in the meantime, we've informally reloaded the hulls by replacing the primers and loading about 3/4 of a capful of fG powder then pressing paper towels to hold the powder in place.  One can launch a nerf rocket with authority that way.

What problems did you have?

[Rickk]

I tried up to 40 grains of 2 F with a 1.5 ounce sand filled 35 mm film container. The container was wrapped with masking tape to make it tight fitting in the Atlas case. It was loaded top-up as the 35 mm top does not fit into the case. About all it did was a slow whoosh and the film container landed about 10 feet in front of me. I wound up switching to 40 grains of 3F and things got better, not great, just better.. Aluminum cases seem to work fine with 2F, although they need a "pipe insulator" powder chamber to work well. The Atlas cases already have a powder sub chamber so I'm not sure why they work different.

How many grains of 1F is "3/4 of a capful"?

Rick

[Incitatus]

Lordy ... I would guess about 15-20 grains or so ... something like that.

We were making noise and shooting nerf darts so a little goes a long way. 

Clearly some experimentation is called for.  Your experience is very odd.

[Rickk]

I'm not sure what a nerf dart looks like, looks like I need to find out. Any idea what they weigh?

As far as the 35mm cases in the Atlas hulls...

Wrapped each one with duct tape so there was a snug fit.

Filled with sand/chalk ... about 1.5 ounces total.

Seated container as far down there as it would go cap end up.

25 grains 2F - got about 5 foot range.

40 grains of 2F - maybe 10 foot.

40 grains 3F - not sure where it went, as by then I wasn't walking out to my backyard range but just shooting behind my house which overlooks a hill going into the woods. It went "quite a way" is all I can say, but not like what a turned down 40mm "booster case" with 25 grains of 2F would do.

I backed it down to 30 grains of 3F and it was back to landing not too far from mwhere I was standing.

I was a little uncertain about putting effort into working up a load using 3F as I don't really know what the hell I am doing yet and need to ask around a bit before doing more work with the stuff. The case looked fine afterwords, so it couldn'ta been to bad. Still, I decided to wait a bit and ask around before continuing to play with the Altas cases.

For what it's worth, I also played with the longer White nylon FTF cases. I only tried them with 25 grains of 2F. They worked better than the yellow atlas cases but nothing like what I could get to happen out of an aluminum case (even a really short one).

I am thinking it's gotta have something to do with the wall thickness of the plastic cases and how they don't allow me to load the film containers top end down, which might have something to do with getting a better seal in the bore, but that is all just guessing.

Need to mess with it again someday when it warms up. I'm about 40 miles north of you as far as I can guess, and if I'm right you know it isn't gunna be shooin weather for the next few days.

[Rickk]

paper towels...  flashback, bells ringing and stuff like that...

ummm... how many square inches of paper towels do you think you stuffed in there? Or what size paper towel and how many of them?

Any idea if Altas puts anything significant between their pyro tubes and the powder charge ?

Rick

[NitroSteel]

I'd really be interested in buying one of these if I could find some reloading information for pyrotechnics and flares.  I think it would be alot of fun to take to the gun club with the cannons and mortars - especially when it gets dark...

Any information anywhere?  I haven't found much yet.

Thank ya'll,

NitroSteel

[Rickk]

Basic reloading info can be found on "Grog's 37mm/40mm web site"

Pyro info - skylighter.com 's archive is free and worth downloading all the how-to's . Skylighter carries lots of good books as well.  Then there is the passfire.com web site.

Stay away from things that go boom. If they go boom in the barrel instead of in the air, your gunna have a really bad day.

Rick