Shooting Wooden Bullets? Are they effective?

[stubshaft]

The Swedes used wood bullets in their 6.5X55's as blanks. Lucky if they could punch paper at 20 feet.

 

[Colonial Boy]

I remember in Basic Training when some clown loaded a stub of pencil in front of a.blank, luckily the Corporal saw him and stepped in and stopped him before he could fire at anyone.
Instead of charging him, the Corporal saw the Platoon Sergeant and they arranged a demonstration using fresh bayonet dummies.
At 10 feet they were likely to be lethal and at 15 feet on the up side of very painful beyond that they fell off rapidly but were still dangerous. ’.
None of our lot ever fooled with blanks again.

 

[Colonial Boy]

Just thinking about this, I have some hard and heavy woods, Iron Bark, Box and Red Gum; will turn up some bullets and give them a try

 

[Rancocas]

Since we're talking about blanks now, I can tell you this, back in the 1980's we were training with paintball guns and sometimes blanks in our service handguns. Someone got the idea of loading a cotton ball in the blank cartridges believing that it would shoot out and harmlessly tap someone.
Well, our armorer went to the nearest convenience store and bought a bag of cotton balls. Problem was they were not real cotton, but rather some synthetic material. When fired, that synthetic cotton ball came out like napalm. The flaming material stuck to you!
A couple of holes burned in shirts, and we were done with that.
And paint balls - I was hit in the back of my bare hand by a paint ball. Hurt! Raised up quite a welt.

 

[B P Arn]

I remember reading that the Japs used bamboo bullets late in the war, and that they were a bugger to cut out of the GIs because they would splinter when they hit someone...

Not true.

 

[GBG]

An arrow!?

https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/threads/arrows.40554/#post-476986

 

[northernThaiguy]

Not true.

Well, it seems that it was, and it wasn't.

For the most part, the Geneva Convention outlawed them and they weren't in regular use except as blanks to make machine guns cycle. It seems that most of the purple ones that were brought back from Europe were like that - hollow wooden bullets to chamber easily but would disintegrate when fired.

There were reports of men getting shot in the latter years of the war, and having slivers work their way out of their bodies for years afterwards.

This was a good forum thread:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/tri...ullets-by-axis-powers-in-ww-ii-t8006-s10.html

 

[Colonial Boy]

Meant to follow up on this but for some reason I posted in ‘’What muzzle loading stuff . . . .’’ , probably age related
Anyway, to recap,
then I rough turned the blanks

Next I made some projectiles to a neat fit in the bore of the H&A target rifle, 40 grn average x 3/4 inch and 46 grn x 1 inch.[and forgot to photograph them].
Put targets out at 25 metres, loaded 25 grn 3f under the 40s and never hit the target [3 shots]
Loaded 50 grns under the 46s and the same result, no hits, although I could hear them hitting something, possibly the 50 metre mound.
However when we [Service rifle shoot was going on at the same time so many onlookers].retrieved the targets the target on the unshot-at side had a long tear where one of the shot’s ripped it.
So they were getting there as far as distance and elevation were concerned, just in the wrong place

Will try paper patching next time.