Hello again,
I've always been a Col. Whelen fan and love to read his writings. The other night I was reading one of his writings when he was the commanding officer at the Frankford Arsenal where all of the small arms ammunition for the army was manufactured. He set out to improve all of the ammunition for service rifles and target ammunition for the competition teams. He said that he decided that due to the heat and friction generated in a rifle barrel and knowing that tin would be a good lubricant for 30-06 03 Springfields, he decided to coat the bullets with tin. They sized the cupro-nickel jacketed bullets down and coated them with a .002 coating of tin. When these bullets first went to the rifle team in 1921, it didn't take long for the shooters to nickname them Tin Can bullets. It worked-no more metal fouling and much better accuracy. This lasted for a while and then, things went to heck. A serious defect occurred, The tin alloyed with the bore of the rifle and created an alloy that had a low melting point and the barrel washed out and eroded very quickly & accuracy went to heck. RESULT-EXPERIMENT FAILED.
What I can't figure out is how did a alloy occur at the temperatures inside a rifle barrel. I thought you had to mix two or more molten metals together to form an alloy. Is it possible that the tin just embedded itself into the rifle barrel by temperature and pressure? But he said it eroded horribly. Would it be possible that the cupro-nickel jacket with the tin coating caused this problem? Lets hear your opinion?
Mashburn
David a. Cogburn
