Very Weird...Need Help

I believe that the round was from someone else's gun.

Reason: If you were shooting 230 grain ball, those are smooth-sided bullets--without a cannelure. The fragment shown has a double cannelure--usually found on heavy handgun bullets to lock the core in.

However, the double cannelure is also found on another kind of bullet--the swaged lead semi wadcutter, usually loaded in .38 Special ammunition. That's what it looks like to me.
 
Looking at the photo Bullet Fragment-5.JPG you posted, you can see the marks on the bullet fragment made by the lands and grooves of a barrel. What I can not figure out is what those two parallel "tread marks" that run perpendicular to the lands and groove marks were made by. They had to have been made after the bullet left the barrel.

I do not believe those marks are a cannelure. They were made somehow after the bullet was fired. If they were there before the bullet was fired the marks made by the lands and grooves would have deformed them.
 
Mello>> Those are cannelure. Reference Powderman's post just above yours. ;) It's a jacketed bullet (originally) and jackets are usually pretty thin (maybe 5-8 mils), so the lands and grooves will impression the core lightly--which is what you are seeing. But the cannelure is much deeper crimped, which is why they seem to be a later effect of impact. They are just too deep to be pressed out by the lands and still show clear after the jacket peels away.
 
I believe that is part of a ufo that frequents shooting ranges. Your ricochet must have struck the ufo and chipped through the shields and a piece hit you at warp 6. I'm pretty sure anyway.
 
I believe that is part of a ufo that frequents shooting ranges. Your ricochet must have struck the ufo and chipped through the shields and a piece hit you at warp 6. I'm pretty sure anyway.
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Bwaaaaaa....!

Whoever you are, you owe me a keyboard.
 
I was instantaneously hit in the stomach with a force that almost took me off my feet (at 6'2" and 240 lbs. - not an easy task).
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That's the only part I find hard to believe. You may have reflexively jumped back, but that fragment wouldn't knock anybody anywhere.

Otherwise, just a ricochet like everyone else has said.
 
I was hit by a fragment in an indoor range once in the chest - came off of someone else's lane. It feelt like a baseball hitting me in the chest. It won't make you move off of your feet, but it does feel like a much larger object hit you than what actually did.
 
Gentlemen,

Thank you very much for your posts to my thread. I see that my occurrence is not that unusual, although it has never happened to me before. Further, after reading all these posts, and those which I have at another forum, I believe the fragment that hit me was not from my gun, but quite possibly from the guy next to me who was shooting .38. It was a major coincidence that I was hit just a millisecond after I pulled the trigger on my gun.

My buddy, who was on the other side of me and is very knowledgeable and a walking encyclopedia of little known gun facts, thought it was a "shear" which I had never heard of. He did say that usually shears go straight up.

There are several lessons I take away with me from this incident. The first and most important lesson is to make sure my eye protection is the strongest it can be. I am going to speak with my optometrist to make sure my glasses can withstand that type of impact. Another lesson is to inspect the condition of the backstop, i.e. make sure it is clean and not full of lead. And the third, I am considering going back to my modified Weaver shooting position.

And for Sport45, I really hope this never happens to you (not that I would wish it on anyone) as I think you would not believe you could be run over by a train unless YOU were.
 
Look for a Z87 certification on your safety glasses. I get mine from safevision.net.

Go ahead and think that thing almost knocked you off your feet if you want. I've had similar hit me as well as having been blind-sided by baseballs a few times. They startle you and hurt like the dickens but most of the body movement associated with the impact is from flinching. I jump too when I'm hit. I move even more when a wasp tags me, but it's not like he really pushed me over.

I wasn't trying to belittle your experience, just pointing out the physics disparity.
 
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When I fired the last round I was instantaneously hit in the stomach with a force that almost took me off my feet (at 6'2" and 240 lbs. - not an easy task).
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I hate that when I almost get taken off my feet when a tiny piece of lead hit's me.
 
Rangefinder,

It is not possible for those marks to be cannelures.

Cannelure marks which are in place before the bullet is fired, would have been deformed by the lands and grooves of the barrel during the travel down the barrel. Those marks are the result of something which marked the bullet after it left the barrel; as it can plainly be seen that the marks are over the marks produced by the lands and grooves.
 
That was not your ricocchet. It looks to me like a lead bullet wadcutter, most likely from an S&W .38 Special (wide lands, RH twist). The low intitial velocity plus the energy absorbed by the backstop resulted in a bruise rather than a more serious wound. The bullet is not from a .45 Auto factory load.

Jim
 
It is not possible for those marks to be cannelures.
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I'm sorry, but I must disagree. It is ENTIRELY possible for those marks to be cannelures.

I have picked up bullets that were in such good shape that they could probably be loaded and fired again. I have seen others totally deformed, after hitting various objects both hard and soft.
 
If those "track marks" were cannelures they would have been wiped away when the lands and grooves deformed the bullet. It is not possible for those marks to be cannelures.

Look at those marks. They occurred after the bullet left the barrel. Therefore, they are not cannelures. You have to explain how a cannelure could be created on that bullet fragment after it was discharged.
 
45Gunner...

... the point about the projectile not being able to knock you over was technically correct.

It could hurt like the devil, and I doubt anybody would contest that.

However, if you've ever seen experiments where dead animals are shot, to compare the body movement of an animal that has no reflexes to the body movement of a live animal being hit by a round, you'd realize that rifle and shotgun rounds don't move a body significantly.

What moves bodies is pain and shock reflexes causing muscular contractions. IE you jump out of your skin due to pain and shock. Or, your body gets stunned enough that you lose balance. The effect of the bullet, baseball, etc is that you jump and/or fall, but the energy of the round on its own didn't achieve that effect.

Saw such experiments done comparing a videotape of a rabbit hunt (.22 hit seemed to launch rabbit several feet) vs shot into dead rabbit (some ripple of motion on skin, and that was about it); have also seen footage of tests with rounds of varying power fired into sides of beef - think that may have been on mythbusters.
 
Gee, I have picked up a fair number of .38 wadcutter factory bullets and they all show the same basic appearance, and yes, those are cannelures. The shallow rifling of a normal .38 Special will not wipe out the cannelure unless the bullet is way oversize. I stand by what I said.

If it were worth bothering, and the range registers its users, it would probably be possible to trace that bullet to a specific gun. As deformed as it is, there are still markings that would be usable in a comparison microscope.

Jim
 
Those are cannelures.

They are pressure formed, usually by a spinning type device, on swaged lead bullets. They are not removed by the lands when fired, but merely wiped in the area engraved by the lands.

Swaged lead bullets are typically revolver bullets. So, 45 Gunner, you are probably correct about the fragment coming from the shooter in the next lane. Not intentionally, of course. The fragment in question is certainly not from a .45 ACP 230 grain FMJ bullet. Even when the core separates from the jacket, there are no marks - sure no cannelures - on the core.

Ricochets from metal targets or backstops come from either an angle where the fragments can ricochet once from the target or backstop and secondarily from another surface; concrete floors or steel bracing in the exact wrong spot will do. Metal surfaces can also ricochet if a cup shaped dent is impressed into the surface. The bullet hits one side of the cup and slings around and back the way it came.

I've been dusted from time to time and thumped with a couple big bits at time. One small bit to the face; did not leave a permanent mark. It is a good reminder to wear safety glasses. Any one of the bits and pieces I've stopped would not have gone well in my eye.
 
Hey guys, thanks again for all the input. Whether I was nearly knocked off my feet or not is not the issue. Try getting hit hard in the gut and lets see your reflex action. Let's stay on subject and talk about the ricochet, what caused it, and how one can protect themselves from injury. I have a pretty good sized bruise which I find remarkable from such a relatively small object. One can only guess the velocity in which I was struck. More remarkable is the sharp edges displayed in the picture(s). Apparently I was hit broadside as it did not cut my shirt nor my body.
 
I have been hit several times by stuff that comes back from the backstop.

Its one of the reasons you wear eye protection.

Never been hit quite as hard as you describe though.

The range I shoot at did have an incident where a part of a bullet ricocheted off the backstop somehow and hit another person on the ankle hard enough to draw blood.
 
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