Writer here with a 50 Cal. reload question

F

FilmGuy

Inactive
Hey guys, I hope this question is appropriate for this forum.

I'm a film writer/director (and occasional shooter myself) working on my next movie screenplay and I have an action scene where a .50 cal rifle is fired.

I want to make the story as real as possible so I'm looking for advice on an ammo issue I have in the story.

At the end of this action scene the people using it have only a few bullets left. I want the lack of more .50 cal ammo to become a big problem for the people who need it, who use the gun to defend their homestead from attacks and now they worry about more attackers coming soon.

How do I keep the audience from asking, "Why didn't they just reload their brass?". So I'm wondering, if you had little or no access to outside supplies of any kind, how hard would it be for a group of people to manufacture what's needed to make a .50 cal bullet work practically? Powder, primer, bullets? (How many times could you reload 50 cal brass anyway?)

I could fix my issue with a statement from one of the characters in the group, saying "We are out of reload supplies" but I'd like to avoid having to do that. I'm hoping that it's just not realistic to reload in these circumstances and they will need to find more ammo elsewhere.

Thanks a bunch for any advice!
 
I have no experience with .50 personally but I'm pretty sure the round needs specialized equipment because most reloading presses are too small to handle that large of a round. Additionally I have seen powder specifically for 50 caliber. I imagine other powder for large rifle calibers could work in some instances but a look into reloading data would confirm that.

I imagine the brass could be reloaded numerous times but it would depend on the types of loads you are shooting.

With all that said I'm not sure not movie goers would even consider that your group could reload ammo. 99% of the general public wouldn't have a clue what's going on if you started talking about detailed reloading specifics.
 
I shoot .50 BMG. If you're going to write about it you should give it a try. Where are you located?

You can get .50 reloading presses the same place you get most other presses. You can get the Lee .50 BMG reloading press for under $250.
Some people use .50 specific powder and some don't.

The forces involved in seating the bullet are higher than other calibers and there is a longer throat in the press required for the bullet to be seated. So the press is a bit stouter and longer.

Otherwise from a process perspective it's the same, just a lot more fun to shoot, particularly at real long distances.

Head over to Fifty Caliber Shooters Association, FCSA.org for more details if needed.
 
To me, watching such a movie, the story line should be consistent with the situation. If the house is being defended by some survivalists or preppers, then they may well have reloading capability if it's their own house. So you could take the story that way, as they frantically try to reload to keep up with the need.

On the other hand, if they just happen to find the .50cal rifle, or bring it into this homestead with them, and it's just a typical home, they would not have the capability to reload that ammo, and you can just run out of it. Nobody would imagine that there is a way to McGyver more ammo.
 
Yeah, just leave the reloading aspect out of it.
When the ammo runs out, it runs out, like in most westerns.
Never saw any reference in all those great Western movies and books about reloading, (except for some of the original Hopalong stories and an occasional Gunsmoke episode where the part time deputy owned a gun shop).
 
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Depends on the rifle...
.50 BMG is a big military bullet of modern design.
Precise components and machinery are required.

.50 cal (half inch) rifles have been around since gunpowder was invented.
From early 'Hand Cannons' to flint lock muskets that took paper 'Case' cartridges,
To metal cartridges for buffalo rifles...

I own a 'Buffalo' rifle, and brass for reloading is only available every couple of years, since its not common, manufacturers only make a run every two or three years, and the brass is VERY expensive, so I don't have a bunch of brass for it...

*IF* this is a modern .50 BMG rifle, the rifle will weigh close to 30 pounds, the ammo is also very heavy...
Someone stumbling on to one would only be able to carry a limited amount of ammunition while carrying a 30 pound rifle.

Big pounding rifles are cool until you have to carry one,
Same with machine guns, cool as can be until you have to carry 30 pounds of ammunition for it! 16 years as a grunt I can speak from experence...
 
I think the story would be more realistic if the homesteaders weren't using .50bmg at all to protect themselves. I've had one in the past and it wouldn't be my first choice.

As for reloading, primers would likely be the shortfall.
 
I have an old friend that is trying to sell a 50 BMG rifle. It is a complete package including cases of ammo, press with all the accessories and components. It has a new barrel that is larger in diameter than most. The barrel came from one of the 50 BMGs that had the mount on the barrel.

He wants $5,000, the rifle, it is a single shot. Believe it or not when he started I contacted the manufacturer about problems he had. The builder said "not a problem", it has a life time warranty.

And then my friend and I had words, there were no head space gages for the 50 BMG so I made one. I was going to check my gage in his rifle. He was curious as to what I was going to do with the gage. I responded with: "I am going to give it to someone if it works". It could be said he lost it. Seems if it did not exist and no one had one there was no logic in giving it away. Anyhow the rifle he is selling has a very unique head space arrangement.

Under siege: It should be unsettling to think about being surrounded and under siege by a group that can shoot at you from 500 miles away and watch your die on television. I could be wrong but Gadhafi ask S. Hussain if he knew who he was messing with. Seems Gadhafi was supposed to be in a tent behind his place, after the tent was destroyed Gadhafi reformed.

F. Guffey
 
"...like in most westerns..." Is a pretty good analogy. No close to you society/civilization means no manufacturing, no availability of powder(slow burning stuff), primers or suitable bullets.
Mind you, bullets can be made on a lathe, assuming you have power and access to soft metals. Proper powders and primers cannot though. Even the daft idea of using strike anywhere matches for priming compound won't work if you can't get matches.
All that stuff would require trading for if they could find somebody who has it and is willing to trade. Same issues crop up in all post-apocalyptic novels and movies.
As to how many times you can reload one, it depends entirely on the load used. Same as any cartridge.
 
I personally think it would be great to have the reloading aspect in a movie. Makes it more real. In my eyes, better than the limitless supply the Arnold and the Sly always had. The only movie I can remember where the Character sought out more ammo for his dwindling supply was Quigley down under. The scene where he is telling the general store owner just how and what could be used to reload his 45-110 cartridges. I enjoyed the scene a great deal.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
 
I want to make the story as real as possible so I'm looking for advice on an ammo issue I have in the story.

At the end of this action scene the people using it have only a few bullets left. I want the lack of more .50 cal ammo to become a big problem for the people who need it, who use the gun to defend their homestead from attacks and now they worry about more attackers coming soon.

How do I keep the audience from asking, "Why didn't they just reload their brass?". So I'm wondering, if you had little or no access to outside supplies of any kind, how hard would it be for a group of people to manufacture what's needed to make a .50 cal bullet work practically? Powder, primer, bullets? (How many times could you reload 50 cal brass anyway?)

I could fix my issue with a statement from one of the characters in the group, saying "We are out of reload supplies" but I'd like to avoid having to do that. I'm hoping that it's just not realistic to reload in these circumstances and they will need to find more ammo elsewhere.

Thanks a bunch for any advice!
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You have a couple ways to play it. You have a technical problem, a backstory answer, a timing problem, a location problem, as a way to solve your issue.

The technical solution:
If you have the brass and expended primers, you can make your own bullets out of half inch copper pipe and a bullet mold. The hard part about reloading when store bought supplies are hard is getting a powder with the appropriate burn range for 50 BMG. That is why so many 50 BMG shooters buy their powder in 8 lb kegs, and often buy surplus powders like WC870 or WC872 at steep discounts when they can get it, and sleeves of primers whenever there is a sale.

Once you remove either the stockpiled stash of ammo or the stash of reloading supplies, you have removed the technical means to reload ammunition and what you have left then is the classic resource allocation problem for a plot device.

The backstory solution:
I would find unrealistic is a situation where a prepper would have a 50 BMG but NOT a 308 Win and plenty of ammo for that as well. The "two is one, one is none" philosophy. Unless the scenario involved bugging OUT to a location where there weren't a whole stockpile of supplies, then you could use the evacuation to the bug out location as a reason for arriving with a 50 BMG and limited ammunition, needing to get another character to a Doctor or medical provider, and having to "go now" instead of deliberately packing for the journey, then getting pinned down at the other location and having only the ammo that was on the person when they began the evac out. Or they could have already run out of 308 Win, etc.

An easy way to make it a real dilemma for "preppers" is to have another prepper steal their stash of powder, bullets, and primers, and the remaining group not have half inch copper pipe and lead bullet molds on hand to reload what limited ammunition they have left.

Or you could have the preppers not be reloaders, and mention that it was "on the list to aquire" but there are plenty of "preppers" today that would rather buy a lot of surplus ammunition rather than learn to reload, so that is also a possibility.

The timing solution:
A third way to play it is that since this is an action sequence, whether or not they can reload the ammunition in time to be tactically useful becomes a factor. Imagine how dramatic it could be if every shot the guy takes someone else grabs the still hot, smoking brass, and runs it to the reloading station where someone lubes it, resizes and deprimes, then primes, charges, and seats a bullet and hands it to someone who tosses it back to the spotter who feeds it into the rifle just in time to pull the trigger... And every 4th or 5th reload the person at the reloading station says, "SPLIT NECK! Damnit!" and the supply of useable brass dwindles....

The tactical solution:
The preppers have a stash of ammo, but they just can't get to it. The person with the 50 cal is in a tower/fighting position/overwatch and all the extra 50 BMG ammo is in a cache in the barn 700 meters away across "no mans land" so at the location where the rifle is, there is no way to get fresh ammo, and it becomes the classic "target prioritization" storyline to maximize effects on the enemy while minimizing friendly resource loss.

Hope this is helpful, and I hope you have fun with the action sequence, you have a lot of ways to write yourself out of an unrealistic survival situation.

Jimro
 
Film guy
If it makes any difference, the .50 BMG will stop most any un- or lightly armored vehicle, or targets sit to a mile+. But it's really heavy (20-30 lbs) and doesn't move (retarder) as quick.
As noted above a .308 would be a good compliment.
 
I really appreciate all the replies as it helps immensely.

Let me add a couple of details: This story takes place in the not so distant future and the US has fallen into third-world status. These people are peaceful types and not really preppers. Only one of them has any real hunting/gun knowledge and he is teaching a young teen the ways.

They have two guns, an old, beaten up 308 they use for hunting, and the 50 is rarely ever used but they have it in case of long range attacks from a near-by mountain where an attack had happened in the past. The 50 has an aged yet futuristic scope on that I'm roughly modeling on the new Tracking Point system. There will be a view of the scope screen which has thermal and target locking abilities.

Given this, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree with the conventional 50 cal and should play with concept ammo that could, in theory, be around 15 years from now. That could make it unrealistic to reload and very hard to find. (which is what I want). Although, like was suggested, if you are out of ammo in movies, few people are going to get upset about the fact that reloading isn't talked about (maybe this isnt the best forum to say that!) :)

In the story the 50 came from an ex-member of the group who had a cache of (future) military surplus gear. I had thought of changing the 50 in the past to something more exotic, like that multi-barrel super high rate of fire gun that looks like a box, that uses caseless ammo (I cant recall the name), or something to that effect but keeping it simple seems more realistic and the 50 is just a good fit.

Basically I wanted something that can reach out there, and that makes a spectacle of itself when fired. :D

Oh and I'm in the LA area, and no, I am not from here nor do I have any liberal agenda, just to be clear. I'm part of the 5% minority it seems.

I have never had the chance to fire a 50 although I do know someone who has one. I just can't afford to fly across the country to visit.
 
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How's that?
 
Let me add a couple of details: This story takes place in the not so distant future and the US has fallen into third-world status. These people are peaceful types and not really preppers. Only one of them has any real hunting/gun knowledge and he is teaching a young teen the ways.
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Given the future aspect and third-world status, you might be better off making up your own type of 50 cal weapon. The future part allows for suspension of disbelief (which gives you more creative freedom), the third-world status allows you to bring in your "former secret military operative" angle, and you can pretty much design things however you want. You're not tied down, so to speak.

They have two guns, an old, beaten up 308 they use for hunting, and the 50 is rarely ever used but they have it in case of long range attacks from a near-by mountain where an attack had happened in the past. The 50 has an aged yet futuristic scope on that I'm roughly modeling on the new Tracking Point system. There will be a view of the scope screen which has thermal and target locking abilities.

Given this, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree with the conventional 50 cal and should play with concept ammo that could, in theory, be around 15 years from now. That could make it unrealistic to reload and very hard to find. (which is what I want).
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Every weapon type has a designed purpose, and I don't think a conventional 50 cal helps you much.

In the story the 50 came from an ex-member of the group who had a cache of (future) military surplus gear. I had thought of changing the 50 in the past to something more exotic, like that multi-barrel super high rate of fire gun that looks like a box, that uses caseless ammo (I cant recall the name), or something to that effect but keeping it simple seems more realistic and the 50 is just a good fit.

Basically I wanted something that can reach out there, and that makes a spectacle of itself when fired.
Click to expand...
I think a specialty 50 cal of the future is your best bet. You could model the ammo after advanced tank rounds, only smaller. Throw in some stuff related to the Navy's ongoing rail gun technology, and you'll have something that would let you reach out there AND make a spectacle. What military wouldn't want a hand-held tank slayer? It would be an effective and impressive weapon to prevent the kinds of attacks you mentioned, and it would take someone with a top secret (and perhaps mysterious) background to know how to use it, which explains why he has it in the first place. That kind of person would also be a perfect mentor. Futuristic ammo would also explain why it's unrealistic to reload and very hard to find, as only an advanced military or military-contracted facility would have the tools and resources to do it. Maybe it's an experimental model that was going through secret trials when the country collapsed, or was being rushed into service as the country collapsed. Maybe part of the story is the need to find more ammo, which can only be found in very few places. Maybe others want it back. Maybe others have the remaining samples and want them all. Maybe the scope is not the greatest in the world - it becomes another Achilles' Heel for dramatic effect - but it's the best that could be had under the circumstances. Lots of possibilities in all that.
 
Most 50 BMG shooters have friends that also load and shoot 50 BMG. Reloading for it is impossible without primers and 50 BMG powder. Only a few very slow burning powders are suitable for 50 BMG and it takes 200 grains plus for one round. Thing about a decent 50 BMG rifle is that bad guys are in danger out to 600-1000 yards. Most people would avoid approaching a 50. I'd say that when the 50 ammo runs out that they just switch calibers.
 
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