Silencers, Sniper Rifles and the CIA

[Bob Prudhomme]

Thank you for the pictures Bob. It doesn't look necessary to crimp a cartridge to use a sabot. Ok, now what about the idea that brass cartridges can "rust"?

Also, does anyone recall what caliber the "DalTex Specimen" was? The follow up question to that is, whether you could use a sabot round to imitate a 6.5 mm Carcano from a gun of that caliber, and if so, would a sabot for that conversion require a crimped casing (presumably because a readily available sabot from x caliber to 6.5 mm would still be too small?

All those things would be necessary in order to make sense of the DalTex specimen. Then you'd have to answer the question why would a shooter making a plan ahead of time select a type of gun whose ammo had to be jerry-rigged past a "normal" sabot arrangement to frame Oswald?

The biggest obstacle to firing a 6.5mm Carcano bullet, encased in a sabot, from a larger calibre rifle can be demonstrated by looking at this photo:



The bullet in the Carcano cartridge is freakishly long, much longer than most other bullets. Now take a look at the next photo:



Notice that the base of the bullet does not project out past the base of the sabot, meaning that not only would you have the freakishly long Carcano bullet, you would also have the thickness of the base of the sabot to contend with; making for an extremely long assembly of bullet and sabot.

As it is not a good idea to seat a long bullet so far into a cartridge that the base of the bullet protrudes far below the base of the cartridge neck, what larger rifle would one use to fire a saboted 6.5mm Carcano bullet from?

Crimping the neck of a handloaded cartridge is something most handloaders do not do, as most handloaders are not using cartridges in the rough conditions encountered in combat, or loading cartridges for automatic or semi-automatic weapons. I know of no handloader here that crimps cartridges for bolt action rifles.

Brass cartridges will oxidize and turn a dark brown colour but, with their high copper content, it is only surface oxidation, and I have never seen one "rust".