A unicorn found

[armed hiker]

Okay mods this one is your call, this is about ammunition but the thread really is about the history of the CZ82. Move it if need be.

A couple of years ago a friend and I were at a local gun show and I came across some Sellier & Bellot ammo. It was packaged in little off white boxes of 24 rounds. Hmmmm.... czech ammo..........24 rounds to a box, that's two CZ82 mags worth. Well the price was good enough to buy it for plinking ammo so I grabbed what they had (a few boxes).

I had this hope that it was the mythical CZ82 sintered metal rounds, I consequently learned it was not these (wonder of the internet) and packed them in the safe to shoot them up some day. I made it to the range a month ago and tested them out for the first time. All 24 fired just fine nothing special at all. Hey it is a CZ82 after all, I expect it to work.

Fast forward a few weeks and I find the box in my work desk, hmmmm, I wonder if they still offer these under another name.  I send customer service at S&B  an email to see what the load is and this is the email I get back...........

Thank you for your interest in our ammo.

The rounds you mentioned are our old military ammo for pistol model 82. They have got steel case and bullet made of sintered steel powder. These bullets penetrate kevlar body armor. They haven't been supplied to the U.S. by us, they come from army surplus. We bear no responsibility for them as they are approx. 30 years old.
We produce them no longer and don't supply any components for them.

I hope this helps.

Well I guess those magnetic projectiles are magnetic for a reason.
Now I wish I did not bast away with the whole box, I will see how they do on targets other than paper.  I also wish I had a chronograph to see what kind of speed they had, again they did not feel special when shooting them. I did laugh about the ammo being 30 years old, that makes it middle aged in my ammo locker.


Oooops! I forgot the photos  are here        http://www.flickr.com/photos/26320723@N04/8697384056/in/photostream

[JimThornTX]

Oooops! I forgot the photos  are here        http://www.flickr.com/photos/26320723@N04/8697384056/in/photostream

Reminds me of the current Russian steel-cased ammo.

[Stogies]

Are these legal in your location?

[TWParrish]

Oooops! I forgot the photos  are here        http://www.flickr.com/photos/26320723@N04/8697384056/in/photostream

Reminds me of the current Russian steel-cased ammo.

There is a pretty good section about armed hiker's ammo about 2/3 of the way down this page:
http://www.freeexistence.org/vz82.html
Cool find!

The LVE (Green Box) you mentioned is just another one of the bimetal, can't-shoot-it-in-a range-in-my-area brands of ammunition.

Manufacturer: LVE (Low Voltage Equipment Plant), Novosibirsk, Russia
Headstamp: LVE 99 9x18Mak
Cartridge Case: Steel case, berdan primed, non-corrosive primer
Bullet: 92.2-gr (1 measured), steel-jacketed copper-coated with concave exposed-lead base
Magnetic: Cartridge case and bullet jacket are magnetic

OAL (ins)
Range: 0.971 ? 0.979
Avg: 0.974

Velocity: (fps)
Range: 968 - 1029
Avg: 1008
ES: 20
SD: 61

There is an interesting article about this kind of ammo here:
http://www.uspsa.org/front-sight-magazine-article.php?Should-I-Buy-BiMetal-Ammo-8

(Can you tell I was just this week looking into this kind of thing?)

[armed hiker]

I am planning on Dissecting a round and measuring what I find, I am curious about this round.
I will post up what we find.

I Had read freeexistence on the 82 before

(p. 291) In the year 1982, Sellier and Bellot developed 9mm vz. 82 ammunition for the Czechoslovakian army.  In the 1990.s the round was evidently manufactured only in limited quantities.

well the S&B reply said mine was 30 year old ammo so that fits.

The mass of the bullet is only 4.5g, whereas the Makarov bullet weighs 6.1g

I hope to check this soon.

The surface of the bullet is lacquered, and an experimental version was also nickel coated or suffused with titanium nitride

Mine is not lacquered, the bullet is slightly golden in color not quite the shade of ti-nitride I am used to seeing either.

The article talks of a photo of the headstamp but there is no photo and the book itself seems to be another unicorn. I might like that one too 

According to the diagram on the opposing page, these experimental rounds bear no headstamp; in contrast, the standard rounds have a two digit date code, along with the .bxn. factory code for Sellier and Bellot

I think this is why I assumed it was not the sintered round as these do have a headstamp they are clearly marked S&B 9mm M    no date code. I think it must have been the code on the box that determined the round.   NP 39.57  anyone know what they mean? charge,bullet,case? certainly not a year but code for something.

Given the http://www.uspsa.org/front-sight-magazine-article.php?Should-I-Buy-BiMetal-Ammo-8
article I could see why you did not want to fire them from a non polygonal barrel, but I must admit that article brings up more questions for me than it answers. I would hope that the steel jacket is a soft steel in comparison to a barrel but who knows? What happens when you send a sintered iron round down through it?

[TWParrish]

Given the http://www.uspsa.org/front-sight-magazine-article.php?Should-I-Buy-BiMetal-Ammo-8
article I could see why you did not want to fire them from a non polygonal barrel, but I must admit that article brings up more questions for me than it answers. I would hope that the steel jacket is a soft steel in comparison to a barrel but who knows? What happens when you send a sintered iron round down through it?

I agree about the question vs. answer ratio in the article.  The parts that interested me was the dissection of the bi-metal rounds, since not one range near me will allow them to be fired.  I really wanted to know what was the problem.  I had come into possession of about 200 rounds of Brown Bear FMJ, only to find that I have no legitimate place to shoot them.  Oh, well, I have a friend in Maryland whom I visit periodically (I am in PA) who has his own range.  They'll bite the dust there.

[armed hiker]

I would bet the indoor ranges that do not like bimetal rounds do so because the backstop they use is marginal at best and they fear that it will get torn up. I don't know if this is based on fact or the same internet lore we all love so much.

I would think that a bi-metal bullet would not do much more damage than a conventional copper coated lead round otherwise there would be someone out there trying to ban them for being "more" lethal. This sounds like a good subject for the box of truth web site to test out.

[TWParrish]

I would bet the indoor ranges that do not like bimetal rounds do so because the backstop they use is marginal at best and they fear that it will get torn up. I don't know if this is based on fact or the same internet lore we all love so much.

I would think that a bi-metal bullet would not do much more damage than a conventional copper coated lead round otherwise there would be someone out there trying to ban them for being "more" lethal. This sounds like a good subject for the box of truth web site to test out.

I'm right there with you, and I already looked at the Box 'o Truth.  (Add a bunch of time spent looking for ballistic gel tests of the rounds on youtube.)  I did read some accounts of people who were asked not to use the bi-metal rounds at ranges because they were sparking off the backstops, and this caused a fire hazard due to the presence of flammable dust.  But that "armor piercing" argument some of them make about the bi-metal 9x18 mak rounds I have read are in complete opposition to the "it's an underpowered round" statements made by many of the same people.  Anyway, I found a link to this:
http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread.php?299-9x18-Ammunition-Data-Post
which gave me the info I needed to find non-bimetal ammunition.
I anxiously await further data about the sintered rounds, though.  I am not an expert, but I rather suspect that since the '82, and the Makerovs in general, were replacing the Tokarev and its 7.62x25 round, and since that was used because of clashes with people using rudimentary body armor, the sintered, extra hot rounds were probably an effort not to lose the ability to shoot through flak jackets and early Kevlar.  I have seen a video of the 7.62x25 round shooting through an early Kevlar trauma patch (5 layers, I think), as well as going through the 4x4 post used to mount the patch as a target.  I would love to see the sintered round tested that way.  (I think I may be entirely too interested in this particular topic.)

[armed hiker]

Alright.
Thanks for the link on the Mak ammo. I am just as always confused. The ammo I have is in that collection and is NOT the Sintered rounds. I need to dissect one to find out if the info from S&B is correct. It would not be the first time a sales rep did not know what they were talking about. If it is a sintered iron bullet then in cross section it should be obvious.

The search continues.................

[9mmHP]

I think this is why I assumed it was not the sintered round as these do have a headstamp they are clearly marked S&B 9mm M    no date code. I think it must have been the code on the box that determined the round.   NP 39.57  anyone know what they mean? charge,bullet,case? certainly not a year but code for something.

Sorry to resurrect this topic. I was searching on NP 39.57. It was on a box of S&B 9mm Parabellum with 8gm (124gr) bullets. Since the bullet and caliber are completely different, I'm led to believe that NP 39.57 must refer to the 4.4mm "Neroxin" Boxer primer used. Either that or the powder possibly.

[JoePfeiffer]

I would bet the indoor ranges that do not like bimetal rounds do so because the backstop they use is marginal at best and they fear that it will get torn up. I don't know if this is based on fact or the same internet lore we all love so much.

I would think that a bi-metal bullet would not do much more damage than a conventional copper coated lead round otherwise there would be someone out there trying to ban them for being "more" lethal. This sounds like a good subject for the box of truth web site to test out.

This is the reason given by the indoor range I go to (well, they didn't say their backstop was marginal. But they did say steel cased ammo would damage it).