Been messing around on the lathe at work during my lunch hour. I've had a few ideas bouncing around in my head and now that I have an M203, I get to make and test my stuff.

I call these my "Gold Smoke" projectiles. If you dealt with any 40mm launchers in combat, you may recognize the nickname for standard HEDP rounds. I have enough gold ogives to make half a dozen or so of these, but have a line on more many more ogives and can make an unlimited number of them with 3d printed front caps (kinda like my 3d printed chalk cones) that would be similar to military flare rounds. These projectiles can easily be loaded with smoke mixtures and a fuse hole drilled in the base. Vent holes can also be drilled in the body to let the smoke out. If you have any experience making fireworks, it wouldn't be too difficult to make parachute flare or star burst loads as well. These launch out of standard m212 cases with the regular blank charge.

The bases are made out of zinc, with the rest out of aluminum. So there is no extra wear on your launcher. The projectiles weigh less than a standard m781 chalk projectile, so you should have no problem filling them up with different pyrotechnic compositions without dangerously raising the chamber pressure. I don't have any of these to sell, yet, but I am testing them out and won't be the only person testing them to get different opinions. As you can see, I made two prototypes (well actually 3 or 4, but two sizes), the standard gold smoke size and the extended "hellhound smoke" that is about the same length as a star cluster or parachute flare round, so it can be used in standard size M203 launchers.

Let me know what you think. Hopefully I can get some plastic nose caps designed and printed this week. I also have some more aluminum tube coming in to see if I can simplify the process as my machining skills are non-existent. I also need to order some new cutting tools.


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just a side note, the short one had been fired into a dirt pile from 50yds before these pictures and I only replaced the gold ogive since the fired one was dented. The aluminum tube and base were perfectly fine/reusable.

-Jake
Chevtec Defense LLC

Looks interesting, so what's the most fun we can have with these? Any ideas for impact fuses?

Nice looking.

Ideas yes, but nothing I want to try yet. I'll be sure to share what I come up with. I can say that an extremely fun option is filling with firefox "ninjasmoke" mix. It burns instantaneously and will even make a nice "pop/bang" if in an enclosed container. But it is just a smoke composition and not an explosive. Works well with a simple fuse epoxied into a hole in the base.

There are quite a few different designs for impact fuzes/spotter charges. The main problem is that they are usually tedious to make and/or dangerous. A good option would be something like the mortar rounds that use a shotgun blank as a spotter charge. That's definitely something I would like to explore in the near future. But I need to practice/learn machining much more

I'm glad I didn't end up buying all those inert fuzes from that surplus guy. I miss his screaming hot deals.

If I bought a few hundred and they quickly disappeared - I wonder how many he had for sale to begin with!

You're putting them to good use it looks like. Personally I'd be more interested in the zinc pushers than the rest. Can't hardly get any these days so I've been digging mine out of the berm.

ETA: Stormseeker! That was the name of the surplus place.

Yep! That's where I got them.  Found a guy recently that has pallets of 40x53 components.  Including some of these ogives and the screw in kind.  He also has a bunch of the fuze parts interestingly enough. As well as new cases, primer pockets, and the domed copper burst disks.  Just with I had a mk19 to load for! But I'm getting a box of stuff off of him to see what I can come up with, probably some cool inert HE rounds.  

Zincs are getting hard to find, I made these out of zincs that were damaged but had a good driving band.  I bought 800 used ones recently and sold a few hundred to help other shooters out.  MAST told me they buy them in minimum batches of 10,000. If it gets bad enough there may be a group buy haha.

Would you be willing to share the 40x53mm components source? I don't have a Mk19 - more's the pity! - but I do have plans for a single shot using that round. Components dried up from the sources I've found so far.

MAST sells a minimum of 10k pushers at a time - but for how much each? I'm delighted to hear that they sell components to smaller businesses/individuals at all.

PM sent.  

FYI,  MAST sells on gunbroker under the name "blackgunammo" or something like that

Now this is neat.

"blackgunammocom" it seems. Nothing relevant for sale currently but it's another account for me to keep watch on their items!

I like it. Looks great!

Yep that's it.  They usually have single round kits for sale and often post packs of 100 blue nosecones (one of the reasons I don't sell as many haha).
Their website is down now but they told me they are working on getting it back up for direct ordering.