Copper tubing in bullet recipes

[baldamundo]

Is this working exactly as intended? Currently copper tubing seems to be a bit of an odd outlier in ammunition crafting.

You don’t find that many of them around and they’re used in almost all powerful bullet recipes but they’re the one ingredient you seem to run out much faster than any of the others.

I think the main cause of that is that you can’t recover them from dissassembling ammo. You can craft them out of scrap metal (although it requires end-game fabrication equipment) but it takes an hour and a half to craft a single piece. And with some of the recipes you need two or three pieces for just five bullets - so that’s a two minute bullet recipe increased to four hours from the tubing requirements. You can sometimes find them in garages, but normally only one or two, and other than that they seem pretty hard to come by.

Now admittedly I don’t know the first thing about bullets and their manufacture irl, so maybe this is realistic but it seems a little odd.

Could we get clarification as to whether this is WAD?

EDIT: 5.56mm ammo seems to be unique in being able to use “.22 casings” instead of copper tubing and I think you get these from dissassembling them, so that makes them just about the only rifle-calibre ammo that’s easily mass-produced.

EDIT2: The 5.56mm ammo requires both “.22 casings” and “.223 casings”. Is that right?

EDIT3: And you can dissassemble .22 ammo to get .22 casings, but there isn’t a recipe for crafting your own reloaded .22 ammo.

EDIT4: (okay, last one) you don’t get the .22 casings from dissassembling 5.56 ammo, so the reason I had so many spare was presumably from dissassembling .22 ammo.

[Valpo]

You get copper tubing from dissasembling kitchen equipment like oven or fridge.

I ll test how much that is gimme a sec.

edit: just tested and got 4 copper tube from dissasembling the fridge and 1 from smashing the kitchen sink… the oven gave me none that makes 5 from 1 kitchen. There should be a lot of houses arround for you to vandalize the kitchen. (try smashing bathing tubs and sinks in the bathroom too)

[Keyreper]

you can also get some copper tubing from either washing machines or dryers.

[kevin.granade]

The idea is you’re using the tubing to make jacketing for the ammo, which is why it’s only hitting high-end ammo, the low powered stuff is just lead in a mold, where jacketed ammo requires you to swage a jacket around some ammo.

Using .22 casings on 5.56 is because they just happen to match in size, so you can swage .22 casings around the 5.56 bullet.

Probably the main issue is that you can’t recover the lead and copper from spent rounds, you might be able to dig them out (by butchering) and recover either bullets, or units of copper scrap and lead that can be made into rounds.

That’s the rationale, I wouldn’t oppose a realistic workflow that works around this, but other than recovering materials from targets as I outlined above, I’m not sure what that would look like.

[Valpo]

To me it seems only logical that the more sophisticated a tool/weapon/machine is that you are recreating the more it feels to you that it wasn t worth the work as uposed to its widespread use before the cataclysm when it was however manufactured in factories atuned to doing this efficiently which you as a lone survivor just can t do in the same fashion. I like it that way.

[The_Lone_Badger]

You used to be able to get tons of copper tubing by burning down houses and then scavenging through the rubble (destroyed Walls drop copper tubing). Is this still the case?

[baldamundo]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:4, topic:7735”]The idea is you’re using the tubing to make jacketing for the ammo, which is why it’s only hitting high-end ammo, the low powered stuff is just lead in a mold, where jacketed ammo requires you to swage a jacket around some ammo.

Using .22 casings on 5.56 is because they just happen to match in size, so you can swage .22 casings around the 5.56 bullet.

Probably the main issue is that you can’t recover the lead and copper from spent rounds, you might be able to dig them out (by butchering) and recover either bullets, or units of copper scrap and lead that can be made into rounds.

That’s the rationale, I wouldn’t oppose a realistic workflow that works around this, but other than recovering materials from targets as I outlined above, I’m not sure what that would look like.[/quote]

Why is it that you can’t get copper tubing from dissassembling ammo with the kinetic bullet puller?

[KA101]

[quote=“baldamundo, post:7, topic:7735”][quote=“Kevin Granade, post:4, topic:7735”]The idea is you’re using the tubing to make jacketing for the ammo, which is why it’s only hitting high-end ammo, the low powered stuff is just lead in a mold, where jacketed ammo requires you to swage a jacket around some ammo.

Using .22 casings on 5.56 is because they just happen to match in size, so you can swage .22 casings around the 5.56 bullet.

Probably the main issue is that you can’t recover the lead and copper from spent rounds, you might be able to dig them out (by butchering) and recover either bullets, or units of copper scrap and lead that can be made into rounds.

That’s the rationale, I wouldn’t oppose a realistic workflow that works around this, but other than recovering materials from targets as I outlined above, I’m not sure what that would look like.[/quote]

Why is it that you can’t get copper tubing from dissassembling ammo with the kinetic bullet puller?[/quote]

Because the puller removes the bullet from the casing, not the jacketing from the bullet. You want to make the process more detailed, feel free.

[The_Lone_Badger]

If you melt copper and lead together, would they alloy or separate out into layers?

[baldamundo]

Because the puller removes the bullet from the casing, not the jacketing from the bullet. You want to make the process more detailed, feel free.

Sorry, forgive me if I’m being ignorant - I don’t really know the first thing about this stuff IRL:

The bullet is made just of the lead and the copper tubing (at least in the simplified way it’s rendered in-game), with the casing, primer and gunpowder being the parts of the cartridge removed by the bullet puller?

So if we were making the system more precisely realistic, we might add a ‘bullet’ component in place of the lead and copper in the recipes and possibly make that craftable separately, yeah?

Is there a (realistically possible for a survivor) way of separating the jacketing from the bullet IRL? What tools would it need if not the bullet puller?

If that level of detail is undesirable, or just as a stop-gap measure until that detail is added, could the copper tubing be added to the bullet dissassembly results as a reasonable simplification/abstraction?

Again, apologies if anything I’ve said is unclear or just dumb - as I say, I have literally no idea what I’m talking about.

[KA101]

[quote=“KA101, post:8, topic:7735”]Because the puller removes the bullet from the casing, not the jacketing from the bullet. You want to make the process more detailed, feel free.

Sorry, forgive me if I’m being ignorant - I don’t really know the first thing about this stuff IRL:

The bullet is made just of the lead and the copper tubing (at least in the simplified way it’s rendered in-game), with the casing, primer and gunpowder being the parts of the cartridge removed by the bullet puller?

So if we were making the system more precisely realistic, we might add a ‘bullet’ component in place of the lead and copper in the recipes and possibly make that craftable separately, yeah?

Is there a (realistically possible for a survivor) way of separating the jacketing from the bullet IRL? What tools would it need if not the bullet puller?

If that level of detail is undesirable, or just as a stop-gap measure until that detail is added, could the copper tubing be added to the bullet dissassembly results as a reasonable simplification/abstraction?

Again, apologies if anything I’ve said is unclear or just dumb - as I say, I have literally no idea what I’m talking about.[/quote]

“Bullet” (you’d need to specify caliber and type: it’d be Yet More Items) items: correct.

I’m not familiar with the metallurgy. I imagine it’s technically possible but suspect it would be grossly inefficient in terms of time and/or resources. If I had to guess, I’d say forging tools similar to those used for end-stage metalwork. The puller is basically a hollow plastic hammer wherein you insert the cartridge and swing: that somehow works it loose.

So I’m thinking the copper jacketing isn’t something that cold easily be separated, but the jacketed-rounds might be a stopgap. Probably won’t be a major priority, though.

[kevin.granade]

The bullet is made just of the lead and the copper tubing (at least in the simplified way it’s rendered in-game), with the casing, primer and gunpowder being the parts of the cartridge removed by the bullet puller?

yep. basically the puller grips the bullet and/or the casing, and jerks them apart. You end up with an intact bullet, loose “gunpowder”*, and a casing with an attached primer. (we gloss over the fact that extracting the primer is a separate step.)

So if we were making the system more precisely realistic, we might add a ‘bullet’ component in place of the lead and copper in the recipes and possibly make that craftable separately, yeah?

Maybe, however that wouldn’t address the issue at hand, which is that you need a supply of copper tubing to swage around the bullet. Unless it’s common to disassemble bullets of a given calibre and reassemble them in the same calibre with a higher load or something? In that case that might preserve the bullet. If on the other hand you’re disassembling unjacketed ammo and using it to make jacketed ammo, or dissasembling jacketed ammo of one calibre and making jacketed ammo of another calibre, you’re out of luck.

Is there a (realistically possible for a survivor) way of separating the jacketing from the bullet IRL? What tools would it need if not the bullet puller?

Actually it’s super easy, you just melt the lead out of the middle, though you might have to crack the bullet open first if it’s FMJ (the copper completely surrounds the core). That however leaves you with essentially random copper scraps, I’m not at all sure how reasonable it would be to form that into what you need to make new jackets.

If that level of detail is undesirable, or just as a stop-gap measure until that detail is added, could the copper tubing be added to the bullet dissassembly results as a reasonable simplification/abstraction?

I don’t think so, the pipe happens to be just the right thing to swage onto bullets (and we’re already playing pretty fast and loose with it to allow that), making swage stock yourself is pretty unreasonable AFAIK.

*Modern rounds don’t have gunpowder, they have Nth generation “guncotton” or possibly some other explosive with even more desirable characteristics. Guncotton is a modified form of cellulose (historically derived from cotton, not clear what’s used now) that burns extremely rapidly with very little in the way of harmful combustion products. If you used actual gunpowder in a modern gun you’d have very low power, and have a hell of a time keeping the thing operational because gunpowder combustion products are highly corrosive.

[The_Lone_Badger]

I didn’t realise that tubing was actually the correct thing to use to jacket bullets, rather than being ‘this is a source of copper’.

[Arek_PL]

why we cant use copper wire instead of tubbing? its rare too but much more common something about 50 will be not expensive but not cheap too

[Valpo]

why we cant use copper wire instead of tubbing? its rare too but much more common something about 50 will be not expensive but not cheap too

No actually copper tubing is muchmore common then copper wire.
You finde 5+ copper tubing in EVERY household no problem.

[Caprice]

No actually copper tubing is muchmore common then copper wire.

Electric motors might not have a [D]isassemble, but try smashing one sometime.

[TheFlame52]

[quote=“Valpo, post:15, topic:7735”]No actually copper tubing is muchmore common then copper wire.

Electric motors might not have a [D]isassemble, but try smashing one sometime.[/quote]
Removing a broken electric engine from an electric car gives a few thousand copper wire.

[Robik]

[quote=“Caprice, post:16, topic:7735”][quote=“Valpo, post:15, topic:7735”]No actually copper tubing is muchmore common then copper wire.

Electric motors might not have a [D]isassemble, but try smashing one sometime.[/quote]
Removing a broken electric engine from an electric car gives a few thousand copper wire.[/quote]

Hmm, we should weaponize that… new type of ammo, FWJ.

[saltmummy626]

you can disassemble an electric motor for 3200 copper wire.

Ive never had the opportunity to melt jacketed bullets, but I do not believe they would alloy. I dont really work in lead, but I guess I could try melting it with some copper scrap ive got lying around. then again, we could just look it up.

ok, it does not alloy. lead is insoluble in copper as the copper solidifies first, the lead stays in the copper as globules of unmixed metal.

[Valpo]

you can just melt the lead out as it melts first its not tricky. unless the bullet ist completely covered in copper this process is quite easy with the right tools.