Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander
Basically, I'm trying to determine whether any ammunition manufacturer in my setting can justify using iron/mild steel to make lead-free rounds without being aware of the supernatural and the role of such rounds for monster hunting.
|
This is fairly unlikely. The high-purity soft iron you need for such rounds is probably fairly expensive, and certainly corrodes easily. There's also no easy way* to make it match the weight of the conventional bullets that weapons are sighted for. That will make a difference at ranges that are relevant to snipers and machine gunners, and armies don't like to have weapon-specific ammunition, or different weapons for training and combat**.
If you were to use iron rounds at long ranges, you would need to re-calibrate the sights; it's only at the short ranges typical of monster-hunting combat that the difference would be insignificant.
*
You could match density by using iron rounds with tungsten inserts, but pressing inserts into soft iron is much more difficult than pressing them into lead.
*
If a soldier has a gun that is his, he can be persuaded to look after it. Guns that are only used for training don't get cared for so well, and training with inaccurate and unreliable weapons is bad for soldiers' confidence.