Silver bullets

[M829A3]

I would like to know about either casting or swaging 308 bullets from Silver. I have my reasons, non of which have to do with Lycanthropes, although I can't rule that out! So anyone have experience with maybe bronze, or similar atypical bullet materials? And yes it would be for FALs.

[Tuscan Raider]

Sounds like expensive ammo.

[AndyC]

1,750 'F melting-point, IIRC

Edit: 1,763 - so I was close

[Powderfinger]

I killed 2 of those L things last night with 12 ga. loads of silver dimes. It was money well spent.

[molychromeman]

Cast bullets out of silver?
I would suggest a proven load. Lyman 311291 cast with gas check sized to 0.311" diameter lubed with allox bullet lube.
Powder IMR 3031 26 grains and a Winchester primer. If you can find type lead use it or lino-type lead is ok.

[MordeanGrey]

Silver in your bullets? Might be a Hellboy fan! LOL

In addition to his natural gifts, Hellboy carries a variety of items, such as holy relics, horseshoes, and herbs, in his utility belt, as well as a variety of grenades and other demolition tools; these often come in handy when fighting supernatural beasts. He commonly carries an oversized pistol. In the film adaptation, this gun is called the "Samaritan," and Hellboy states that he uses "Really big bullets" containing silver shavings, holy water, garlic, "the works" (as said by Hellboy in the movie) to ensure the weapon's effectiveness against supernatural creatures. It is also stated that the gun is fashioned from melted-down church bells and fragments of the True Cross. It should be noted, though, that Hellboy is, by his own admission, a lousy shot, preferring to mix it up in hand-to-hand combat whenever possible and eschewing most weapons.

[jaflowers]

heard of people making bullets out of pewter before. also had heard of people making and shooting silver bullets before but there was some weird problem due to the weight or melting point of silver. Can't remember for sure. probably do a Google search and find some info on it. good luck

[IronSkegge]

Check out this website on how to build a gas forge. You can also do some searching to find other informative websites on home built forges.

http://www.zoellerforge.com/simplegasforge.html

[Windustsearch]

Put the silver into a casting crucible and it'll met quick with an acetylene torch. Poor molten silver into bullet mold and presto. You'll have lighter harder bullets.

[USMC 0341]

I would be careful to swage the bullet down to a diameter very close to the barrel's land-to-land dimension. Silver, being much harder than lead, will not compress as readily as lead an thus could lead to much higher pressures if you are not careful on this point.

[Ricketts]

Plus, I would make sure I used a cast iron mold like a Lyman. You use an aluminum one by Lee and you probably will damage it die to the high temp required to melt the silver.

[TerryN]

Originally posted by Ricketts
Plus, I would make sure I used a cast iron mold like a Lyman. You use an aluminum one by Lee and you probably will damage it die to the high temp required to melt the silver.

Actually, lead alloys (like wheel weights and such) melt at about 75-100 degrees below the failure point of aluminum molds anyway. Since silver melts at 1,000 degrees (give or take) above the melting temp of lead, I'd think that aluminum molds would be a very poor choice for this application.

[Gunga Din]

I used to work in the electrical contact industry (so did Trixie). Silver was one of our prime materials. Back in the 1960s my engineer buddies and I hashed this over pretty well.

We concluded that casting will not work, as very special molds would be needed to prevent premature cooling and the attendant folds, and the actual melting of the silver and pouring it into the mold would have to be done in a reducing atmosphere of hydrogen or cracked ammonia. Otherwise whatever comes out of the mold will be ugly and black.

Silver is too hard to swedge, for all practical purposes, although we did it routinely with very special equipment (headers). But forget it for bullets with grooves.

But there is a way: Turn the bullets out of whichever Ag alloy you prefer on a lathe, or if in quantity, on a screw machine. That will get the job done, and the final product will look great.

[MAINER]

Years ago, I read an article on casting silver bullets ala Lone Ranger.
Consensus was "Tonto didn't cast em over no campfire" They ruined several molds tring to get them hot enough with a ox acy torch. Finally got a few that looked sorta like bullets by consulting a jewelry maker/silversmith. Some chemicals were employed to bring the melt point of the silver down.

Silver bullets, black powder and nickel plated Colts. The guns got real nasty looking, accuracy was crap, couldn't find any rifling on fired bullets, but fun was had by all, cept Tonto. He had to call everyone Kemo Sabe.

How about:
http://www.laser-cast.com/AboutLaserCast.html

[Ricketts]

Now that I think about it, years ago a friend of mine was retiring. He retired early and got a bunch of money to do so-- and the term then was "he got a silver bullet".

We got him a real one. Since I was the only reloader in the joint, it was up to me. I took a chunk of brass and turned it down into a 45 cal round nose and loaded it into a brass 45 LC case. We then sent it out to be silver plated.

Wasn't solid silver but it looked COOL when we got it back. Had it engraved with his name too. Unfortunately, he passed on a while back and I don't know what happened to it. I do know he wore it on a chain for a long time.

[brownknees]

Assuming you can find a way to acually make silver bullets, then they probably won't fly for crap.
The reason I'm thinking this is that rifling twist won't stabilize them as they would a lead core-jacketed round. The mass, & weight distribution will be all messed up as silver has a much lighter weight per mass than lead.

As Gunga Din discovered hot silver will oxidize very quickly & you'll end up with a mangy black wrinkly thing.

If you do try casting & get this silver oxide there is one thing you might try to remove the oxidization without removing any metal & changing the diameter. (If you're planning onshooting them, rather than making some kind of dislplay bullet that will matter).

Take a non-reactive container (glass or plastic.)
Line the whole insides with aluminum foil, probably 3 layers.
Dissolve as much "washing soda" (Sodium carbonate) in HOT water as it will take, now immerse the silver to be cleaned with a plastic ladle of some kind to stop it directly touching the foil.

Ignore the fizzing..........................................B ut don't lean over the bowl to check progress with a lit cigarette, that fizzing is O2.

What is happening is that the oxygen bonded chemically to the silver in the oxidizing process is being broken back out of the metal by the electrolytic action of the aluminum using the hot Sodium Carbonite as the electrolyte.

Once done wash with deionized or distilled water & buff or polish with a clean cloth.

[Lon Moer]

[AndyC]

I have that on my calendar for Oct 29 and was wondering how I could get to a scanner here at work to share it with you guys. Glad someone managed to get it right

[Gazz]

I doubt that you would be successful casting a silver bullet in an iron or aluminum mould. As previously mentioned, the moulds would most likely be to cold for the silver to flow into properly - you would get lots of wrinkles and a rough surface if you were lucky. Silver objects are investment cast - a wax model is invested (placed in a ss flask and then covered with a plaster of paris type material which is engineered to withstand very high heat) and this whole thing is placed in a burnout kiln to melt/evaporate the wax. When this is done, usually several hours of burnout - the flask is placed in a casting machine, either centrifical or vacuum and the molten silver is injected or sucked into the cavity left by the burned out wax. You will also need to take shrinkage into account. If your wax model measures .308" in diameter, your cast silver part will be somewhat smaller once the sliver cools. Perhaps you should talk to a local jeweller about casting a few for you. It probably will not be inexpensive but certainly less than if you bought all the required equipment yourself. You could also have them machined from round stock. I suppose that if you wanted to invest the time, you could make them in a hand drill by spinning the silver slugs and carefully removing material with files or emory paper covered flat sticks of wood. Getting them all the same weight and profile woud be time consuming.

[fry]

Originally posted by USMC 0341
I would be careful to swage the bullet down to a diameter very close to the barrel's land-to-land dimension. Silver, being much harder than lead, will not compress as readily as lead an thus could lead to much higher pressures if you are not careful on this point.

some good advice

[brownknees]

How about swaging rather than casting?
The cor-bon swaging equipment might work well for this use.

[pierre]

The lost wax, investment cast method that Gazz outlined would give you the finest results, tolerance and detail - wise. I've seen jewelry made by using an insect sprued up and enclosed in the investment (a special plaster, essentially), then burnt out in the kiln. Molten silver is then slung in under centrifugal force. The mold is then thrown into water, the plaster falls away. Cut off the sprues, polish and you have an incedibly detailed replica.
This process works for things from gun parts and turbine blades to dental crowns. For mass production the wax models are cranked out in rubber molds and ganged up for investing.
As for ballistic properties, I can't comment much. I don't know how the malleability and hardness of the usual copper alloy jackets compares to that of pure silver and its common alloys. I wouldn't surprise me much to learn that there's a point where they come close to one another. Hardness can also be drastically affected by annealing the piece.

[Windustsearch]

I have done that kind of casting before and the only way to really make it worth your time would be to turn out cylinders of hard blue wax on a lathe. After casting, cut the silver cylinders and shape them from there. You could probably get away with three 4" cylinders per casting, they can be connected to each other with red dental wax.

For exacting diameter just make the wax cylinders over-sized and turn the silver cylinders down on a lathe after casting.

You are talking probably twelve or more hours for just a handful of bullets.

That said, I think silver bullets would work fine, they would form in the barrel better than steel core ammo, but obviously not as well as lead.

[Gunga Din]

If making a few rifle bullets, just copy the Barnes Triple-Shock X-Bullet solid copper bullet dimensions.

[MasterGunner]

I hate to be the one to rain you your parade, but . . .

Many, many years ago Guns and Ammo magazine did an article about casting silver bullets like the Lone Ranger. They found that they had a couple of problems.

(1) The high melting point of the silver gave them trouble with the mold. The furnace was a problem getting the silver to melt and the mold had to be heated cherry red even to get to a projectle to form.

(2) When they finally got cast projectles, there was some shrinkage of the silver that made the bullets undersize.

(3) When they were finally able to get the approximate sized projectiles, they found that the accuracy of the bullets wasn't that great.

Other than than those problems, I wish you luck on your project.

[pierre]

The procedure for right sized silver bullets would be looking up the percent shrinkage of cast silver (I'll bet it's out there in some table, say in a silversmith's, jeweler's, or dental manual or text), then turning a brass or aluminum model out that is that percentage over-sized, and making an RTV (room temperature vulcanizing) rubber mold with it. Wax cast in the RTV mold is then invested, burnt out, and silver is slung in. Shrinkage is pre-compensated for. The dental industry has had to deal with it in making custom crowns for years, unless the gold alloy they use has negligable shrinkage or something.

[SHARPSHOOTER]

I used to work with a guy who was into getting maximum velocity from cartridges. I recall him using a turret lathe to turn bullets out of alloys, the way I recall it though he was using a lot of bronze though and no Silver. Were I going to do it, the lathe would be the way to fly.