Casting Silver Bullets

[Dark Mod]

How about lost wax casting a silver jacket. Then fill with molten lead. Saves on silver keeps the weight of the boolet up. Probably could be run through a sizer once filled. Yes I have give this lots of thought.

That would work actually, but i really wanna try a solid silver bullet. You think it would be too hard for a sizing die? Probably not any harder than a hardcast bullet so i hope not.

By the way, i dont happen to have a 9mm sizing die, i dont suppose i could bring some bullets to your house and size them could i?

[ar15barrels]

Any thoughts? Also, anyone ever try to fire a silver bullet? Im sure silver is a lot lighter than lead so ill likely have to use a heavy for caliber bullet, maybe like a 158 grn, to make the mold, then hope it ends up being around 115 grns so I can use 115 grn load data.

I would not actually load them to fire them.
Silver is VERY hard so the bullet will not obturate anything like a lead core bullet.
If you really want to shoot them, make them with bore riders with a single driving band about 1/16" long to seal the grooves.

[Dark Mod]

If it doesn't pan out; I've nickle plated onto copper jacketed bullets and they came out looking pretty good. Was easy.

be cognizant your adding a little to the diameter. I could hear a little difference when they went down the barrel. I also hit a bulls eye with one of the five I shot.

I was thinking something similar too, we are set up for Rhodium plating so worst case scenerio i could plate some copper bullets. The funny thing is a thin plating of Rhodium would probably cost more than all the silver bullets and grips combined.

I would still pass them through a sizing die after plating, just to make perfectly sure they are the correct diameter

[Fizz]

Doesn't silver readily alloy with lead? You could probably cast as normal and it wouldn't shrink too much.

[sl0re10]

I was thinking something similar too, we are set up for Rhodium plating so worst case scenerio i could plate some copper bullets. The funny thing is a thin plating of Rhodium would probably cost more than all the silver bullets and grips combined.

I would still pass them through a sizing die after plating, just to make perfectly sure they are the correct diameter

Try a bottle of nickle solution from ebay. $35. It seemed to help accuracy... you might end up plating a few for yourself to shoot.

[Dark Mod]

I would not actually load them to fire them.
Silver is VERY hard so the bullet will not obturate anything like a lead core bullet.
If you really want to shoot them, make them with bore riders with a single driving band about 1/16" long to seal the grooves.

Thats another big worry of mine, silver has a BHN of 24, which isnt too much harder than a hardcast lead bullet. Ive even seen some companies selling lead bullets with a BHN of 24 so i was hoping it would kinda just work out.

I could make them bore riders, but i dont have any sample bullets like that to take a mold from and time is of the essence (These have to get cast along with the grips, otherwise its a no go).

Im kinda just hoping for the best at this point, but Im glad you brought this up as its an important angle ive barely considered.

Ill put some thought into it, worst case scenerio i can have my designer mock up a bullet for the 3d printer, but if im gonna have someone do that i intend to do something special.

Maybe a symbol or someones name on the meplat, that way my dad could say "ive got a bullet with your name on it" or something like that. What im i talking about, thats a terrible idea, if he ever had to shoot that person he would get a murder charge for sure.

[Dark Mod]

Doesn't silver readily alloy with lead? You could probably cast as normal and it wouldn't shrink too much.

This is another great point!!!!! I havent even thought of this. The only roadblocks i can think of is if a reloading pot will get hot enough to melt silver, and what the alloy would have to be to retain leads non shrinking properties. If it ends up being only like 20% silver it kinda defeats the purpose.

Edit: Just did a bit of googling. Silvers melting point is 1763, and Lead is 621..... Lead would boil before being hot enough to melt silver (1740)

Probably a moot point since i doubt casting pots get anywhere near that hot... Unless i heat silver to melting using my jewelry equipment, then pour it into a pot of molten lead.... its getting a little more complicated now since molten silver is above the boiling point of lead, when i added the silver to the lead it may have a bad reaction. Also It would be hard to maintain the alloy level and some of the lead would evaporate, not to mention be kinda dangerous. I wouldn't feel right asking my employees to do that knowing its unsafe. The silver would solidify before i had time to pour the alloy into a mold.

I could do it vice versa, but the lead would boil and evaporate as soon as it hit the molten silver, plus theres no way to add material to the molten silver concotion once its heated up, the equpiment prevents this for safety reasons.

[ar15barrels]

Thats another big worry of mine, silver has a BHN of 24, which isnt too much harder than a hardcast lead bullet. Ive even seen some companies selling lead bullets with a BHN of 24 so i was hoping it would kinda just work out.

I could make them bore riders, but i dont have any sample bullets like that to take a mold from and time is of the essence (These have to get cast along with the grips, otherwise its a no go).

Im kinda just hoping for the best at this point, but Im glad you brought this up as its an important angle ive barely considered.

Ill put some thought into it, worst case scenerio i can have my designer mock up a bullet for the 3d printer, but if im gonna have someone do that i intend to do something special.

If you model them, do them hollow like a minneball.
That will solve the obturation problem as well as reduce your material costs.
Keep the wall thickness about 1/3 of bullet diameter, leaving a void in the middle about 1/3 the bullet diameter.

[Fizz]

This is another great point!!!!! I havent even thought of this. The only roadblocks i can think of is if a reloading pot will get hot enough to melt silver, and what the alloy would have to be to retain leads non shrinking properties. If it ends up being only like 20% silver it kinda defeats the purpose.

I have a Lee pot and I'm not sure it'd melt pure silver. You would probably need to cast out of a crucible made for gold or similar.

[BigBronco]

I did a bunch of research on this a few years back. The guys that pulled it off tuned a custom made graphite mold. A steel or aluminum mold does not retain enough heat for the molten silver to flow in to the mold with out cooling so fast that it will not get a wrinkled surface

[Carcassonne]

Thats another big worry of mine, silver has a BHN of 24, which isnt too much harder than a hardcast lead bullet. Ive even seen some companies selling lead bullets with a BHN of 24 so i was hoping it would kinda just work out.

Silver is softer than copper, and they make 100% copper projectiles.

Depending on the caliber and size, those are going to be some expensive bullets.

I did a bunch of research on this a few years back. The guys that pulled it off tuned a custom made graphite mold. A steel or aluminum mold does not retain enough heat for the molten silver to flow in to the mold with out cooling so fast that it will not get a wrinkled surface

It might be easier to machine a silver bullet from bar stock.


.

[BigBronco]

Pages of info here:

http://www.patriciabriggs.com/articles/silver/silverbullets.shtml

[thenodnarb]

another thought: Silver solder is a permanent way to affix a flash hider to a barrel. Would silver fouling be difficult to remove from the barrel?

[VooDooV]

Thought because silver is a national resource you cannot waste it ie. shoot it.

[stilly]

I did a bunch of research on this a few years back. The guys that pulled it off tuned a custom made graphite mold. A steel or aluminum mold does not retain enough heat for the molten silver to flow in to the mold with out cooling so fast that it will not get a wrinkled surface

Oh damn. I just got a graphite mold for ingots. The thought on the back of my mind was how efficient diamonds are at conducting heat. But NAW, This aint aluminum or metal, so it won't conduct heat any...

SOAB...

So I can not cast 200G ingots in the graphite and pick it up with my bare hands to move it?

SOAB...