Aluminum bullet????

[thecollector]

Cartridge brass is 70% Copper and 30% Zinc, and not quite as good as the guilding metal of jacketed bullets (95% Copper and 5% Zinc) as a bearing material against steel barrels. 100% Copper is fine against steel and works OK in solid bullets, but it is not as dense as Lead, that's why Lead is used as a bullet core material, it has a highly favorable density to cost ratio. Other materials such as Tungsten and Uranium are denser than lead and would make desirable bullet cores but are prohibitevly expensive for regular bullet cores. Tungsten cores have been used in armour piercing ammo, and Uranium is used as the projectile material in hyper velocity kinetic energy penetrators such as the 120 mm HVFSDS anti-tank rounds.
Aluminum is not dense enough for good ballistic performance, its weight per unit cross sectional area would permit rapid velocity loss from areodynamic drag. Aluminum is used as the discarding sabot material in the HVFSDS rounds because of its low density.

 

[762shooter]

There is a business in Salmon Arm BC that turns solid bullets for .50 BMG from a copper/zinc allow similar to brass but with different machining properties. I've read that they are performing well.

 

[Doc M]

My work has the capabilities to do this. Brass for sure, we run it all the time in the CNCs. Would this actually make a decent bullet material?

Lathe-turned BRONZE (not brass) bullets are hugely used for long-range precision shooting, particularly in .50 BMG rifles at 1,000 yards.

If you could find good plans for a profile that your CNC operator could turn, you guys could make yourself an extra $100 a day each on top of your material costs by turning match-grade slugs and selling them via something like Gunbroker.com. Guys will pay a couple bucks a shot for lathe-turned solid bronze bullets.

For example, lathe-turned solid bronze 755gr bullets in loaded ammo sold for USD$60/5 rounds on gunbroker recently; the projectiles alone are worth $4-6 each if they're well-turned and consistent. If you have access to a CNC machine, you should look into this for sure. Buy some proper composition bronze bar stock and get 'er done if the shop will let you!

-M

 

[41 Colt]

I asked my coworker today about this. He's a hunter and has actually been interested in this himself. He said brass comes in several hardnesses but leaded brass, or regular machining brass, sounds like it would work. We have a machine comparator in shop and he said bring buy a bullet and he can take an exact reading and write a program for it (I currently don't have any). He said 3/8" bar stock (for 9mm) is about $30-$40 for 12', and about 250 bullets could be had out of a stock off the top of his head. He didn't mention machining costs. I can get more info tomorrow.

Lathe-turned BRONZE (not brass) bullets are hugely used for long-range precision shooting, particularly in .50 BMG rifles at 1,000 yards.

If you could find good plans for a profile that your CNC operator could turn, you guys could make yourself an extra $100 a day each on top of your material costs by turning match-grade slugs and selling them via something like Gunbroker.com. Guys will pay a couple bucks a shot for lathe-turned solid bronze bullets.

For example, lathe-turned solid bronze 755gr bullets in loaded ammo sold for USD$60/5 rounds on gunbroker recently; the projectiles alone are worth $4-6 each if they're well-turned and consistent. If you have access to a CNC machine, you should look into this for sure. Buy some proper composition bronze bar stock and get 'er done if the shop will let you!

-M

He has heard about the lathe turned .50 BMG bullets, I don't think he knew what they were fetching though.

 

[josquin]

I had a machine shop make me some bullets out of solid bronze....

A similar bullet is available commercially (well, maybe not to us in Canada ) from beltmountain.com/punch.htm. Apparently they penetrate like there's no tomorrow. There was an article in African Hunter magazine of a fellow who used a customized Marlin 1895 in .50 Alaskan to take an elephant with these.

Stuart

 

[green]

French army used a solid bronze bt in the 8mm Lebel "Balle D" ctg. Fired off several billion 1900-45.

 

[Doc M]

He has heard about the lathe turned .50 BMG bullets, I don't think he knew what they were fetching though.

Hey, if you make millions and want to forward me a modest "finder's fee" as the inspiration, I'm not complaining...

Seriously, this is one of the first things I would do if I ever purchased a CNC lathe. As it is, my manual lathe isn't exactly ideal to do this kind of thing.

-M

 

[Duck_Hunter]

$30-40 + machining costs for 9mm?
You could buy some frontier CMJs for around $80/1000

 

[caporal]

Thanks for all infos

Thanks for all infos

I think I was not clear on one point: That idea was for handguns at short range ONLY. So stabilisation is not as critical as a rifle & talking about stabilistation. Bullet weight as nothing to do with stabilisation it's the lengh in relation with diameter as it was discussed,

Mathematician George Greenhill was able to mathematically establish that bullet stabilization was influenced by its length in relation to its twist rate.

In other words, it does not matter what a bullet weighs, but how LONG a bullet is in relation to its width which determines optimal twist.

the Greenhill Formula:

Twist = 150 X D2/L

Where:
D = bullet diameter in inches
L= bullet length in inches
150 = a constant

Is a highly effective and predictable means of determining optimal twist rates. Having said this, there was a difference when bullets traveled closer to a trans-sonic speed. the factor if 150 must be changed to 180 in near trans-sonic bullet velocities.

However

Thanks especially about possible galling of aluminum in barrel & the abrasion of the aluminum oxide those 2 points are more than enought to make me forget that silly idea,

I was thinking about aluminum as a cheap alternative for bullet but it seem that only some brasses or bronzes can be used so wont be cheap


Larry"Corporal"Marcotte

 

[Big JD-From the hills]

I have always wanted to get a few teflon, or even nylon bullets made up, for use in revolvers with only a primer charge, or small powder charge. I have played with wax bullets for such use, but its kind of anyoying. The leaded brass should work, you might want reduce the bearing surface though, like the barne's bullets

 

[Rembo]

About 10 years ago there were some aluminum bullets being used. They were in 30 cal and hollow, I mean a hole right thru from front to base, they used a copper gas check on the bottom. One of the guys at the local shop was shooting them in a 300 Win Mag Sendero....

 

[.Ben]

aluminum oxidizes like crazy which wouldent be god for your barrel plus id would be the lightest bullets out there and prolly not even pratical at all for shooting....