Silver projectiles

BullOnParade

BullOnParade

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A friend of mine is in jewelry making, we were hanging out a while back and I showed her my casting setup. We discussed the process and screwed around at a later date, trying to make silver bullets. We didn't get the process squared away that time, but we've talked about it since and I may lend her my molds to try again.

Curious if anyone has bought silver bullets before. What you think of selling them for the novelty.

According to a quick Google search, copper and silver have similar hv, however, I would not recommend shooting silver through a firearm unless you're at risk of a warewolf or vampire assault.
 
melting down pc boards to get the silver solder out of them may be a way to get silver for bullets, later this spring I plan on doing that and casting some bullets. vampires beware
 
BattleRife said:
The melting point of silver is 960°C, temperatures like that risk destroying your moulds, which were designed to work at about 400°.
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This is what I would worry about. I have seen the affects of using zinc and aluminum moulds. Zinc acts as solder. Ruined the moulds. I would contact the manufacturer and see what they say their moulds are rated for as far as upper heat limit.
 
I do some silver casting. Takes considerable heat. I would like to try making some silver bullets but I don’t do any bullet casting. Probably need to preheat the mould pretty good.
 
I dont know why I stumbled on this when looking at casting stuff, it's some author, I don't know who she is, and I imagine her books are targeted towards women.. so probably noone else here does either.

Regardless, she works with a scientist? Metalurgist? And they calculate the different shrinkage vs lead, make custom molds, experiment with mold temperature to get the right surface finish? Right up to shooting them.

I dont know why I fell down that rabbit hole, but it was alot of interesting stuff I hadn't even thought about.

Here is a link, but its going to be a lot of reading.

http://www.patriciabriggs.com/articles/silver/silverbullet8.shtml
 
A 150gr bullet would be ~0.34oz, which has a market value of around $8.50. Would be a cool novelty but I wouldn't want to fire em at that cost!
 
I f you could get some blocks of carbon and pin them and then drill and bore a bullet mould in it you could maybe chuck up the dropped bullet and turn it to shape in the lathe. It won't be quick but how many werewolves are out there.

Bill
 
You can buy silver 1 ounce 45acp and 10 ounce 50 bmg "bullets" from silver gold bull Canada. Think snap caps style. Not a projectile.
 
mg34 said:
melting down pc boards to get the silver solder out of them may be a way to get silver for bullets, later this spring I plan on doing that and casting some bullets. vampires beware
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Hope you understand that "silver bearing solder" is common - so, has a low melting temp like 400 F, but about 4% (or less) silver and 96% (plus) tin. Real "silver solder" needs to have iron parts up into red hot temps to melt that silver - is actually properly called a silver braze, I think, when pure or nearly pure silver used to join two other pieces together.

I have no clue how you would separate that silver from the tin, since it is now alloyed - no doubt there is a process to get them to separate, but do not know what that is - I think the alloy is a eutectic, or nearly eutectic alloy - the melting point of the alloy is lower than melting point of either parent metal.
 
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On a somewhat related note, my best friend got a unique gift for the birth of my son about 22 years ago.
He took a .38 Spl case and a lead bullet for same (probably a 158gr, but not sure) to a jeweler.
The original bullet was used as a pattern for a mold to make a copy out of gold.
I dont recall what karat it is, but I expect it was a few dollars then, and more now.
This site shows around US$250 to $325 for a Troy Oz of gold back in 1999 or 2000.
https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart
 
Just acquired a bunch of Silver Solder that I'd like to make into bullets. I don't know its composition, but it's likely something like: 65-85% silver; 10-20% copper; and 5-15% zinc, with a melting temperature around 750C.

I'll likely make an ingot to start and go from there.

As for molds, I don't mind risking a Lee aluminum mold, but I imagine steel will be the way to go.
 
I remember watching a lot of crap videos years ago on how to make silver bullets, and I was never convinced that any of the people making the bullets were experienced reloaders, and were just trying to make bullets for the novelty of it.

I saw one video, that I cant find, where the person was an experienced reloader and they found there were all kinds of issues when working with silver.

One challenge, was that the moulds designed for lead are based on the rate that lead will contract as it cools, so that the finished bullet is smaller than the mould, and the correct size for the intended calibre. As silver contracts at a different rate, related in part to the higher melt temperature, they found that standard lead moulds weren't sized properly for silver, and they ended up needing to get custom designed moulds. If I recall the silver bullets were several thou off of what they should have been when using a lead mould.

The other challenge is that Silver has about 90% the density of lead, so when it comes time to do your powder calculations, you will have to expect to working with bullets at the lighter end of the scale.
 
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