Random Idea : Magnetic Shot?

[giddonah]

I'm in the "nice idea but..." camp. Magnetic force is a close distance force. As soon as the shot leaves the barrel, you'll be looking at a tendency to spread that would overcome the magnetic force. Plus, what is going to happen when you get two positive charges close to each other?

I'm not sure if it would have an effect, but I would be interested in seeing test results.

 

[BADUNAME37]

If you strike a magnet, it loses some of its power.

I wonder how much the firing of the gun would make each magnetized pellet that much less powerful.

As it is, you are talking a pretty weak power, in relation to the awesome power of a 12 gauge. Once those pellets go through the choke and leave the muzzle, they are free to fly how they want, albeit WITH EXTREME ENERGY headed towards the target.

I think you would need to shoot like 50 rounds of non-magnetized pellets and 50 of magnetized to see if there are any patterns to the magnetized vs. non-magnetized---namely tighter patterns on paper, everything else remaining exactly the same (extremely controlled environment).

It is a good idea in theory, it just needs to be verified to see if it will actually work.

What might serve the same purpose would be to have the plastic shot collar stay together longer that holds the shot together.

 

[Hawk]

Flying buckyball of doom, enh? Good stuff. That whole north-south thing has me thinking they won't form into the nice little clump we're accustomed to seeing in a 12Ga #8 cut away.

http://amasci.com/amateur/beads.html

If using something normal mortals could afford (as opposed to those super magnets) my wild guess is not much would happen - once there was a little clearance there'd be a lot of clearance. Magnetic attractive forces drop off in a hurry with distance - rather of a complicated inverse square if memory serves. Good luck with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet#Force_between_two_bar_magnets

 

[Husker1911]

Have you seen the most recent Indiana Jones movie? Indy cuts open some shotgun shells, and the (presumably) lead pellets are attracted by a strong magnetic force.

Hey Hollywood, lead shotgun pellets are non-ferrous, and not affected by magnetic force.

 

[benEzra]

Unless someone figures out how to make something other than steel magnetic, I am afraid I wouldn't be interested in any event. I don't think you can cook it enough to be as good as Hevi-Shot or Kent T/M.

The most powerful permanent magnets are all non-steel. The most common of the really strong magnets today are neodymium-iron-boron, usually Nd2Fe14B. Samarium cobalt magnets were more common in the past, but they've mostly been superseded by the neodymium ones now except in high-temperature applications.

The downside is, those materials are no more dense than steel, and they tend to be brittle, which makes them problematic for shotgunning.

 

[GregGry]

Another way to look at it:

If it peforms more like buckshot you basically have very expensive buckshot on your hands.

If it performs more like a slug (sticking mostly together as one mass) then what you have is a partial slug with poor accuracy

 

[MikeKeyW]

OT, computer hard drive magnets.

Check out the magnets in a dead computer hard drive, their used to position the heads. they make great tool holders when mounted over the workbench. Just be careful handling them, they tend to snap together hard and if theirs skin in the way...
Hawk, who mentioned Buckyballs (Buckminsterfullerene, a carbon molecule with some amazing potentials) hit the nail on the head with the relation of proximity to the effective magnetic field, otherwise those strong magnets would wipe all the 0's and 1's off of the hard drives platters. Now if you want to see some really strong magnets check out the LHC at CERN:
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/
Now that's a really big gun...

 

[4thPointOfContact]

How about this....
Imagine a disk pre-scored into pie shaped sections so that it would break apart easily. Now, imagine one disk molded to the disk below it so that it would fly to the target in the same manner as a slug. Once impacting, the disks separate from one another as would the pie shaped sections. Package it in a sabot so that the sabot would interleave with the disks, cushioning them until the sabot left the barrel.

I'm not sure what the result of triangular pieces of near-shrapnel would do, but I imagine it might have more effect than round ball.

 

[BADUNAME37]

That's the best idea yet! Triangular-shaped projectiles, once they hit the target!

 

[rhinoh]

Would magnetic shot veer off toward the north like a compass needle?