Silver bullet pressing / swaging?

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wacki

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Has anyone tried it? Moh's hardness scale is 1.5 Pb vs 2.5 Ag. Silver is about the same as gold which is well known as a malleable metal.

So in theory it's possible. You might need a .50 cal "Mega Mite" press to press a .357 in Ag but I bet it could be done.








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Silver is no where near as malleable as gold or even copper.
It would take enormous pressure, compared to lead or copper, to swage silver bullets.
Silver has too high a melting point for casting with any home equipment and the molds will quickly be destroyed at those temperatures.
Back in the Lone Ranger TV series days, a couple of magazines tried it out--FAIL.
 
Silver is too hard. Accuracy will be bad.

Those warewolves might need to be dangerously close when you shoot them if this poster is correct.
 
OK, throw a twist on that - what metals can be alloyed with silver to increase it's usefulness as a bullet metal - those stupid Twilight movies and other werewolf and vampire flicks can start another goofy firearms trend like the zombie junk, so why not silver alloyed bullets...perhaps lead with a sliver spike in the middle. Cheaper, that. :D
 
I do swage bullets, and my experience is that anything other than pure lead increases the pressure required to get good bullet fill out in the swaging die. Even alloys with a bhn of 12 (wheelweights) is much harder to swage than pure lead with a bhn of 5 or 6.

If you tried to swage something as hard as silver with the commonly available swaging dies and presses, you would risk cracking a swaging die, bending parts of the dies, or breaking the linkages on the swaging press. The pressures required would be above the design limits of the lead swaging dies.

These assumptions aren't based on scientific knowledge, just the knowledge gained from pulling the handle on my swaging presses.

Hope this helps.

Fred
 
Cast them using a "lost wax" process like a jeweler would, or turn them on a mini-lathe. They should shoot as well as jacketed bullets, or cast Linotype.
 
Melt and make shot out of it... Should flow through the screen if molten then load as shot in shotgun and pistol... Might be able to silver plate bullets although I am not sure... Could not hurt to have a few boxes around could it?:p
 
*a bit off topic*
awhile back (and after a few libations) a few of us got into a discussion of how to actually make a silver bullet in in a cost effective matter that might actually work. we decided that silver nitrate and lead chloride could be mixed in solution and heated - the resultant material could be formed - either pressed into a frangible bullet, or plated/jacketed like a normal lead bullet.

The practical upshot would be a round that would essentially be virtually impossible to remove through normal werewolf super healing!
 
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