Casting Silver Bullets for Werewolves

[kragjorgensen]

One of my former colleagues helped a "werewolf book" author make a more realistic novel by casting & testing silver bullets.

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

There are some interesting insights, including the differences in hardness & shrinkage & density. Kevin has since gone back to Canada, which caused me to miss out on his partial differential equation filled interior and exterior ballistics course. Still trying to get a copy of his lecture notes.

With metals prices going as they are, lead may soon catch silver...

I had another colleague, since passed away, who claimed that when he was a boy his father made bullets alloyed with Gold and they all shot in the same hole. His Dad even showed him by one-holing a target at 50yds. I replied, "Conrad, didja ever think that your Dad may have just shot one shot in the middle and put the other nine over the top of the paper?" There was a look of hurt realization after all these decades. His Dad was born about the same time as my Grandad and I recall numerous & similar tall tales by my father, grandfathers, and uncles meant to awe the naive & callow youths of the latest generation then just recently out of diapers... Later on I got a note from Conrad, "...I have never known my father to lie to me even when he was prevaricating..." Sadly the last of the great curmudgeons passed away after a stroke in 2009 just shy of his 90th birthday.

Anyway, I thought the results with the silver bullets would be interesting, if this hasn't been put up on this site before.

Matt

[Shiloh]

I have made some in the past as novelties.
When I had my full time jewelers shop, I started with a boolit made from hard blue jewelers wax, cast it up in silver, and made a rubber mold to make injection wax duplicates.

They are oversized and would highly discourage loading and firing them.
I have seen one that was loaded up in a .357 cartridge as a novelty werewolf round.

I have also silver plated 125 gr jacketed hollow point boolits. How would the werewolf know???

Shiloh

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

the real question , what percentage of silver is necessary to kill a werewolf

much of the current lead free solder contains a few percent silver if using this solder to make say a 20:1 alloy you would have a measurable amount of solder in each bullet already

[MBTcustom]

Gold does dissolve into molten lead very quickly. I have found traces of gold in quite a few samples I have tested, and it is my belief that if it were cheaper, it would be a common additive to improve hardness of the alloys, but that is just a theory of mine.

[Rick R]

Larry Correia is a shooter and writer who has a series of novels about Monster Hunters Inc. a privately held company that removes pesky monsters of all types for pay. Correia has gone to the extent of describing the ammunition that the private company has designed and produced in a small shop and the ammunition carried by government employees who have access to large factories for their ammunition needs.

Makes for a pretty good read. :)

[windy]

i'm just waitin' fer a yarn about some old-time trapper er injun-fighter pannin' gold to melt fer his balls er bullets. shucks, it might just pay a feller to get shot, long as it warn't fatal!
mind yer topknot!
windy

[Papa smurf]

It's Halloweeeeeeeeen again ! DAH !!! Papa Smurf again !

[john hayslip]

I don't know if it is available on the internet but in the 60's or so the magazine Gunworld did a piece on casting silver bullets as the Lone Ranger was supposed to do. They dressed up in Lone Ranger and Tonto costumes for the pictures. They were trying to use a regular bullet mold. Basically they couldn't get it to work,, the silver melted at too high a melting point to be done on a campfire and they had trouble getting good bullets if they used high enough heat to melt the silver. It was, of course, a farce, but was really funny reading. In a later issue they did one where one of the staff dressed up as Superman for the article. Wasn't nearly as good.

[I'll Make Mine]

That article is on the net; I've read it recently.

Bottom line is that pure silver is very, very impractical for cast bullets; melting point is way high, only an iron/steel mold can be used, the bullets shrink a lot more than lead and don't fill out well, and pure silver is too hard for good terminal performance.

That said, silver and lead ought to alloy well; they're found together in most mining locations (either galena with silver sulfide, or native silver with native lead in quartz, same formation mechanism as quartz vein gold). As noted above, tin-antimony-silver solders are becoming common for plumbing, and silver-bearing solders based on tin (often with a little cadmium, silver's closest friend, as well) with melting points similar to common tin/lead soft solder have been around for a long time.

Based on recent werewolf fiction, it shouldn't take much silver to cause a great deal of trouble for werewolves -- but if one were to find through experience that an alloy wouldn't work (and live through it), one could surely silver plate lead boolits, using a process similar to that used for copper plated bullets already commonly available. I'd think this to be much more practical and more likely to be effective than a low percentage silver-lead alloy anyway...

[Jeff82]

Interesting. The author references the "Best of Gedauvan," which was the subject of a vary poorly done History Channel reality show investigation. In one segment they experimented with a cast silver bullet rifle cartridge. It worked, but was less accurate than a commercial jacketed lead cartridge --no big surprize. Nothing blew up though. In the show, they came the same conclusions about hardness, and the weight difference and problems with casting. Of course, they used a modern lever action rifle. I suspect a patched silver ball round fired in rifled musket might perform a little better, which would have been more relevant to the comparison they were trying to make.

Personally, I prefer Lyman #2.

[scattershot]

I don't know if it is available on the internet but in the 60's or so the magazine Gunworld did a piece on casting silver bullets as the Lone Ranger was supposed to do. They dressed up in Lone Ranger and Tonto costumes for the pictures. They were trying to use a regular bullet mold. Basically they couldn't get it to work,, the silver melted at too high a melting point to be done on a campfire and they had trouble getting good bullets if they used high enough heat to melt the silver. It was, of course, a farce, but was really funny reading. In a later issue they did one where one of the staff dressed up as Superman for the article. Wasn't nearly as good.

I remember that! Maybe KemoSabe had a jeweller friend.

[Sonnypie]

It's Halloweeeeeeeeen again ! DAH !!! Papa Smurf again !

I be thunkin somebody is missin April Fools Day. :hijack:

[KCSO]

Way back in the 60's GUNS magazine did an article where two of their writers made used and accuracy tested silver bullets. I have the article somewhere in my boxes of old magazines, I can't for the life of me remember the writers now but they did a LOT of weird stuff back then. They never got good accuracy from silver bullets. I turned 6 of them for a display case for my Dad's 38 one time but we never shot any of them.

[KCSO]

1964 Jack Lewis an ex marine and a screen writer. Gunworld Magazine.

[shotman]

Well if you know an electrician the contact points are silver in the larger breakers.
you need to use a STEEL mold and I used the cast pour ladle to heat the silver. the mold needs to be dull red. so you are looking at trashing a mold. I had 18 cast in a 44 belt and when I came back from the target they were gone. If I knew the name of the guy I would make one for him

[John in WI]

If you get a chance--this book gives detailed instruction for silver bullets. Although if I remember he turned them. http://graysci.com/

It's a great and funny book in any case. It's called "Experiments you can do at home, but probably shouldn't". There was one demonstration where he salted popcorn by pumping chlorine gas into a pan of metallic sodium. The results were a little, err, exo-thermic!

Anyway, I wonder if it has to be METALLIC silver for werewolves? It seems to me a soluble silver salt would work better (WAY higher solubility in blood). It's probably not humane. But when I'm hunting werewolves, I leave my hunter's ethics at home!

[deltaenterprizes]

One article I read the jeweler made a mold from carbon fiber blocks so that they would take the heat.

[turmech]

Not that I would do this as I am confident that lead will kill anything I need to shoot at.

But it would seem to me that one of the easiest ways to shoot silver at something would be in a shot cup of a shot shell. An old chain especially with roundish links should preform as well as steel shot.

[Beagle333]

But it would seem to me that one of the easiest ways to shoot silver at something would be in a shot cup of a shot shell. An old chain especially with roundish links should preform as well as steel shot.

By Gummy, I think you're onto something! :mrgreen: I'll stuff one down the barrel of my trusty .56 Renegade Smoothbore! Come 'n Get it, Mr. Werewolf!! :twisted:

Or how much silver does it take (as previously mentioned?) Perhaps I could just take one of the wife's mismatched set of silver earrings, hammer it into a small ball, and stuff in into the hollowpoint of a 457122. :holysheep

[Papa smurf]

Maybe we all should try casting wooden stakes---- its that time of the year . ----- Papa again

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

how about a stack of silver dimes in a shot cup with nitro cards between them

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

Maybe we all should try casting wooden stakes---- its that time of the year . ----- Papa again

no need i have Israeli wooden bullets in 308

they look to be just turned down hard wood dowel

[ElDorado]

i'm just waitin' fer a yarn about some old-time trapper er injun-fighter pannin' gold to melt fer his balls er bullets. shucks, it might just pay a feller to get shot, long as it warn't fatal!
mind yer topknot!
windy

No need to wait. Read Centennial by James Michener.

[lrdg]

Thirty years ago I worked in a gun / jewelry store. The owner got the idea he wanted some silver bullets for jewelry. He gave me a couple silver spoons to try casting. Using oxyacetylene, I melted the spoons but never got the silver to fill out the mold. Lots of serious voids (bubbles?). At that point I sort of decide that the Lone Ranger just might be more fiction than history.

I do not recommend casting silver bullets.

[madsenshooter]

I emailed the fellow whose wife wrote the werewolf book sometime ago, told him to tell her to work machining the bullets from silver rod of the appropriate diameter, which is available for most bullets, into any future yarns. I got dibs on the floor sweepings!

[boltons75]

There was just a show on discovery or history channel, they were casting, in a steel Lyman mold, silver boolits, and shooting them testing for accuracy. They were trying to debunk and old werewolf hunters tale.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2

[lrdg]

I guess that's where I went wrong, I was using an RCBS mold.

Been a long time, but I think it ruined the mold. I know I got that sucker pretty hot. Melting point of silver is just shy of 1000 deg. Though I doubt those spoons were pure silver.

[kragjorgensen]

Gold does dissolve into molten lead very quickly. I have found traces of gold in quite a few samples I have tested, and it is my belief that if it were cheaper, it would be a common additive to improve hardness of the alloys, but that is just a theory of mine.

I'm pretty sure Conrad's Dad was mischeviously pulling his ~8yr old leg at the time about his magic gold-alloy bullets. I was almost double digit age before I began to seriously doubt my Uncle Bob's claim that he was immune to poison ivy because he had green blood... I wish I could've remembered ALL of their tall tales - hard to re-invent this kind of wild stuff for the next generation...

The fire assaying technique relies on gold, silver, platinum, etc. dissolving in a lead solution. Thousands of years ago they came up with ore + litharge to dissolve the precision and slag off the rest, then melt the lead & precious metals in a cupel made of bone & such (if I'm remembering correctly) and the lead drains into the cupel leaving a little precious metal bead. Even the old testament discusses the process. Amazing what they came up with back then through trial & error.

I've heard tell of significant silver making the bullets less likely to break up.

At least it's not another Zombie thing...

Matt

[boltons75]

I guess that's where I went wrong, I was using an RCBS mold.

Been a long time, but I think it ruined the mold. I know I got that sucker pretty hot. Melting point of silver is just shy of 1000 deg. Though I doubt those spoons were pure silver.

They were using a crucible and a special oven.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2

[MikeS]

Would silver boolits be appropriate for hunting jackalopes?

We had a guy going for about 3 years about how vicious and dangerous they were!

[I'll Make Mine]

Papa, some folks claim that vampires are just as vulnerable to silver as werewolves.

Then again, you could take the Hellboy approach -- make up really BIG bullets with a little of everything; garlic, holy water, silver, hellebore, wolfsbane, "da woiks!" as he put it...

[Bert2368]

I just found my furnace for melting the Silver, made from my old microwave with fried turntable but a good transformer, and a few other bits.

http://youtu.be/VTzKIs19eZE

Casting isocyanate plastic foam bullets in my greased and water damped Mihec .44/444 mould using Gorilla Glue, then using the foam "bullets" for a lost foam type casting after embedding in a thin layer of plain old dry wall mud and play box sand- Attaching the foam vents and risers to several of the foam bullets with a few dabs of gap filling super glue.

I love it when a project comes together-

[Blackwater]

Don't Oregon Trail bullets have a trace of silver in them?

[bangerjim]

I just found my furnace for melting the Silver, made from my old microwave with fried turntable but a good transformer, and a few other bits.

http://youtu.be/VTzKIs19eZE

Casting isocyanate plastic foam bullets in my greased and water damped Mihec .44/444 mould using Gorilla Glue, then using the foam "bullets" for a lost foam type casting after embedding in a thin layer of plain old dry wall mud and play box sand- Attaching the foam vents and risers to several of the foam bullets with a few dabs of gap filling super glue.

I love it when a project comes together-

Did you ever try hot melt glue boolits? I cast them all the time using my standard 38 and 45 cal molds. The mole must be coated with PAM for release and you COOL the mold by rubbing a ice cube along the bottom and sides. The cast and shoot great! And do not worry about cleaning the PAM out of your mold. Just wipe if off with a paper towel and cast away with hot lead. Grease and oils do NOT make wrinkly boolits........ cold molds and cold lead do. Heat your mold on an electric hotplate up to CASTING TEMP, not just warm, and you will get perfect drops from the 1st one.

Use a trigger feed HMG gun, not a cheap-o one you press on the stick with your thumb! You are doing plastic injection molding here and you need PRESSURE!

banger-j

[BigEyeBob]

how about a stack of silver dimes in a shot cup with nitro cards between them

Reminds me of the "charge of the sixpences" a story I read in an old hunting book , story goes something like this .
In the days of the Raj in India , a hunter was hunting buffalo and used his last cartridges on a buffalo.
He was using a muzzle loading rifle , the last buffalo he hit but only wounded it , the animal decided to make a charge , the hunter loaded the powder and reached into his pocket for a projectile , but got a hand full of small change in the form of 3 ans six pence coins .
He stuffed the barrel with these and as the buffalo got closer he waited until the animal was almost upon him and fired into its face.
When the smoke cleared the animal had taken off and left the hunter wondering at the magic of small change.

[koehlerrk]

Larry Corriea worked this out in his Monster Hunter International books. Basically, there's three workable solutions.

1. Do a rip off of CorBon's Pow'rBall ammo but use a silver BB instead of a plastic one.
2. Silver plated buckshot. Pricey... so don't miss much.
3. Sintered powdered metal bullets, silver being one of the metals. Nice, but only available to the government.

[Hickok]

Lasercast/Oregon Trail says there is silver in their boolits. I say my cast boolits have sliver in them too. When I look at them as they come out of the mold, they are sure enough silver.

A very slight percentage of silver in a cast boolit is toxically fatal to a werewolf if it gets into it's blood stream. A bad hit with a cast boolit containing silver, will kill one, but it may take awhile, about like a gutshot animal. The silver in the cast boolit will cause the wound to go septic on a werewolf, and it will assume the "dying cockroach postion" in two to three days.

To put a werewolf down DRT, shot placement is everything. Put a cast boolit with a percentage of silver into the chest cavity, neck or head and they go straight down, providing you have enough penetration. .40 caliber and up for handguns with boolit weight starting at 200 gr and going heavier, and .30 cal and larger for rifles, with boolit weight starting 170-180 gr and heavier as caliber increases.

Extreme toxic shock from any quantity of silver penetrating into the chest/circulatory cavity induces a comatose state, while the wound itself bleeds them out.

As my sig line states, I am a maker of silver boolits for werewolf hunting!!!

I am as much an expert on werewolf hunting, as are all those experts on Bigfoot hunting! :bigsmyl2:

I have as much solid proof and evidence as they have!!!

[Hickok]

:kidding: I put the hook out there and no one took the bait!

[theleo]

You're a fool, 40 cal for Werewolves!? They can only be killed with old 45 caliber Webely's loaded with man stoppers. No 30 caliber rifle has a place either, the bare minimum is a 40-65 and you go up from there. It's common knowledge big holes, silver, and holy black is the only combo that will kill them. Shot placement has no place in the conversation as it's pointless in all practical situations.

[Skipper]

Just cast a regular hollowpoint and fill the cavity with silver solder.

[45-70 Chevroner]

I guess that's where I went wrong, I was using an RCBS mold.

Been a long time, but I think it ruined the mold. I know I got that sucker pretty hot. Melting point of silver is just shy of 1000 deg. Though I doubt those spoons were pure silver.
Actually silver has a melting point of 1723 degrees F.

[snowtigger]

I actually did cast some bullets with a 6% silver content. I used .999 silver ingots in wheel weights. I used my Lee 20-4 pot. Half full and brought to full temp. 1070 degrees according to my RCBS thermometer. I did not think it would work, but I put one ingot on and watched it. After a few minutes it began to disappear around the edges, so I threw the rest in. It took a while but it worked.
I realize that is well below the melting point of silver but, I had read some metals amalgamate far below their melt temps. I guess it works.
I then let it cool to about 750 degrees and poured it into a Lee 310 grain 44 cal mold. It made some good looking bullets to go into nickel plated cases.
PS Not having a hardness tester, I set one on a vise and hit it with a 2lb hammer. It mushroomed well without fracturing.
I also diluted the remainder to 1% percent silver and cast it all up. I shot the 1%ers and a few of the 6%ers and they shot as good as I can. I still haven't found any werewolves, so I still have the rest.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Actually silver has a melting point of 1723 degrees F.

That is about 939 Centigrade.

Actually silver should make an extremely good bullet for extreme rifle velocities if you don't need expansion, or are content get it the way hollow pointed solid copper bullets do. It is soft enough to engrave well in the rifle (wouldn't risk it in a revolver though), is heavier than most other metals, and is a far better conductor of heat than gilding metal or cupro-nickel. Heat would penetrate readily into its interior (with no core to melt), thus minimizing the frictional heat buildup which causes metallic fouling.

In most respects it is as easily worked as copper, and certainly gravity-casts better, though not well enough to make the bullet by nothing else, except for round smoothbore balls. The effect on the lycanthropist was probably established in the days of smoothbore guns, but in rifles we need something better.

Silver gives off gas bubbles when melted, so it would need to be poured into a mould, liberating them to the atmosphere, and it should be hot but not hot enough to keep the silver molten for long. Centrifugal investment casting is best, but not indispensable. I would either turn oversize castings to the right diameter and nose contour (it isn't like you will need many, especially in the Americas), or press or pound them into a simple die, with a nose pin to pop them out. It could be cut in steel with a tungsten carbide burr, and you could either make your mould in fireclay or drill it in solid carbon (which I think jewelers use rather than carbon fibre).

Obviously a .303 is the best rifle for the job, as you could use a 5/16in. burr for the die, or 8mm. if you have the oversize groove diameter often found in the No.4 Lee-Enfield. You shouldn't rely on a .32S&W or .32-20, in case you have a raving psycho who merely acts like a werewolf.

[Hickok]

Yes, I believe "Rule .303" would work very well!

[mozeppa]

so... if you cut off a Werewolf's head with a Samurai sword ...does it grow back?

[Dancing Bear]

Sooo..... why not cast HP bullets and just insert silver solder (or any silver strip) into the cavities??

[Drew P]

Silver bullets kill werewolves by way of infection, so it takes a few months. More bullets makes it go faster, so we should be looking at high capacity cartridges so the time gets down to a few days. Shot guns might be the better option, but what size shot would be needed to penetrate their tough pelts?

[fastdadio]

So I should hang on to that old box of Winchester silver tips I have in the ammoe locker just in case?

[seaboltm]

Threads I have seen had a real tough time making usable silver boolits by casting them. Made me think of using silver round stock and using a hobby lathe to cut them out.

[Hickok]

so... if you cut off a Werewolf's head with a Samurai sword ...does it grow back?No, that is one dead wolf. Complete systems failure and shut down.

Not recommended due to the fact that the werewolf has arms that extend below their knees, giving them extreme reach. And with lightning fast animal reflexes, you go down in the first seconds of Round 1.

Any massive trauma or gunshot to the head would surely kill one, but they are too agile and too fast for head shots. "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, your gun can't hit, what your eyes can't see.":rolleyes:

As I say, we are all as much "experts" on werewolf hunting as are "bigfoot/sasquatch" experts. When we lay out the positive proof and evidence, it is equal.:wink:

[Knarley]

My money would be on some silver buck shot.
Knarley

[NM156B]

Hello from Pittsburgh. New to the forum here (and fairly new to casting), but I am slowly cranking them out via lost wax casting for my 1860 Colt using simple items just found around the house, didn't purchase any special equipment, and am getting around two 44cal bullets per ounce (currently works out to $7 per round). If it works for the round ball, it will work for the conical and I will be working on those maybe next month. That said, I would like to perfect this process so would appreciate anybody who is interested in this project to contact me accordingly and maybe we might be able to have a viable successful defense against the Lupine threat. Link of successful first cast : https://sites.google.com/site/vwgsilverbullet/home (https://sites.google.com/site/vwgsilverbullet/home)

[Hickok]

My money would be on some silver buck shot.
KnarleyThat would rip a werewolf a new..........you know what I mean!

Knarley, are you with a re-enacting unit or shooting N-SSA? I see you have the right color kepi on:-), are you with an artillery battery?