Question for the group

[Ellis]

Is there any way to cast brass or copper boolits using traditional moulds either steel or aluminium? I would like to try and make some solids for my .48 socom.
Another question, does anyone have any experience loading 500 gr. boolits in the .458? I am trying to work up a load and having very little luck finding any data for this round.

Thanks in advance for any replies!

[JSnover]

Nope. The melting temperatures are way hotter than you want to get your molds.
Better off having someone turn them on a lathe.

[M-Tecs]

Depending on alloy brass melts at 1652 - 1724. This is way to hot for normal bullet cast equipment. Solids are normally lathe turned not cast.

Part of the reason you aren't finding data is most shoot the 458 SOCOM out of AR. The 500 grain bullets long of the magazine.

http://www.reloadammo.com/458-socom.htm

http://458socomforums.com/index.php?board=24.0

[Ellis]

I have loaded some up, and was worried they may be seated too deep in the case. I take it from your reply that the seating depth would cause an over pressure load?

[Ellis]

Thanks for the links, I had seen the first one, but was unaware of the second.

[Ellis]

That was my next option, I just wasn't ready to try my hand at turning them.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Basically no. The melting points are so high that they would surely warp a steel or iron mould, or destroy any other kind in short order. Also heat loss is proportional to the difference in temperature between the metal and the air, mould etc. I doubt if you could cast as precisely, even, as in lead which is only barely hot enough to flow.

Jewellers use centrifugal casting, to force gold or silver into a ceramic mould with greater force than gravity can provide. I am sure someone would do this for you, in some kind of hard metal. Take a look at the various parts available in steel and brass in www.trackofthewolf.com (http://www.trackofthewolf.com) . I have just bought one of their trigger guards, and it is a thing of beauty modern art does not know. But you would still have shrinkage, which is unlikely to be quite as consistent as you would want in a bullet.

Corbins say you can swage just about anything. But the cost of equipment is only justifiable for someone who knows for sure he has a use or a market for a very large number of copper bullets. A much cheaper possibility which I have just thought of is to mould high temperature epoxy and metal powder in a little cup chucked in a Dremel tool or high-speed drill, and spin it so that the metal becomes much more highly concentrated on the surface. It might be an entirely worthless idea, but if it works, you heard of it here first.

[Ellis]

Wow, you just gave me a grade A brain fart!!! For some silly reason I salvaged a coffee can full of brass grindings from a key machine. Now to figure out a way to mix something that would hold together, but not stick in a mould.....

[runfiverun]

wax the mold.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Brass is a difficult animal to cast. It has to be protected from the atmosphere usually with a layer of glass on top. This is to prevent the zinc from gassing off.

Brass is Copper and Zinc, Bronze is Copper and Tin,which doesn't gas off when heated so it was easier to cast with primitive methods.

That is why there was a "Bronze Age," and not a "Brass Age." Brass is too problematic to cast. It can be done, it's just not easy.

All those bullets you see are being turned on CNC Lathes that have nothing else to do. They are making bullets just to keep the machines running. I have one sitting idle in my shop and have considered making bullets, but haven't actually decided to do it due to the liability issues.

Randy

[Shiloh]

Is there any way to cast brass or copper boolits using traditional moulds either steel or aluminium? I would like to try and make some solids for my .48 socom.


No

Shiloh

[bangerjim]

As Joe Pesci says......"Forget about it"

I have cast brass in the past (NOT BOOLITS!!!!!!) and it is a very tricky animal, what with the very high temps and using GLASS as the flux on the surface! Not something you will use in you standard boolit molds. Brass is generally cast in either lost wax investment (one time use) plaster molds or sand molds.....again ONE time usage. Setting up a cope and drag with large brass items is not that bad, but trying it for teeny weeny little boolits........O......M......G!

Just stick with Pb as millions of us do. If you want brass/copper, consider investing $1k or much more (!) in swaging dies and presses to jacket you own Pb wire.

Stick with Pb.......Pb is good...........Pb is your friend.

banger

[runfiverun]

1-k would get you the [umm a] press almost.
a good heavy duty one is more like 1600 and it won't swage brass [brass jackets yes, solid brass NO]

[bangerjim]

That $1K+ is assuming you make the press yourself!!!!!!!!!! Good plans on here. Not worth it to me and my needs. That kind of money buys a ton of com jacketed boolits.

[runfiverun]

could but it don't buy the same feeling you get when you shoot 1/2" groups with your own bullets.

[WFO2]

Try here https://cuttingedgebullets.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?search=action&category=8458 or do a search on Monolithic Bullets .

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Wow, you just gave me a grade A brain fart!!! For some silly reason I salvaged a coffee can full of brass grindings from a key machine. Now to figure out a way to mix something that would hold together, but not stick in a mould.....
r
Stand clear of the brain! But I would hate to have anyone think it was more than an idea that might interest someone prepared to find it a blind alley. I'd be especially doubtful about the sort of chips you get from cutting keys, which are coarse and mostly elongated. Log jams in rivers are lumpy! I think you would get those filings carried an uneven distance towards the outside by centrifugal force, and thus an unbalanced bullet. IF it can be made to work, I think it would be with very fine powder, possibly the sort that are used for the resin in metallic-looking fiberglass items.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

could but it don't buy the same feeling you get when you shoot 1/2" groups with your own bullets. t

Neither it would, but if I am to get the feeling of not getting 1/2in. groups, I would rather get it cheap.

I'm not sure that in this thread the copper bullets came first, and the reasons for them came afterwards. Aluminium would be very easy to turn really smoothly and gives a good bearing surface on steel, and is cheap. Then you can find a good reason in trying for the ultimate velocity.

That would be a good time to have a .303 or .375 rifle and a lathe collet to hold the rod, as metal rods are readily available in 5/16 and 3/8in. You could even cut off full wadcutter bullets with a saw.

[Ellis]

1-k would get you the [umm a] press almost.
a good heavy duty one is more like 1600 and it won't swage brass [brass jackets yes, solid brass NO]

I am a knife maker, and forge my own damascus, a few years back I built a 45 ton powered hydraulic press, I never considered swedging with it... It may not be too hard to make up a die holder

[dverna]

As usual, bangerjim has given you good advice. I have never seen the advantages of a solid copper bullet. Jacketed bullets have excellent accuracy and perform well on game. They are cost effective and can be produced, if one wishes to make the investment.

For the vast majority of most shooting, cast bullets offer a cheap and effective projectile. Unless of course one is looking at varmint and long range target applications. For a .458 SOCOM, you just want to hit something HARD. And cast bullets are up to the task.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Shooting non-condors in the range of the California condor, possibly? 45 tons would be plenty of power to swage copper, but the dies would still be either very expensive or difficult to make. They have to be extremely smooth, particularly on the cylindrical surface of the bullet. One saving in time and trouble over those used by professional bullet swagers is that you could make a die to be turned over and a punch inserted to push the bullet back out again.

[Texantothecore]

I have cast lead, aluminim and bronze. I used school equipment which probably cost 50,000 to get the first casting. The process involves pouring into high temperature ceramc molds which are heated before pouring.

My advice is "don't go there".

[JSnover]

Wow, you just gave me a grade A brain fart!!! For some silly reason I salvaged a coffee can full of brass grindings from a key machine. Now to figure out a way to mix something that would hold together, but not stick in a mould.....
Just don't expect 'solid' performance. My bet is you'd get a frangible bullet that doesn't penetrate before breaking apart, not to mention possibly coating your bore with some sort of burnt epoxy-like substance, though it probably would clean up easy enough.

[W.R.Buchanan]

The biggest advantage of Solid Brass Bullets that that they don't distort when penetrating meat and can even have a good go at solid bone.

This is mainly useful in taking very large thick skinned Dangerous game,,, in California where we can't hunt with lead boolits.

The game we hunt here in CA with those bullets is mainly Large Cars or Light Pickups. My biggest Trophy Goal is a 59 Desoto, but I would settle for a late model Ford Pick Up.

Randy

[M-Tecs]

I believe the Barnes Triple Shock 100% Copper bullet http://www.barnesbullets.com/bullets/tsx/ is the best hunting bullet ever developed. I works extremely well on lights skinned game like small deer and antelope and equally well on elk and moose. Shot a couple of deer with a .223 with the TSX bullet. Performance was outstanding. I witnessed a young lady kill a Bison bull with a lung shot with a 6mm Remington. Very impressive performance for such a light caliber.

Great bullets but you can't cast them. Wish you could.

[Digital Dan]

Scratching my noggin on this and puzzling about what the objective is. Velocity and pressures for the cartridge are quite compatible with cast lead and cast can accomplish anything solids can do. Likewise for the 500 gr versus 300 gr bullet

Fella will have a tough time finding T-Rex these days.

There is some info out there suggesting that heavier bullets have been used, but my question about the objective stands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.458_SOCOM

[Digital Dan]

One of the oddities of shooting is the science/black art of terminal ballistics. Conventional wisdom has it that penetration is a function of sectional density (SD) and momentum. True enough, but the important part of that equation is unspoken, that being the point that SD is relevant in context of what happens to bullet diameter in the terminal phase, not the beginning of the trip. Double your diameter and SD plummets. Solids will penetrate with vigor IF they do not tumble and there is no guarantee on that. Another common index of SD from times past has it that a value of .250 is a general baseline for North American big game of the not so dangerous variety. Lot of folks use that standard, but Barnes pretty much upset that apple cart with the X bullet.

Anyway, one of the points I look at is application, in this case unknown. I know what a SD of .084 at modest velocity will do. A) it won't expand, even with a bone strike and B), it will penetrate far more than most believe.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/muddler/Guns/DSCN0520_zps7db471ca.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/muddler/media/Guns/DSCN0520_zps7db471ca.jpg.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/muddler/pig%20pen/DSCN2968_zpse097a38d.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/muddler/media/pig%20pen/DSCN2968_zpse097a38d.jpg.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/muddler/pig%20pen/DSCN0550_zps4461c968.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/muddler/media/pig%20pen/DSCN0550_zps4461c968.jpg.html)

The above illustrates what a .22 CB short is capable of doing at a range of about 15 yards.

Similar alloy, .30 caliber and 183 grains at an impact velocity around 1,000 fps. Penetration is soft dry sand was about 2' and SD is .276.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/muddler/Guns/Sneezer/Bullet%20meet%20dirt_zpsvy42l3co.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/muddler/media/Guns/Sneezer/Bullet%20meet%20dirt_zpsvy42l3co.jpg.html)

There's no need to make life tough on one's self without good reason. One can do just that however without sound investigation and understanding of the physics at play.

A .458 bullet of 500 grains has a SD of .341. Fella wants to shoot that, fine, but you need to adjust seat depth to that appropriate to the gun, first and foremost. Then he needs to find or develop load data appropriate to the metrics of case volume, acceptable pressure and bullet weight/construction.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I believe the Barnes Triple Shock 100% Copper bullet http://www.barnesbullets.com/bullets/tsx/ is the best hunting bullet ever developed. I works extremely well on lights skinned game like small deer and antelope and equally well on elk and moose. Shot a couple of deer with a .223 with the TSX bullet. Performance was outstanding. I witnessed a young lady kill a Bison bull with a lung shot with a 6mm Remington. Very impressive performance for such a light caliber.

Great bullets but you can't cast them. Wish you could.

They can be, particularly in modern rifles from the major manufacturers. But like all solid brass or copper bullets, they are extremely sensitive to the relationship of bullet and groove diameters.