a "lead free" thought

[hornetguy]

I have never swaged, but it's always been a little interesting to me.
With all the chimp-screaming by the eco-freaks about the dangers of lead, and the increasing demands to ban it, I was wondering if, instead of a precision lead core, one could put a precision amount of sintered or powdered tungsten, or bismuth in a jacket, then swage it?

or, am I WAY out in left field?

I would think that a bullet like that would be pretty explosive, but, who knows?

[youngun]

From what I've heard tungsten is incredibly hard to work with. Microscopic particulates that hurt your lungs, and any that get into hinges, etc., wreak havoc.
Better idea is to keep the gov't in check.

[tommag]

I haven't a clue about swaging, but that is what Barnes is doing with the Varmint Grenade. They use sintered copper and tin in them.

[teddyblu]

Hornetguy:

If you go to swage.com a corbon site you will find a chapter on tungsten powder bullets for small arms.

Larrys

[hornetguy]

ok... thanks. I kinda figured I wasn't the only one thinking about that kind of thing...

[Greg5278]

I could be wrong, but I thought the Corbin Tungsten powder was horribly expensive. It probably has gone up the last few years.
Greg

[hornetguy]

Since they make shotshell shot from bismuth, I imagine it could be formed into cores as well?

I simply believe that as times change, we should be able to change with them, instead of just rolling over and moaning about the "good old days"....

...there's not many buggy whip manufacturers anymore, either. We have to be able to adapt, rather than give up the "hobby"...

[hornetguy]

From what I've heard tungsten is incredibly hard to work with. Microscopic particulates that hurt your lungs, and any that get into hinges, etc., wreak havoc.
Better idea is to keep the gov't in check.

that, of course, would be the ideal situation.

[felix]

Bismuth is hard, heavy and expensive. Antimony is hard, light, and cheap. ... felix

[hornetguy]

Bismuth is hard, heavy and expensive. Antimony is hard, light, and cheap. ... felix

I was thinking more on how to replace the heavy "evil" core in bullets once lead has been banned....

Gold is heavy, but a little more expensive than WW metal...


at least for now, that is....

[deadguy]

If it ever gets to the point that lead is banned, it is well past the time to start "giving our lead back to the government"!!!!!!

[bobk]

OK, what metal isn't toxic in concentration? Weirdos worry about a few bullets we shoot, but mercury is so prevalent in our environment that according to gov. statistics, 1 in 6 women have too much mercury in their bodies to consider getting pregnant. We need a little perspective here. I just can't see those Condors gobbling up .45-70 boolits.

Bob K

[yarro]

Pure antimony is too brittle to swage into anything. The Condors are probably eating stuff shot with lead pellets not bullets, but the Ecos want an end to hunting so they don't bother telling the truth.

-Yarro

[nicholst55]

Since lead is so incredibly evil, we should immediately evacuate Galena Kansas and Galena Illinois, divert all road traffic around them, declare them Superfund cleanup sites, and compensate all bona fide residents of both cities to the tune of several million bucks each.

My suggestion makes about as much sense as banning lead bullets. But, there I go again, putting common sense into the equation - will I never learn??

[toecutter]

Most of the Powdered Metallurgy (PM) bullets that are out there are made with copper, zinc, tin, nylon and just about any mix between them. The tin or the nylon are generally used as binder agents because they have comparatively low melting points compared to the rest of the mix.

I've been thinking about doing this, as when I'm processing WW into ingots, I always have a ton of zinc WW's left over, I've been saving them up, and was thinking about just using a big rotary rasp, or sanding drum at the bottom of a chute, let gravity and modern electricity do all the hard work. Maybe use scrap brass broken up the same way for the copper content.

The real trick to this is getting enough compression that the bullets will stand up to being ejected from the swage die, and then scintered in an oven. Anything using nylon or tin should be scinterable in a conventional household oven if you can get the temp above 500F or so.

The thing I was kinda considering was using zinc as the core, and then electroplating the outside with copper. It struck me this had all the advantages of being non-toxic, the same performance as frangible, except it would be tougher because of the copper skin, and it would be cheaper since I'm using less of the expensive stuff (copper) and more of the cheap stuff (zinc).

[georgeld]

Don't know about you, whether you're married or not. IF not, sure you could get by with
smoking up the kitchen and oven. IF you are. Might be good to get your own oven in the shop to do it in.

Divorce's can get plumb damned expensive I hear.

[miestro_jerry]

I live in the Ohio River Valley, the feds just extended a company's permit for putting Mercury into the river, they are dumping 5 to 6 times the normally allowed amount.

Way back when, Cyclomates was the original artificial sweeten, they said that if a rat drank 40,000 can of the stuff the rat would get cancer. I figured that the rats bladder would explode first.

We seem to have survived many forms of contaminations for many hundreds of years, so whats a little lead in the enviroment? Plus the lead would sheild us from all of the radiation from all of those radioactive materials that we put into the air, soil and water.

Jerry

[junkbug]

I believe Turkish 7.92x57mm Service ammunition from the 1930's & 1940's used a mild iron or steel jacket with a sintered powdered iron core. This was almost certainly an economy measure, at least as far as obtaining raw materials was concerned. Not sure how labor or equipment intensive it was. Looks like it has possibilities though.

Sean

[AllanD]

Frankly I think it would be easier to shoot the damned condors.

I'll supply nearly pure cadmium bullets to do the job...

I say nearly pure because I'll harden them with mercury and arsenic.

Sorry, I'm fresh out of thallium.

AD

[Caveape]

Has anyone tried pouring molten copper into a Lyman mold lately? Let me know how that works out. It would be lead-free for sure.