Milling Solid Copper Rods into Shotgun slugs

[Y-man]

Guys, I need to ask, has no one machined Solid Copper Rods into Shotgun slugs?

I have searched on the forum, there does not seem to be any thing as per that.

Correct me if I’m wrong, copper is a softer metal that should not score the bore of a rifled barrel, right?
I have some solid Copper Rods – 3ft long, 19.05mm thick.

Here’s what I plan/ am researching:

I want to mill grooves/ rings of 2mm deep all along the length, 4mm apart. These will form collapsible Rings (2 or 3) on each slug. I will work out some sort of lube to put into the grooves.

Then I will cut off lengths of 21 or 23mm. I will then grind/ file the slightly curved meplat into good shape. These would be my slugs.

These will be the full-bore slugs. Not in-wad or in-sabot slugs. I do not have access to buy any types of wads or sabots – I have to simply replace shot in Birdshot shells with a slug.

Going full-bore would help me eliminate the variables of different thicknesses of wad/ petals from the various different types of birdshot shells that I can get here… Spanish shells, shells from a company in Mali, etc.

Would these work? I plan to shoot them out of a Mossberg 500 rifled barrel.

What do you guys think?

[jcren]

I am not educated in slugs, so this is only worth it's advertised price, but I would try either a hollow base wadcutter with tl style grooves for displacement or a domed/ball shaped air pellet style with a couple of stepped counter bores to shift weight for long range stability (shuttle dock style)

[country gent]

Ideally the slug should be turned in the lathe in one chucking. A light pass to actual dia then grease grooves cut and a hollow base or wasp waist if desired. Last the nose formed to shape and to cut off the slug from the bar of stock. In this way everything remains concentric and true. While it can probably be done, all the copper slugs Ive seen have been undersized in sbots. You will be in a new area so be carefull with what you try

[M-Tecs]

I would be worried about pressure on full-bore slugs even with the "grooves/ rings of 2mm deep all along the length, 4mm apart. These will form collapsible Rings (2 or 3) on each slug". First test firing I would not be holding the shotgun.

Depending on weight a hollow base may be advantageous. I have no experience on full bore slugs so my advise is just things I would be concerned about.

[ProfGAB101]

Unless you were milling fins on the rear of the slug - all the work you describe would be lathe turning - not milling.

Most Copper is a Royal Hemroid to work with. Making from solid is like loading shot shells with Silver Dimes - an absurdly stupid waste of money.

That said - If you want Copper Jacket with soft (or hard) lead core - that is both doable and more practical. You can buy soft copper piping in a roll and cut segments to length. Those could be annealed and a makeshift set of swage dies to final size the slug. The grooves you mention could be done like a cannalure with a roll forming tool. The lead cores could be swaged or cast in place.

I still fail to see a usefulness vrs cost benefit unless your goal is to create a slug which will pass through multiple walls.

[Hogtamer]

Yman is in Nigeria with limited access to components of any sort. That said, if you are talking about a lathe then yes it is doable as country gent suggested. Since you can import a mold I guess (you've got the Lyman) it would seem easier to buy a proven full bore slug mold. Either way, lot's of recoil. 1st thing I think would be to slug your barrel with soft lead and get accurate dimensions. Loading data for solid copper would be hard to come by though and you have to consider powder accessability and primers.

[cpileri]

yes, greg sappington did some and calculated the ratio of groove to bore bearing surface to reduce friction enough so that they can be used weight-for-weight with lead slugs.

he might chime in.
C-

[longbow]

I'll go with "yes" I think a full bore copper slug would work.

Having said that, I think I would be inclined to use just two narrow driving bands and deeper than land relief between them to avoid too much bore friction. Something maybe like the Balle Blondeau:

http://www.cartouches-prevot.com/zoo...s/BLS12.05.jpg

Waist diameter to suit weight of slug required... and for rifled gun you don't need the nose heavy design so basically a spool shape with whatever nose you like.

Seems to me (without looking it up) that uncle dino used swaged copper tube jacket full bore slugs with no issues. Not solid but lots of bore contact.

Alternately Hogtamer has paved the way for Zlugs and a solid zinc slug should work well too. Appropriate full bore moulds are readily available from Accurate moulds though I am not sure of shipping to Nigeria.

And of course if you are game to have copper machined then zinc is another option. It is readily available, low melting point and easy to machine so could be cast into a mould to make a slug or cast into a cylindrical blank to have a slug machined from. If you want to use up copper rod you have then maybe not a viable option but still... an option for fairly easy to make full bore slugs or should I say Zlugs?

Me, I still like full bore round balls. Easy to cast, easy to load and they work.

YMMV

Glad to see you are still at it and experimenting.

Longbow

[bangerjim]

VERY expensive!!!!!!
And if you have never turned copper on a lathe, you are in for real nightmare.

Copper is not a material that is worked in a lathe or on a mill because it is so soft.

Almost as bad as lead.

I have lots of copper barstock and rod, but would never try to make anything like that out of it.

Swaging Cu with a Pb core is the standard way of working Cu. Not machining it. And I machine a LOT of stuff!!!!!!!!! Besides gun stuff.

[victorfox]

I don't know... Like others said, it would probably mess with pressures. You're getting birdshot loads (probably with very fast powders) and changing to a solid material harder than lead to engrave. TAKE CARE!
A suggestion I can make and hope be judged as good or bad advice by more experienced folks is: get some paper, turn the copper bar to about groove diameter then paper patch it to land diameter. I don't have any experience with PP and rifled arms reloading but that would be what I'd trying with the limited resources I ( and you) have...
Again, take care!

[Cap'n Morgan]

You should use brass instead of copper - much easier to machine, cheaper than copper and much easier to find. Like Longbow suggest, two driving bands will do. About 0.06-0.10 mm over bore size will be more than enough to grab the rifling.

I have pondered the idea of a turned brass slugs with a snap-on plastic wad & bearing ring for smooth bore barrels, but really don't see any benefits compared to a lead slug.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

This begs the question why copper, and why turning? It may be that there are legal restrictions on the use of slugs or importing a mould, and of course it isn't for me to criticize, but my impression is that while in West Africa the law isn't always enforced, it can sometimes be very enforced.

Lead alloy will work with the high velocities to which some people load shotgun slugs. So there is no real need for harder metal at the lower velocities you will get by simply replacing the birdshot in existing cartridges.

If you must have some, I agree brass is better, cheaper and more likely to be regularly available. It is a long time since I measured someone's Hastings barrel, but it sticks in my mind that the rifling was deeper than in an ordinary rifle. The first inch or so out of the chamber is by far the most dangerous place for the passage of the missile to meet with heavy resistance. So the driving bands of a hard metal slug really need to be narrow. With brass and a powerful lathe you could make a wide, toothed lathe tool to cut the entire side of the slug in one go, minimizing the work in repeating many cuts accurately. You could make the cutting edge sharper than in a tool for cutting steel. But I don't think this would work in copper.

I can think of two ways you could make lead alloy slugs without a conventional mould - and as long as you have wheels, you have wheel weights. You could have a simple mould of, say, 20mm. or 3/4in. internal diameter tubing or bored block, and cast a few iinches of lead alloy rod to be turned in the lathe. I think you could get a smooth finish with a tool as sharp as a knife, and with this material the slug could be grooved and lubricated or not, as you like. If you prefer them ungrooved, look at the board on powder coating of bullets. But for the kind of shooting in which you use big-game slugs, you can have a good day with a shot or two, and a barrel releading session afterwards.

The other way is to have two of those simple cylindrical moulds. One casts a piece of lead alloy rod, slightly smaller than the desired slug diameter. You then cut off a length which will make a satisfactory slug. You can file or pare it to the right weight. If you don't have a suitable scale, you can make a simple steelyard from a ruler. Suspend it at a point half an inch from one end, hang a heavy weight at the zero point, and shift the metal chunk in a light pan or sling along the ruler till it balances horizontally. You don't even need to know numbers, just that all your chunks of lead balance at the same point marked on the ruler.

Your other metal cylinder should be groove diameter or a thousandth or two over. You need two steel rods fitting this hole, one shaped to form the nose of the slug, and the other the base, which needn't be as concave as a smoothbore slug. You just squash your lump of lead into shape between them, in a powerful vice.

[Y-man]

Thanks all.


I never really explained WHY I even want to try copper: I want to simply to get away from the variables of so many different levels of softness of lead I encounter here in Nigeria! I just got some new shells, and the lead is so soft! I can practically crush the skirt of some of my cast Lyman slugs by hand! I am not able to do the whole hardening of lead slugs dance - no time, no oven [I'm just lazy to buy one, not that they are not available or not affordable...]


Also, in all my shooting - because of softness of lead, I have never had a complete wad with petals not torn up or torn off after shooting...Slug skirts always collapse or expand and tear up the petals. I know the rifling does too...Remember, these are basic birdshot wads and shotcups referred to here...


I hear you all as per concerns with pressure - I will NOT try the full-bore slugs again.

Here's what I plan to do instead - maybe I could look into using a sub-bore size copper rod, say - file off the 19.05 rod diameter to like 18mm.


Cut off solid slugs about 20mm long, file/ grind a rounded point, file the bottom perfectly FLAT, then paper-patch with masking tape, and use inside a shotcup. [regardless of the shotcup dimension variables, the slug will force the shotcup into a constant size.]

I could also use plastic from soda containers to fabricate "sabots" of a kind...


I will also use a plastic over-shot [Frangible] disk: to protect the wad petals from hitting the roll-crimp and shearing off...

What do you guys think of this idea?

I already have a lot of the copper rods, and there is a lathe available...

[toallmy]

A member hear , I believe ( hogtamer) cast zink slugs ,this could fix the hardness issue .

[W.R.Buchanan]

Find some Wheel Weights. I know they are available there as they have wheels there. This will solve your lead problem, then you can cast Round Balls or Slugs out of lead and not have to mess with "Filing" a piece of Copper rod to size.

A Machinist could make slugs from copper on a Lathe. Copper is gummy to cut and wears tools like you can't believe, but it can be done and I have machined a lot of it. Not my Favorite. Without the proper equipment to do this you are going to have nothing but trouble and the experience will not be enjoyable at all, and in addition no two slugs will be the same.

You have moulds already,,, Solve the lead problem. You'll get better results in the end.

Randy

[jmort]

I have taken .50" round stock and just cut it for use in the sabots BPI and Slugs R Us sells. Too expensive for every day use, but very effective. As suggested, brass is a fine material and very effective as well. Look at Punch Bullets. They have crazy penetration results at the Linebaugh Seminars in the Bone Box.

[longbow]

Well, here's a thought though I have never used a "patch" this thick but you might try 5/8" copper (or brass) rod in the manner jmort suggests for sabots but using tough paper to patch up to tight bore fit inside a shotcup. If you get a good fit it should grip the rifling and spin so should be reasonably accurate. You'd need to slit the paper tube though. Kind of a lot of work and maybe introducing even more variables but an option to use copper (or brass or even steel) rod with no turning required.

Longbow

[elvas]

Y-man,
If you can find some straight petal wads (not tapered) like those from B&P:
http://www.baschieri-pellagri.com/en...e/1/index.aspx
http://www.baschieri-pellagri.com/en...m/1/index.aspx
you could turn brass or copper and make slugs for your fully rifled shotgun barrel that will outperform any lead or lead alloy slug ever created.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

gk

Well, here's a thought though I have never used a "patch" this thick but you might try 5/8" copper (or brass) rod in the manner jmort suggests for sabots but using tough paper to patch up to tight bore fit inside a shotcup. If you get a good fit it should grip the rifling and spin so should be reasonably accurate. You'd need to slit the paper tube though. Kind of a lot of work and maybe introducing even more variables but an option to use copper (or brass or even steel) rod with no turning required.

Longbow

You might get reasonable accuracy from a smoothbore that way, by smoothbore standards, but it is hard to believe that you could get the weight of the slug central enough for good accuracy with a rifled bore. If the bullet's centre of mass is travelling in a narrow spiral, it will revert to straight-line motion on leaving the muzzle, but in the last direction the spiral was pointing.

If those Lyman slugs are the usual Forster design, they have an extremely large base hollow which in soft lead is liable to collapse on its way down the bore. But they are designed for a smoothbore, and a rifled shotgun needs nothing like such thin walls. Indeed a flat base should be fine. ]

If it was of groove diameter all you need do is make a new base plug, either with a small conical tip or flat. It would be a lot less trouble than making copper slugs. In fact slugs from the Lyman-Forster mould are usually a most irritating diameter, too small to fit the groove diameter and too large to fit in a shot cup. I would still favour the device I described, for making a sort of groove-diameter but flat-based or small-cavity Forster. With these and normal birdshot powder charges, I don't think pure lead can be too soft.

[country gent]

Copper can be machined in the lathe easily with a properly sharpened HSS cobalt tool and soap for cutting oil ( the waterless hand cleaners really work for this). Size depends on the machines repeatability. We turned alot of copper parts at work and they fished very nice on the little hardginge lathes. A simple tool ground on square lathe bit similar to a parting tool with the proper cutting angles honed shrap can be used to turn od to size and form the compression grooves. Set dial to zero on dia then mark the numbers for depth of grooves and spacings. If tools blade is ground deep enough it can even be used to part slug off of bar. A long travel indicator (2") with a simple magnetic back for the carriage for x travel would be a big plus. Digital readout even better. One of the old screw machines if available could be set up and run a lifetime supply in a few hours. Machining copper run spindle fast 1500-2000 rpm feed .005-.010 per revolution and use the soap for coolant cutting oil. A side angle on the cutter of 1-1/2* each side and a face angle of 5-6* with top radiosed to the grinding wheel then hand stoned to a very sharp smooth edge will cut and hold up well in copper. Copper is gummy but can be machined a soap type lube stops it from sticking building up on the tool. The big thing is machining these slugs with only 1 time chucking so they remain concentric and true. With quick change tooling form cutters could be ground to form nose and other features. Copper can be turned milled and ground watch the heat buid up and the correct lube