Win Silvertip alloy ?

[yovinny]

Anyone know what Winchester Silvertip pistol bullets are made of ?

I ask because their my go-to 45acp carry ammo and I'm wondering if I can safely shoot them into my lead bullet trap, or if they'll add something bad to my lead when I try to reclaim it ?

TIA
Cheers, YV

[dsbock]

Last I remember reading, the silver tip is an aluminum alloy. Winchester claimed at one time that they actually contained silver.

Unless you are talking about a large percentage of your melt, they should not add anything bad to your alloy.

David

[snuffy]

Last I remember reading, the silver tip is an aluminum alloy. Winchester claimed at one time that they actually contained silver.

Yup, the "silver tip" is only an aluminum cap. Recovering lead from those bullets would result in a slight amount of AL. being present. It would simply float out when the lead and jackets are smelted, to be skimmed off with the jackets. The core lead should be mostly pure, soft alloy with a bit of tin and antimony.

[Bwana]

The "silver tip" ammo being produced today does not have an aluminum jacket. The original ones did; but, they have, for numerous years now, been made with plated gilding metal jackets.

[snuffy]

I did not say the jacket was aluminum. Just the "CAP". They may have changed the design again to nickle/tin plate the whole jacket, but again it won't affect the recovery of the lead core from fired bullets.

[Rocky Raab]

Subject to correction after research (I'm on the road now) Winchester never claimed there was any actual silver in the bullet's protective tip. (You may be thinking of Oregon Trail, whose cast bullets do contain a trace of silver, mostly as residue.) The original Silvertip cap was tin until it was changed to aluminum due to cost. The tips were silver colored.

[Char-Gar]

iIIRC...The silver tip started life as tin, but in the early 60s became aluminum. Back in the day, hunters were divided on which was better, the Winchester Silver-Tip or thr Remington Core-Lokt. I killed lots of deer with them both and leaned toward the Remington except in the 30-30 where I liked the 170 grain ST best of all, but the 150 CL had plenty of fans. The discussion of the subject after the day was over at times became as hot as the camp fire.

[dsbock]

Subject to correction after research (I'm on the road now) Winchester never claimed there was any actual silver in the bullet's protective tip. (You may be thinking of Oregon Trail, whose cast bullets do contain a trace of silver, mostly as residue.) The original Silvertip cap was tin until it was changed to aluminum due to cost. The tips were silver colored.

I could have sworn I saw an ad for Silvertips that mentioned the silver. If they never had such an ad, it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong. Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong today.

Still like the cartridge though.

David

[T-Bird]

I remember what char-gar remembers. My experience with both has been that on whitetails, silvertips never failed to fully penetrate and leave a good exit wound-no matter what the angle. Many deer "held " the core-loks but were dead. Alot of beer and time was spent in my early years debating the merits of both. T-Bird

[fredj338]

I did not say the jacket was aluminum. Just the "CAP". They may have changed the design again to nickle/tin plate the whole jacket, but again it won't affect the recovery of the lead core from fired bullets.

There never was a "cap" on the handgun bullets. The old Silvertip 9mm & 45 were alum jacketed. The new ones are nickle plated gilding metal. As noted, they wil not affect your range scrap.

[Shiloh]

The "silver tip" ammo being produced today does not have an aluminum jacket. The original ones did; but, they have, for numerous years now, been made with plated gilding metal jackets.

Still have a box of .30-06 Silvertip from the mid 80's
Aluminum tips.

SHiloh

[MakeMineA10mm]

Anyone know what Winchester Silvertip pistol bullets are made of ?

I ask because their my go-to 45acp carry ammo and I'm wondering if I can safely shoot them into my lead bullet trap, or if they'll add something bad to my lead when I try to reclaim it ?

TIA
Cheers, YV
You guys talking about caps (on rifle STs) and rifle STs generally are leading our intrepid OP astray. He's specifically asking about the pistol STs, which came about in the early 1980s.


The "silver tip" ammo being produced today does not have an aluminum jacket. The original ones did; but, they have, for numerous years now, been made with plated gilding metal jackets.
We have a winner!! Bwana nailed the answer here.

So, to answer whether these are safe for a lead-only bullet trap, I'd say no, since these are essentially JHPs, just like Hornadys, Remingtons, or Federals, in terms of hardness and potential for damaging a lead trap.

[yovinny]

OK, because of the conflicting info here, I disected a round last night.
Again, this is a Winchester Silvertip PISTOL round, 45acp 200gr HP to be specific.
These were bought early 90's and I have about a case and a half of this left, so it will be my carry ammo for some time to come.

Apon pulling, the rear of the bullet shows it to be of typical jacketed lead core construction, with about 3/8" dia. of core exposed.

I took a blow torch to it and quickly melted out the lead core, which seems alloyed lead and pretty hard.

The jacket seems to be very, very thin aluminum and a second after the core melted out, the jacket itself half melted.

Damage to the trap isent a concern, as it's constructed of 1/2" AR500 plate and I shoot 5.56 & 7.62 ball into it without issue.
Having alum in my reclaimed lead is an issue, and based on these results, I'll just refrain from shooting these into my lead trap.



Cheers, YV

[MikeS]

I would say that worrying about having aluminum in your lead is a non-issue. Just like a bullet jacket, the aluminum 'jacket' shouldn't melt if the smelting temp is kept low. And if some of it did melt, it wouldn't do anything much to your lead, other than perhaps toughen it a bit. People worry entirely too much over the contents of their alloy. For pistol shooting, if you can melt it, and cast it into a boolit with nice sharp features, that's all that really matters. The alloy that I use to cast all my boolits with is approximately the same as Lyman #2, except that it has a few 'contaminants' in it. I recently sent a 1lb ingot of my alloy to a person with a Niton 'gun' to test it, and it came back having trace amounts of Iron .696%, Zinc .244%, and Copper .197% in it as well. I use linotype when I mix my alloy, so I'm assuming thats where the zinc & copper came from, and I use a cast iron dutch oven to mix it in, so I'm assuming that's where the iron comes from. Even with these in the alloy it casts great, they don't seem to make any difference.

I would say what I would do if I was in your situation, I would empty out the trap, then shoot some of your cast boolits into it, and then a couple of boxes of the Silvertips. Then empty the trap again, and try melting down the lead. First see if the Silvertip jackets are easily removed from the melting pot, and next, if they're not, see how the lead that now has some aluminum in it casts. If the small amount of aluminum makes the lead un-usable for casting boolits (can't get nice crisp features in the boolits, or other issues), then you have your answer. If OTOH the small amount of aluminum doesn't make a difference to your lead, or possibly even strengthens your lead, then again, you have your answer.

Without doing a test yourself, you'll never know. By using a small sample, even if it ruins the lead, at least you'll know. Imagine if on advice from folks here or elsewhere, you avoided using them, and a year from now or so you find out you could have used them with no ill effects, how silly you would feel.

[MtGun44]

I have not purchased pistol Silvertip HP ammo lately, but the .45 ACP rounds I have
definitely have aluminum jackets and lead cores.

Bill

[yovinny]

MikeS, Interesting info, always thought alum was like zinc and 'ruined' alloy for casting.
I might try doing a test like you said, next time I clean the trap out.
I really dont shoot that many silvertips anyway, just a few mags a year, their mostly saved for carry duty.

BTW; I was wrong earlier, the silvertips I have are from the early 90's and 185gr HP's.
Todays 45acp silvertip HP's are stated as 200gr.

Wonder if the newer ones are gilded as opposed to alum, as stated earlier by Bwana

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Hmm. Aluminum jackets. Sounds like something to try. Wrap a castboolit with aluminum foil.

[shotstring]

I used to shoot quite a bit of 357 Silvertips back in the mid 80's. My understanding at that time was that the exterior coating was aluminum. Performance was always exceptional with those rounds, and we used it as the bench mark to try and improve upon in our own make of defensive rounds. To improve on Silvertips performance proved to be a very difficult thing to do. We tested it on large blocks of clay, newspaper, wet newspaper, sand, bone, car doors, auto rims, glass, wood, clothing and bullet proof vests.

I wonder how the newly designed product measures up against it. I have a few thousand of the new 357 and 44 mag silvertips lying around, but haven't loaded any of them to try.
You've got me curious now.

[beagle]

I'm kinda wondering about silvertips as carry ammo. I recovered a batch of .45 Colt Silvertips once from a 50 yard berm and they hadn't deformed at all. I think you could have reloaded them they were so perfect. Based on that, silvertips didn't impress me. I'd rather have GI hardball or a good cast bullet./beagle

[shotstring]

A berm is not a real good medium to test a bullets expansion performance. People often use sand to recover bullets from because it deforms them less than most other mediums and often gives them a fired bullet without deforming the bullet much or the imprint from the bbl grooves. I have tested bullets that went through car windshields and car bodies that plugged and didn't expand at all. Yet the same bullet in an 18 inch square block of clay expanded to twice its size and made a hole in the clay the size of a watermelon.

Like I said, I haven't tried the new stuff, but the old Silvertips were at the top of the food chain at the time. Of course, there is lots of stuff that is better now with all the development that has taken place over 2 decades. But in their day they were great. Still are pretty darn good I would imagine.

[beagle]

I agree on a berm not being a proper testing media but when I find hardball .45 in the same media that I'm finding the siltertips and the front of the hardball is dimpled (distorted)and the siltertips are like new except for the rifling, there's a problem in the equation somewhere./beagle


A berm is not a real good medium to test a bullets expansion performance. People often use sand to recover bullets from because it deforms them less than most other mediums and often gives them a fired bullet without deforming the bullet much or the imprint from the bbl grooves. I have tested bullets that went through car windshields and car bodies that plugged and didn't expand at all. Yet the same bullet in an 18 inch square block of clay expanded to twice its size and made a hole in the clay the size of a watermelon.

Like I said, I haven't tried the new stuff, but the old Silvertips were at the top of the food chain at the time. Of course, there is lots of stuff that is better now with all the development that has taken place over 2 decades. But in their day they were great. Still are pretty darn good I would imagine.

[yovinny]

I agree on a berm not being a proper testing media but when I find hardball .45 in the same media that I'm finding the siltertips and the front of the hardball is dimpled (distorted)and the siltertips are like new except for the rifling, there's a problem in the equation somewhere./beagle

Thats strange, unless the silvertips with the new guilded metal jackets are tough as nails.
The older ones with alum jackets seem to expand pretty well, thats why I use them for carry ammo.
In fact back in the early 90's, I started carrying them because they were rated the #1 stopper in 45acp, that by the DOJ in actual shootings.

[dmize]

I capped a feral dog with a 45 ACP 200 grain Silver Tip..... All I can say about the results is that ALL of my 45's are now loaded with them for self defense.