Pewter projectiles

[dolfinwriter]

Just bear with me and humor my "What-If..." just for a minute--Has anyone made .224 bullet cores from pewter and then jacketed them with 22LR cases? I know the question coming is "Why would you want to?"

The answer to that is for that situation we hopefully never get to where that's all that's left. I'm going to set up an extruding press after we land in Kansas to make lead wire for bullet cores among other things, but I want to try this if no one else has.

I have a lot of lead. I even have lead ingots weighing down our kitchen trash can because we have a garbage eating four-legged moron (beagle), who has pulled the trash can over to get at what's in it.

But I also have a lot of pewter that I've scrounged out of thrift shops and yard sales. And I'm keeping some of the pewter stuff in the house as picture frames, candle sticks, etc.

Alternatively, has anyone tried making shot from pewter? If the settlers of Boonesborough in fact melt down anything pewter in desperation to make musket balls while under siege by Blackfish and the Shawnee... not that it's ideal, but they were desperate.

Just thinking today about a last resort situation, while I'm packing stuff up for our move. First I came across another tub with camping and emergency stuff in it like propane bottles, batteries, a radio, etc. And then I got to all this pewter in plastic tubs on the back patio. I'm going to need to do a melt session soon to reduce the bulk of those pitchers and plates and candle holders into ingots, but pack the other stuff for moving.

[Scrounge]

IIRC, the Japanese were loading wooden bullets towards the end of WWII because they didn't have enough lead for bullets. From what I understood, they worked, sort of. Not good for long distance, not very accurate. Pewter will be light, and not as dense as you'd like, but if you don't have anything else, it will probably be better than nothing. You should probably experiment with it now, just so there are no big surprises. Might learn something useful.

[bangerjim]

Sell it on here, make some good $$ and buy standard alloy for the application you are using.

Don't waste good Sn-bearing pewter for that! Even if you have lots of it. I also have hundreds of pounds of pure Sn ( not pewter) and I sure would sell it on here rather than cast boolits out of it pure.

And you would have to recalculate all your loads because of the lighter metal.

banger

[farmbif]

during the last big shortage the only .224. 55 gr bullets to be found locally were "green" no lead bullets which were copper jacketed tin core bullets. excellent varmint bullets they basically explode on impact at 5.56 to 22-250 velocities. as banger Jim says it would sure be a waste of good pewter.

[rancher1913]

hes not doing it on a production scale, he just wanted to know if it would work should all else be gone.

interesting idea, should work for swagging, be interesting to see what you come up with.

[Winger Ed.]

I'd save it for alloying into Lead, or sell part of it.

If you need to make boolits in a Lead shortage, check out using the modern generation Zinc wheel weights.
Some folks have already switched over to them with excellent results.

[dolfinwriter]

hes not doing it on a production scale, he just wanted to know if it would work should all else be gone.

interesting idea, should work for swagging, be interesting to see what you come up with.

Exactly. Thank you for clarifying my question!

[Drew P]

I’m working on some lead free alloys for my pellet gun so I can shoot in my yard/ shop. There is a lot of reason to develop non toxic bullets in my opinion. I’ve been trying different levels of tin with bismuth, which is nicer than pure tin because it’s much more dense. Tin is only 1/3 the density of lead.

[sutherpride59]

Why is it as a beagle owner we all refer to our pups as morons lol. Mine is lovingly called the fat idiot. In my opinion the pewter would work but it isn’t as malleable as pure lead so it’s going to be more difficult to work with. I don’t see why it would be impossible unless you are using tools that can barely swage pure lead.