New material for boolits?

[Echo]

Friday morning, at our shooter's group breakfast, I presented the possibility of using depleted uranium for casting boolits. I mean, heavier than lead, depleted and all that, why not? When aircraft are salvaged here @ the Aircraft Maintenance And Rejuvenation (Reactivation? Restoration? Whatever...) Group, the depleted uranium used for balance weights and such is removed. If I could get some of that stuff, I could try casting boolits from it.

In a word - NO! These chums (some are fairly active duty types) were quick in their condemnation of such an idea, due to the toxicity of uranium, plus the fact that it tends to shatter, producing clouds of uranium dust, &cetera. A couple had seen the interior of armor that had been reduced by an A-10 (firing depleted-U core bullets). They tend to coated inside with U dust, caused by the round ricocheting around inside and self-destructing.

Criminy... I was just thinking of an alternative to Pb - I guess it won't be U.

[Avery Arms]

So what is the casting temp?

Will steel molds work or do we need graphite molds?


PP

[Avery Arms]

Google says the casting temp for DU is 2,069F...that kinda rules out Lee molds:-D and is iffy with iron blocks.

BTW I think you would have to use a sabot to actually fire a DU boolit.


PP

[Firebird]

Definitely would need a sabot, Uranium is considered a structural metal due to it's tensile strength etc.
It is just about the perfect material for making armor piercing ammo; extremely dense (much more so than lead), strong but fractures producing a new very sharp edge to hit the target a second, third, fourth etc. time, and lastly it's pyro something that means it strikes a spark that catches itself on fire when it hits. That's why it always looks like an explosion when a DU round hits an armored vehicle - the uranium itself is breaking into small fragments that catch on fire from the impact. If only it wasn't radioactive, though actually the depleted uranium is just barely radioactive, that's why it has a half-life of 4 billion years. It's just really bad if you breathe it into your lungs because it doesn't come back out.
The army has been looking for a replacement since the end of the first Gulf war, they just haven't found anything that has the same set of properties.