copper?????????????

[tuckerdog]

In light of the recent trend of lead free hunting zones[which make as much sense as a football bat] what would b necassary to cast boolits w/copper i know temps r much higher but it is being done by barnes hornady and others are they swageing or casting these projectiles or are they turned on a lathe

[lwknight]

You would be much better off to just buy the lead free bullets. They have the technology to get good expansion performance. You would not be shooting all that many anyway most likely.
I tried to smelt some copper with a oxy-acetylene torch and never got the whole thing melted at once. Its tough. You need a graphite crucible and electric furnace with atmosphere control like using inert gasses to prevent oxidation.

I hope someone comes up with someting reasonable but, I have my doubts.

[dnepr]

I have done a bit of hobby metal casting and if someone wanted to do this I would recomend casting wax bullets with your bullet molds the using them to do lost wax casting of your copper bullets , I think that turning your bullets on a lathe would be the easier method for the hobbiest. As for making them expand like a barnes X , that is way above my knowledge level I will have to wait for the really smart people on this board to figure this one out.

[randyrat]

I would think the trend would be (if they outlawed exposed lead) to cast and swage brass into plated/jacketed bullets using exsisting brass. People do it now with 22 empties, they make them into jacketed 223 projectiles with very good results. There are always ways around bumps in the road.

[Johnch]

We have a machine shop owner at the club that turns copper bullets on a CNC machine

His are hollow point and he then scores the inside of the hollowpoint with a custom punch

He saw how to do it on Accurate Reloading

I was given 50 of his pistol 50 cal bullets to try
I have them loaded
But as of now I have not had the time to do the range work

John

[JeffinNZ]

OR just keep shooting lead core bullets but carry a handful of funky new copper ones to show the forest ranger when he asks. I have no problem ignoring STUPID laws/rules.

[Firebird]

There was a guy in South Africa that turned his copper bullets, Barnes uses a multiple step swaging process, I believe North Forks are swaged and then the grooves are rolled into the bullet. Hornadys are pressure sintering of copper & tin powder to form a core inside the jacket, then they are swaged to final shape. The one method that I don't think anyone is using is casting a copper bullet, which probably means it is either too expensive in energy to melt the copper, or too difficult to get perfect bullets everytime for some reason.

[dangerranger]

I could cast tin or turn copper for larger bullits as I only need 20 or so at a time. but for small varmits I can easily shoot up 200 a day. with the price of comercial bullits that gets expencive quick. I started casting years back because it cut costs to where I could aford to shoot more. I have looked at swaging dies to make powdered metal cores but the cost of the dies are keeping me from it. Id have to sell 10,000 bulits just to pay back the die cost. so Im still looking for a low cost bullit that I can make from free scrap.[ Lead]. DR