Bullet jackets from pennies

[flashhole]

Has anyone tried making bullet jackets out of pennies? Seems to me it ought to be doable. You've seen the rollers that flatten pennies into trinkets with a stamped emblem of some kind or a penny that was set on a railroad track and run over by a train. Would the "re-formed" copper be suitable for bullet jackets?

[StarMetal]

Has anyone tried making bullet jackets out of pennies? Seems to me it ought to be doable. You've seen the rollers that flatten pennies into trinkets with a stamped emblem of some kind or a penny that was set on a railroad track and run over by a train. Would the "re-formed" copper be suitable for bullet jackets?

I believe most the real copper pennies are in people's collections. The current pennies are copper clad zinc.

[Bill*]

yup....everything after 1981 is copper plated zinc ( I dabbled in coins back then )

[blaser.306]

Perhaps U/S currency , but I beleive that Canadian coin is still true ?

[bohokii]

i save any pre-82 pennies just for that day

but i think tinsnips to cut open copper pipe and punch into disks would do just as good

[flashhole]

Good info on the penny date, anyone care to share any techniques?

[richbug]

At present(in the US) it isn't legal to deface Pennies and Nickels for base metal use.

[scrapcan]

How do we get away with putting two quarters in the little machine to crank the handle and then get a new plug with some sovenoir picture on it? Laws must not apply or they don't care about the lowly penny.

[Bill*]

It's only illegal to deface them with intent to defraud (i.e. change the date or rework something to look like an error coin). You can do whatever "floats yer boat" to US coinage otherwise. BTW...This is a true mint error- a roosevelt dime struck off center at the Phila. mint. Sorry for the lousy pic- I only have an old,cheap camera....Bill

[Sarg]

Yea it's only illegal to "alter" the currency and then try to use it. Basically to cover fraud - if you alter coins/bills it is no longer considered legal tender.

Sarg

[Avery Arms]

It has always been illegal to modify a coin to defraud and just recently it became illegal to scrap pennies and I think nickles. That said I don't think the secret service will beat down your door if you melt or draw some pennies in your garage.

Anyway I think pennies are far too thick for normal jacket drawing equipment.


PP

[thenaaks]

hey bill, what's a dime like that worth?

[Sarg]

I bet that dime is worth a BUNCH.

Double struck coins brought several hundred if not thousands back when I collected coins.

[BSkerj]

This truly is a pinching pennies thread...couldn't help it !

[Linstrum]

Just to see if I could do it, about eight years ago I dinked around with pre-1982 U.S. cent coins as jacket metal by rolling them out to around 0.020" thick with a jeweler's rolling mill (see photo below) and then drawing them into jackets. It was a lot of work because I didn't have the exact equipment required to do it quickly and I haven't done it since. Pre-1982 (and about a third of the 1982 cents as well) are 95% copper 5% zinc red brass alloy, which is the same alloy used for a lot of jackets and some primer cups.

Just FYI, pre-1962 cents are 95% copper, 2.5% zinc, and 2.5% tin, which is a true bronze alloy since it contains tin. The difference between brass and bronze in industrial terms is bronze has tin in it and brass doesn't. In art terms, bronze is just a color and most "bronze" statues are just brass. "Bronze" is artful and esthetic, "brass" is ordinary and cheap, so those real pretty Charlie M. Russel statues made out of brass are called bronze so it sounds better, although in my opinion Russel's statues don't need to be called "bronze" since his work is about the best there is. Rodin's statue "The Thinker" I think is darned good, but I'll take a good ol' C.M. Russel over it any day!

Back to using pre-1982 cent coins as jacket material, if you have the equipment to do it I'd think about it. Bohokii's idea of using copper tubing I have also done and it works, too, but copper tubing is usually pure copper and is a bit softer than pre-1982 cent brass alloy. Brass is also a bit more slippery than pure copper.

But save those pre-1982 cents when you find them, I do, there are still a few around yet. Also save the 1982 ones made from brass, they weigh more than clad zinc ones and can be told apart that way, or by sound when dropped on a hard table. When the day comes when the cent is dropped from our coinage system because of minting cost considerations, pre-1982 cents could disappear overnight because by then the copper content will be above face value and the current cent melting laws will be rescinded. Collectors will then want them, and like Indian Head cents were when I was a kid, the collector value will begin to go up. Even if they don't go up in value it would be nice to have a bunch to give to the great-grandkids 50 years from now. One of my four great-grandpas saved a bunch of coins from Sweden when he came to the U.S. in 1870-something just for that purpose.

If I had gotten a whole big bunch of Indian Head cents when I was a kid when they were still cheap, I would now be retired living on an island somewhere. Believe it or not, I saw whole 5 gallon glass Sparklets drinking water bottles full to the neck with Indian Head cents. The bottles were so heavy they couldn't be lifted by three men, or without breaking the bottle, and had to be carted out the door on a hand truck. The most Indian Head cents I heard about in one place was in the Buckhorn Saloon in Camarillo, California, in 1961. The Buckhorn was built in 1901 and 60 years later needed a new floor and when they pulled the old rotted bar room floor up they found three wheel barrow loads full of old coins that had fallen through a long crack in the floor right in front of the bar where customers dropped their change. The Indian Head was made from 1859 to 1909 and a whole bunch of the coins were Indian Heads. They found one Half-Eagle, too, the only gold coin in the trove.

Have fun!

rl792

[flashhole]

Thanks for the history lesson and the advice. I like your machine.

[richbug]

You guys might want to check this out, a $10,000 fine will buy lots of jackets:

http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/index.cfm?action=press_release&ID=724

I can't cite the US code, but I would imagine rolling and smashing would fall under the same view as melting. Only applies to Nickels and pennies at this point.

[MT Gianni]

Does anyone know the composition of Canadian pennies? It would seem a simple plan to get $5 swapped over the border and it isn't illegal to deface foreign money if not for counterfit purposes.

[ExcIsAc]

Does anyone know the composition of Canadian pennies? It would seem a simple plan to get $5 swapped over the border and it isn't illegal to deface foreign money if not for counterfit purposes.

From Wikipedia:


Composition throughout history
Years Composition[9]
2000–present 94% steel, 1.5% nickel, 4.5% copper plated zinc
1997–1999 98.4% zinc, 1.6% copper plating
1982–1996 98% copper, 1.75% tin, 0.25% zinc
1980–1981 98% copper, 1.75% tin, 0.25% zinc
1978–1979 98% copper, 1.75% tin, 0.25% zinc
1942–1977 98% copper, 0.5% tin, 1.5% zinc
1920–1941 95.5% copper, 3% tin, 1.5% zinc
1876–1920 95.5% copper, 3% tin, 1.5% zinc
1858–1859 95% copper, 4% tin, 1% zinc

[Bill*]

Hi thenaaks... Haven't kept up on coin and error values since the 80s but (as a coin dealer) I have it coded as having paid $15 for it. So it's probably worth at least $40-$50 retail now. Would be much less without a date. First person to open the mint bags finds em now and again. They're not as rare as they seem. Just never make it past the first person to see them. I have a small box of various errors left from those days-just cool to look at once in a while
Hey richbug... Thanks for the link. SHEESH- Ya don't keep up for a few decades and they go and change stuff. I retract my info in post #9 and stand corrected :oops:
And Sarg... Yeah, off centers like mine are more common by far-double strikes require quite a bit more of a foul-up in the automated presses and are usually caught on site and destroyed- thus rare (and expensive) ;-)

[sagacious]

Also save the 1982 ones made from brass, they weigh more than clad zinc ones and can be told apart that way, or by sound when dropped on a hard table.

rl792
The copper 1982 pennies ring like a bell when flipped into the air with your thumb. The zinc ones are dead, with no ringing sound.

[Linstrum]

Hi, sagacious, you noticed they sound different, too. Flipping them with your thumb is a lot easier than weighing.

Every once in awhile I'll hear a quarter or dime getting dropped into the cash register drawer that sounds different from the clad coinage and without acting excited I'll ask the clerk to let me see it because those are usually the old pre-1965 silver coins that have a deeper ring. I tell the clerk I want it but don't say why. Those supermarket Coinstar change buying machines reject silver coins and I sometimes find them in the reject return when people don't retrieve them.

My ex-wife and I have a game we play, we pick up change dropped on the floor (unless it is on the register side of the check-out stand) and when it adds up to a buck we get a lottery ticket. The most I ever found at one time was $51, which was in a parking lot. Besides getting a lottery ticket we had a nice dinner out that night, too. So we play the lottery and somebody else pays for it.


rl793

[RedneckAlbertan]

Does anyone know the composition of Canadian pennies? It would seem a simple plan to get $5 swapped over the border and it isn't illegal to deface foreign money if not for counterfit purposes.

As true as that is, it is illegal to deface the Queen in Canada as far as I know...

[sagacious]

Hi, sagacious, you noticed they sound different, too. Flipping them with your thumb is a lot easier than weighing.

Every once in awhile I'll hear a quarter or dime getting dropped into the cash register drawer that sounds different from the clad coinage and without acting excited I'll ask the clerk to let me see it because those are usually the old pre-1965 silver coins that have a deeper ring. I tell the clerk I want it but don't say why. Those supermarket Coinstar change buying machines reject silver coins and I sometimes find them in the reject return when people don't retrieve them.
That's a hoot to find silver coins in the 'reject' slot! I used to run a coffe-shop, and would occasionally find silver coins when balancing the tills. Found some $5 'silver certificates' too. Just a matter of keeping your eyes peeled.


My ex-wife and I have a game we play, we pick up change dropped on the floor (unless it is on the register side of the check-out stand) and when it adds up to a buck we get a lottery ticket. The most I ever found at one time was $51, which was in a parking lot. Besides getting a lottery ticket we had a nice dinner out that night, too. So we play the lottery and somebody else pays for it.

rl793
That's a great game to play. I hope y'all win the lottery one of these days!

The largest amount of money I ever found was a $100 bill I found washed-up on a remote beach. It was wet and folded-over, and at first I thought it was a $1 bill, then I saw a zero and thought it was a $10 bill, and then when I picked it up I see it's $100! I could not beleive it. And, to top it off, exactly two weeks later I found another $100 bill on the same beach, at almost the exact same spot. $200 found as a result of going fishing at the beach. True story.

Good shooting. :drinks:

[jonk]

Just opened my desk drawer and out of about a buck in change I found:
1X1967
1X1970
1X1973
3X1974
2X1977
1X1978
1X1981
2X1982 (both the good 'ringers)

So now you're telling me that for just a few hundreds to thousands in swaging stuff I can turn these 12 cents into jackets? Sweet! :D

[Blammer]

:D

Yep, you got it right jonk!

[Ken]

what are those steel pennies from WWII worth now days?

[DukeInFlorida]

Still worth a penny...... hahaha


what are those steel pennies from WWII worth now days?

[wingnut]

I try to smash some on my 12 ton press tomorrow. But I think it's need a lot more pressure.

[bohokii]

I try to smash some on my 12 ton press tomorrow. But I think it's need a lot more pressure.

they squish real nicely when left on a train track

[StarMetal]

they squish real nicely when left on a train track

So do nickels. I think the difference on the rail track is the train wheel starts at the edge of the penny.

[Red River Rick]

Even if you manage to make the tooling to draw a penny into a jacket, it won't be very long.

You need a 1.10" diameter blank to draw a .40 cal jacket that is approx 0.700 long, so using a penny won't make it.

If you can figure a way to reduce the pennies thickness to say 0.020", and increase the OD, you may have a chance. Otherwise, you'll have a thick based, thin walled, short jacket around 0.550 in length.

The base of the drawn cup remains the same thickness as the material you started with. The only change that will occur is in the wall thickness as the jacket is being drawn. Reducing the wall thickness and increasing the OAL after each drawing operation. Some jackets may require as many as 6 different draws to get to the final OD and Length. So with all the tooling costs and time.....................no wonder their expensive.

RRR

[mold maker]

Todays pennies are copper plated zinc, and the old ones are worth more for copper than a check.

[JoeG52]

From Wikipedia:

I get this from Wikipedia
Years Material
1793–1857 copper
1857–1864 88% copper, 12% nickel (also known as NS-12)
1864–1942 bronze (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc)
1943 zinc-coated steel (also known as steel penny)
1944–1946 brass (95% copper, 5% zinc)
1946–1962 bronze (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc)
1962–1982 brass (95% copper, 5% zinc)
1982–2009 97.5% zinc core, 2.5% copper plating
2009 (Limited) bronze (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc)
2010–present 97.5% zinc core, 2.5% copper plating

[ExcIsAc]

I get this from Wikipedia
Years Material
1793–1857 copper
1857–1864 88% copper, 12% nickel (also known as NS-12)
1864–1942 bronze (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc)
1943 zinc-coated steel (also known as steel penny)
1944–1946 brass (95% copper, 5% zinc)
1946–1962 bronze (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc)
1962–1982 brass (95% copper, 5% zinc)
1982–2009 97.5% zinc core, 2.5% copper plating
2009 (Limited) bronze (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc)
2010–present 97.5% zinc core, 2.5% copper plating

I was responding to a question about Canadian pennies.

[223tenx]

You all know that copper wire was invented by two lawyers fighting over a penny?

[Lee]

SO, can you draw a zinc penny to make a jacket? Or is the metallurgy just not there? And if you could, what would be the performance?

[Brick85]

I'm pretty sure it's perfectly legal to make pennies into jackets, or coats, or skirts, or whatever you want. The law is about melting, and the reason they care more about melting than about drilling holes in them to make washers or such uses is that melting gets rid of a whole lot more. No one is going to make a real profit making bullet jackets from pennies, but a large-scale melt operation could be very profitable and thus very big. Making bullet jackets would be in the same category as the machines that mash pennies into souveniers.

Speaking of which, that'd be a cheaper way to make those 12 pennies into jacket material.

Would pennies work for .223 62-gr jackets? Maybe once I get the casting down I'll start swaging.

[NSP64]

I thought there were a few copper(bronze) pennies made in 1943 and they were the collectors?

[NSP64]

For 3600 pennies I can make you 1000 gas cks.

[NSP64]

and some primer cups.

Do you know which primer cups? I was thinking of recycling LP & LR primer cups into .224 GC's.

[sagacious]

Do you know which primer cups? I was thinking of recycling LP & LR primer cups into .224 GC's.

Any brass LP or LR fired primer cups work fine as .224 gc's. I do not use the nickeled cups for this use.
Good luck.

[StarMetal]

Any brass LP or LR fired primer cups work fine as .224 gc's. I do not use the nickeled cups for this use.
Good luck.

They are not worth the hassle. Better off buying a Pat Marlin gas check maker when he does that caliber.

They are too thick and too large and I think my affect the bullet too much. Look at this pic of a 45 grain Lyman:
http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg51/starmetal47/7385Primer1.jpg

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg51/starmetal47/7385Primer.jpg

[NSP64]

A little long..........Did you shoot it? Maybe spread it out some more and use as a GC for .244?

[sagacious]

They are not worth the hassle. Better off buying a Pat Marlin gas check maker when he does that caliber.

They are too thick and too large and I think my affect the bullet too much. Look at this pic of a 45 grain Lyman:

Starmetal,
My apologies, allow me clarify. I was thinking swaging, since this is the swaging forum. I've been using fired LP primers as gas checks for .224 swaged bullets for years. I save all my fired large primers for this purpose.

When the bullet is swaged onto the gc, the length and thickness of the cup does not pose a problem. I think the cup thickness is actually a benefit in this application as it makes for a very solid base. Probably more accurate to call it a '1/4 jacket' or something similar. In any case, they shoot great for me.

The fired primers have to be treated like fired 22lr brass jacket stock, or like making any other gc's-- they need to be processed to work best. This is the way I do it. First, I throw the fired primers in a rotary tumber with soap/water to clean them and remove the ash, and this also dislodges many of the anvils. Then I rinse and dry the primers and use a special pick to remove any remaining anvils and sort out damaged cups and nickel cups. Occasionally there are a few mild steel cups in the mix, and a magnet separates them out.

The brass cups are then annealed until dead-soft. After that, I pickle until the cups are shiny again.

I run the cups through a die that completely removes the firing-pin indent and also slightly domes the cup base. That helps get a nice, consistent square base after swaging.

The lead core is first run into the point-forming die to narrow one end, and then the cores are placed 'pointy-end' into the cups and run into the core-seater to square the base, and then into the point-forming die to finish. Maybe someone can figure a simpler way, but that's just how I've been doing it.

I primarily use these 'gas checks' to make a 60gr lead hpgc that I shoot at moderate velocity in a 223. They really flatten varmints. I'm not sure how fast they can be driven, as I have never tried pushing them, since I use the 22lr-jacket bullets for higher velocity. I reckon one could use ww alloy and oven-quench and test at higher velocity, but I load them as-swaged.

Hope this helps someone, and best of luck. :drinks:

[StarMetal]

Starmetal,
My apologies, allow me clarify. I was thinking swaging, since this is the swaging forum. I've been using fired LP primers as gas checks for .224 swaged bullets for years. I save all my fired large primers for this purpose.

When the bullet is swaged onto the gc, the length and thickness of the cup does not pose a problem. I think the cup thickness is actually a benefit in this application as it makes for a very solid base. Probably more accurate to call it a '1/4 jacket' or something similar. In any case, they shoot great for me.

The fired primers have to be treated like fired 22lr brass jacket stock, or like making any other gc's-- they need to be processed to work best. This is the way I do it. First, I throw the fired primers in a rotary tumber with soap/water to clean them and remove the ash, and this also dislodges many of the anvils. Then I rinse and dry the primers and use a special pick to remove any remaining anvils and sort out damaged cups and nickel cups. Occasionally there are a few mild steel cups in the mix, and a magnet separates them out.

The brass cups are then annealed until dead-soft. After that, I pickle until the cups are shiny again.

I run the cups through a die that completely removes the firing-pin indent and also slightly domes the cup base. That helps get a nice, consistent square base after swaging.

The lead core is first run into the point-forming die to narrow one end, and then the cores are placed 'pointy-end' into the cups and run into the core-seater to square the base, and then into the point-forming die to finish. Maybe someone can figure a simpler way, but that's just how I've been doing it.

I primarily use these 'gas checks' to make a 60gr lead hpgc that I shoot at moderate velocity in a 223. They really flatten varmints. I'm not sure how fast they can be driven, as I have never tried pushing them, since I use the 22lr-jacket bullets for higher velocity. I reckon one could use ww alloy and oven-quench and test at higher velocity, but I load them as-swaged.

Hope this helps someone, and best of luck. :drinks:

No problemo, yeah those would be great for jackets...cool idea.

[flashhole]

sagacious - got any pictures you can share?

[sagacious]

sagacious - got any pictures you can share?
Flashole,
I make this style bullet on a limited basis for varmint/pest shooting with a reduced-velocity reduced-noise reload, so I don't have a box of them loose to take photos of. The ones I have now are loaded into 223Rem cases. But to illustrate the process for you a bit, I ran a few cores through the dies.

Note that for these pics I used some lighter 41gr cores I had handy. Normally I swage them at 60grs, and also put a flatter 'cupped-point' on them, as that kind of point really hammers small game with reduced-velocity ammo. Also, I generally moly-coat these bullets, and the pic of loaded ammo shows the cup-point moly-coated 60gr varmint 'hammers'. You can't really see the primer-cup base after the moly-coating, so these pics are probably more illustrative anyway.

First photo is cores and some cups that have had the pin indent removed. Second photo shows a core, a core that has been 'pointed' (the pointed end is placed in the cup and then 'core-seated'), some reformed LP cups, a core seated in a cup, and the finished bullet. Last photo shows loaded ammo with a 60gr cupped-point bullet.

Good shooting, and good luck. :drinks:

[flashhole]

Thanks for the pics and the explanation. So for reduced loads, are you around 2200 fps? I assume you don't want excessive leading. They look like great quality bullets.

[sagacious]

Flashhole,
I load these in the middle teens using a pistol-powder load. That gives them a lot of punch out to 100yds or so, which is what they're designed for. The goal was to have a heavy but fairly soft lead slug that had good knock-down without much noise-- the pistol-powder load is pretty quiet. It was easier for me to get an accurate, consistent, reduced velocity load by using a lead bullet than by using a jacketed bullet.

I reckon one could use ww alloy and oven quench, and then load to the 2000fps area and see how that worked, but one might be better off using a 22lr-jacket at that velocity level. The moly-coat and a clean, smooth bore seems adequate at lower velocity for this lead bullet. Good luck.