Casting Silver Bullets for Werewolves

[kragjorgensen]

One of my former colleagues helped a "werewolf book" author make a more realistic novel by casting & testing silver bullets.

http://www.patriciabriggs.com/books/...rbullets.shtml

There are some interesting insights, including the differences in hardness & shrinkage & density. Kevin has since gone back to Canada, which caused me to miss out on his partial differential equation filled interior and exterior ballistics course. Still trying to get a copy of his lecture notes.

With metals prices going as they are, lead may soon catch silver...

I had another colleague, since passed away, who claimed that when he was a boy his father made bullets alloyed with Gold and they all shot in the same hole. His Dad even showed him by one-holing a target at 50yds. I replied, "Conrad, didja ever think that your Dad may have just shot one shot in the middle and put the other nine over the top of the paper?" There was a look of hurt realization after all these decades. His Dad was born about the same time as my Grandad and I recall numerous & similar tall tales by my father, grandfathers, and uncles meant to awe the naive & callow youths of the latest generation then just recently out of diapers... Later on I got a note from Conrad, "...I have never known my father to lie to me even when he was prevaricating..." Sadly the last of the great curmudgeons passed away after a stroke in 2009 just shy of his 90th birthday.

Anyway, I thought the results with the silver bullets would be interesting, if this hasn't been put up on this site before.

Matt

[Shiloh]

I have made some in the past as novelties.
When I had my full time jewelers shop, I started with a boolit made from hard blue jewelers wax, cast it up in silver, and made a rubber mold to make injection wax duplicates.

They are oversized and would highly discourage loading and firing them.
I have seen one that was loaded up in a .357 cartridge as a novelty werewolf round.

I have also silver plated 125 gr jacketed hollow point boolits. How would the werewolf know???

Shiloh

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

the real question , what percentage of silver is necessary to kill a werewolf

much of the current lead free solder contains a few percent silver if using this solder to make say a 20:1 alloy you would have a measurable amount of solder in each bullet already

[MBTcustom]

Gold does dissolve into molten lead very quickly. I have found traces of gold in quite a few samples I have tested, and it is my belief that if it were cheaper, it would be a common additive to improve hardness of the alloys, but that is just a theory of mine.

[Rick R]

Larry Correia is a shooter and writer who has a series of novels about Monster Hunters Inc. a privately held company that removes pesky monsters of all types for pay. Correia has gone to the extent of describing the ammunition that the private company has designed and produced in a small shop and the ammunition carried by government employees who have access to large factories for their ammunition needs.

Makes for a pretty good read.

[windy]

i'm just waitin' fer a yarn about some old-time trapper er injun-fighter pannin' gold to melt fer his balls er bullets. shucks, it might just pay a feller to get shot, long as it warn't fatal!
mind yer topknot!
windy

[Papa smurf]

It's Halloweeeeeeeeen again ! DAH !!! Papa Smurf again !

[john hayslip]

I don't know if it is available on the internet but in the 60's or so the magazine Gunworld did a piece on casting silver bullets as the Lone Ranger was supposed to do. They dressed up in Lone Ranger and Tonto costumes for the pictures. They were trying to use a regular bullet mold. Basically they couldn't get it to work,, the silver melted at too high a melting point to be done on a campfire and they had trouble getting good bullets if they used high enough heat to melt the silver. It was, of course, a farce, but was really funny reading. In a later issue they did one where one of the staff dressed up as Superman for the article. Wasn't nearly as good.

[I'll Make Mine]

That article is on the net; I've read it recently.

Bottom line is that pure silver is very, very impractical for cast bullets; melting point is way high, only an iron/steel mold can be used, the bullets shrink a lot more than lead and don't fill out well, and pure silver is too hard for good terminal performance.

That said, silver and lead ought to alloy well; they're found together in most mining locations (either galena with silver sulfide, or native silver with native lead in quartz, same formation mechanism as quartz vein gold). As noted above, tin-antimony-silver solders are becoming common for plumbing, and silver-bearing solders based on tin (often with a little cadmium, silver's closest friend, as well) with melting points similar to common tin/lead soft solder have been around for a long time.

Based on recent werewolf fiction, it shouldn't take much silver to cause a great deal of trouble for werewolves -- but if one were to find through experience that an alloy wouldn't work (and live through it), one could surely silver plate lead boolits, using a process similar to that used for copper plated bullets already commonly available. I'd think this to be much more practical and more likely to be effective than a low percentage silver-lead alloy anyway...

[Jeff82]

Interesting. The author references the "Best of Gedauvan," which was the subject of a vary poorly done History Channel reality show investigation. In one segment they experimented with a cast silver bullet rifle cartridge. It worked, but was less accurate than a commercial jacketed lead cartridge --no big surprize. Nothing blew up though. In the show, they came the same conclusions about hardness, and the weight difference and problems with casting. Of course, they used a modern lever action rifle. I suspect a patched silver ball round fired in rifled musket might perform a little better, which would have been more relevant to the comparison they were trying to make.

Personally, I prefer Lyman #2.

[scattershot]

I don't know if it is available on the internet but in the 60's or so the magazine Gunworld did a piece on casting silver bullets as the Lone Ranger was supposed to do. They dressed up in Lone Ranger and Tonto costumes for the pictures. They were trying to use a regular bullet mold. Basically they couldn't get it to work,, the silver melted at too high a melting point to be done on a campfire and they had trouble getting good bullets if they used high enough heat to melt the silver. It was, of course, a farce, but was really funny reading. In a later issue they did one where one of the staff dressed up as Superman for the article. Wasn't nearly as good.

I remember that! Maybe KemoSabe had a jeweller friend.

[Sonnypie]

It's Halloweeeeeeeeen again ! DAH !!! Papa Smurf again !

I be thunkin somebody is missin April Fools Day.

[KCSO]

Way back in the 60's GUNS magazine did an article where two of their writers made used and accuracy tested silver bullets. I have the article somewhere in my boxes of old magazines, I can't for the life of me remember the writers now but they did a LOT of weird stuff back then. They never got good accuracy from silver bullets. I turned 6 of them for a display case for my Dad's 38 one time but we never shot any of them.

[KCSO]

1964 Jack Lewis an ex marine and a screen writer. Gunworld Magazine.

[shotman]

Well if you know an electrician the contact points are silver in the larger breakers.
you need to use a STEEL mold and I used the cast pour ladle to heat the silver. the mold needs to be dull red. so you are looking at trashing a mold. I had 18 cast in a 44 belt and when I came back from the target they were gone. If I knew the name of the guy I would make one for him

[John in WI]

If you get a chance--this book gives detailed instruction for silver bullets. Although if I remember he turned them. http://graysci.com/

It's a great and funny book in any case. It's called "Experiments you can do at home, but probably shouldn't". There was one demonstration where he salted popcorn by pumping chlorine gas into a pan of metallic sodium. The results were a little, err, exo-thermic!

Anyway, I wonder if it has to be METALLIC silver for werewolves? It seems to me a soluble silver salt would work better (WAY higher solubility in blood). It's probably not humane. But when I'm hunting werewolves, I leave my hunter's ethics at home!

[deltaenterprizes]

One article I read the jeweler made a mold from carbon fiber blocks so that they would take the heat.

[turmech]

Not that I would do this as I am confident that lead will kill anything I need to shoot at.

But it would seem to me that one of the easiest ways to shoot silver at something would be in a shot cup of a shot shell. An old chain especially with roundish links should preform as well as steel shot.

[Beagle333]

But it would seem to me that one of the easiest ways to shoot silver at something would be in a shot cup of a shot shell. An old chain especially with roundish links should preform as well as steel shot.

By Gummy, I think you're onto something! I'll stuff one down the barrel of my trusty .56 Renegade Smoothbore! Come 'n Get it, Mr. Werewolf!!

Or how much silver does it take (as previously mentioned?) Perhaps I could just take one of the wife's mismatched set of silver earrings, hammer it into a small ball, and stuff in into the hollowpoint of a 457122.

[Papa smurf]

Maybe we all should try casting wooden stakes---- its that time of the year . ----- Papa again