Just came across this thread this evening and don't mean to be too negative and believe me , I'm not above mining a berm myself. I just have to say that it's a little over the top to expect a shooter that's found a use for some left over scrap, zinc for gas checks in this instance, to worry about the berm miners. Berm mining is somewhat like dumpster diving in that you need to sort the rotten fruit from the beer cans. This seems to me to be the job of the diver and not that of the trash depositor. Beside this ,the amount of zinc in a few gas checks would just add a little hardness to the alloy and be no big deal. This is just my take on this and not in any way meant to discourage mining. Gp
The best I can measure is 0.008". It comes in a 2 1/2" x 50 feet roll. Z Stop Moss Control @ $30 from Lowes or Home Depot. That makes for a lot of checks, even after installing a roof peak strip on the chicken coop. It's softer than the aluminum flashing I have that measures 0.009, and works with both Freecheck and PatMarlin dies.
Is the melting point of zinc high enough to be as effective as copper or aluminum?
It's a lot higher than the melting point of powder coating or the combustion temperature of paper (for paper patching), or the melting point of a poly-wad or sabot. I doubt the melting point of the check has much to do with anything. Ever seen a fired boolit with lube still in the grooves? The following gives good reasons for using zinc checks:
https://hawkbullets.com/prot-x-bore.html
Menards has it too . I just looked. And they had a 6"x 10' roll of copper for $43 but that looked pretty thick. I will have to measure it one of these days. The zinc was soft and looks like it would form very easily.
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