There used to be a plant locally that produced penny blanks for the mints. After the plant shut down, there were thousands of these blanks available locally and I bought a large bag of them. As they are not coins, there is not an issue about defacing US coinage. They are the dimensions of pennies with no markings whatsoever. Would these blanks be a good starting point for making bullet jackets, and if so, what would be the best size bullet to make from them?

Probably not. Today's penny is not solid copper and hasn't been since WW2. They saved the copper for bullets instead of money.

Pennys are a copper/zinc/copper sandwich. There are some that are steel cored as well. Cut one in half with tine snips to see what you have.

Jeremy

Vol
Take one of your penny blanks and cut it open. If it's copper all the way thru you're golden if it's zinc you are not.
My middle sister had a boy friend that sold cutco products to help raise money for college. One of his demonstrations was to use a pair of shears to cut a penny in half. Some where in my junk I've still got the penny.

The mints started making copper plated pennies fairly recently when they discovered that the copper in the penny was worth more then one cent.

Had a friend many years ago that used pennies as jacket blanks. It took a bit of annealing during the drawing.

Jim

#1). As said, are these blanks solid copper or the copper/zinc/copper sandwich. If solid copper, you might want to check current scrap value. HIGH! Sell the blanks and buy the bullets you want.

#2). The corbins, Dave--corbins.com; and Rich-- rceco.com; make the tooling to do work like this. Actually any machine shop could but the Corbins have experience... (No charges/low charges for "developmental work.") "Drawing dies" for forming the cup shape of a bullet jacket are not cheap. Can it be done? Yes. Do you want to bear the expense? Good question.

This large a chunk of copper would make a large jacket. Elephant bullet type. That means a powerful press to form the bullet... I lean toward #1... frankly. But if you must... luck, happy trails.

From Wikipedia:

Years Material
1793–1857 100% 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 1943 steel cent)
1944–1946 brass (95% copper, 5% zinc)
1946–1962 bronze (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc)
1962–1981 brass (95% copper, 5% zinc)
1982 varies, (95% copper, 5% zinc) or (97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper)[6]
1983–present 97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper (core: 99.2% zinc, 0.8% copper; plating: pure copper)[7]

Would be interesting to see bullets made that are 100% penny. Hollow bullets for meat hunting like rabbits ect. A penny bullet press. Would be illegal but would be useful in a few circumstances. Pistol bullets?