I have ZERO experience with casting, so forgive any ignorance. Looking at densities of lead and tungsten, the latter has a slight edge. Process temperature for casting tungsten is a bit out of range, however.

Then the mind wandered onto the topic of blended metal and this is where "the thought" occurred.

Could you mix tungsten powder (available commercially) with your molten lead, and cast your bullets from this?

It would raise the weight a hair, and perhaps make the bullets relatively frangible due to the interspersed particulate tungsten weakining the lead matrix ....

Is this total ignorance, something worth trying, or a trip to the ER in the making?

I bet you'd have a heck of a time getting that tungsten dust evenly blended in with your lead. It'd settle out in clumps is my bet.

I'm kind of wondering, why do you even want to try this? Frangible bullets would be ok for varmint shooting where you are concerned about ricochets, but I can think of no other application. A high antimony content would probably make them just as brittle, for less cost and trouble.

They might end up being really, really hard. Tungsten is pretty hard stuff, and you might think of these bullets as being tungsten particles all soldered together. If the tungsten is harder than your barrel steel, there might be an abrasive effect. If the bullet ended up especially hard and non-deformable, maybe you would have high pressures.

On the other hand, getting it to work could be a bear. Tungsten is a highly reactive metal, and it forms an oxide coating like aluminum and magnesium. Tungsten is one of only a handful of metals that will not form an amalgam with mercury. I highly doubt tungsten is soluble in lead. Finding a flux that allowed you to mix tungsten powder and molten lead would be a challenge. Assuming the correct flux is found, the mixture of liquid lead and solid tungsten powder ought to pour into your moulds about as readily as bread dough.

H. C.

I agree, the tungsten will eat a barrel. Why would anyone want better then lead anyway. Can shoot the stuff all your life in a gun without wearing it.

I had not considered the abrasive effect on the barrel, that would not be desired.

I was looking to increase the weight of some of the cast bullets we have tried without increasing length. Frangibility would only have been a plus as we do work related to law enforcement and overpenetration/ricochets are not desired.

The idea came from the concept promoted by Corbin in their swaging manuals by combining tungsten powder with lead shot in a swaged core. The resulting bullet is heavy, frangible, but obviously jacketed and not cast.

The thought was to try and translate this to cast bullets. A slurry type material of liquid lead and tungsten powder forced into molds to make very heavy frangible analogs of the swaged versions. I had not considered mold flow, but this could be overcome with pressure. The settling effect could be overcome perhaps with a surfactant (I make these for a living) that would offer proper emulsification.

All in all not near as simple as I had hoped, and the main detractor is the abrasive/erosive effect of the tungsten particulate on the barrel.

Any suggestions for alternate solutions would be highly appreciated

quote:

I agree, the tungsten will eat a barrel.

I agree too. And probably fairly fast.....

BigRx

Do a search for "Frangible bullets" on the web. There is a company making them, and Captain Midnight, who posts on the cast bullets boards is the proprietor, I believe. I'll bet you can buy them, easier and cheaper than making them.

We already had SinterFire make a frangible .458 for us, which works great. Only challenge with that is these are blended metal versions that are low density. The 300 gr version they made for us is similar in size to the 500 gr jacketed lead version. This is why we are looking at other options. We are waiting on some samples from Extreme Shock Munitions to see what they can do for us, but nothing has arrived yet.

Marty, I don't have a great deal of experience in this area but I have paid attention to a lot of different technologies over the years and I think I see a blend of them. First, Corbin can make a set of dies to accomodate the shape you want; you can then blend a mix of tungsten powder, epoxy (or a UV activated resin like the dentist uses?)and #12 shot to fill the cup. Even pure Tungsten & resin?
I think the lead will float on the tungsten powder like ice on water.
It would be pretty dense and still somewhat frangible depending on the final ratio of components. Main problem is that it's a labor intensive, low volume propositon. Maybe not a problem with the Bush guest worker program

I recall reading an article in Precision Shooting about 10 years that focused on the use of tungsten core bullets (jacketed). As Marty pointed out, tungsten has higher weight per volume than lead. This translates to a heavier bullet than one of identical proportion having a lead core, so the ballistic coefficient is higher. I don't recall how much of a ballistic advantage was gained, but there was quite a buzz among the 1000 yard shooters in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (or so they claimed in the article). I haven't seen any other articles pertaining to this. Maybe the economics or some other factor negated any practical advantage. I agree with the others that tungsten most likely would not be of any interest to bullet casters.

Why not just solid Tungsten, inisde a copper or bronze solid. African Grand Slams are like this. McMaster Carr sells tungsten. and I've cut it on the lathe. As far as I can tell it cuts and works close to carbon steel. There's no reason to work with powder as you lose all of the high density properties using it this way.

$0.02

Some thoughts:

Tungsten solid is expensive, more so than the powder. Also, the AGS-T are costly, at $7 a bullet ... No need to reinvent the AGS-T and I have a letter from Tech Branch telling me I cannot do so as they seem to think the .458 SOCOM is a pistol round???

Also, the powder was meant to ensure frangibility and thus wide dispersion and a wound that is difficult if not impossible to treat (can you say lavage?) These are not meant to be nice rounds, these are meant to create that type of rumbling amongst the bad guys like the talk of "poison bullets" amongst the Mujahadeen when the 5.45x39 was introduced by the Soviet troops ....

Anyway, back to other irons in the fire.

PS Collins, any results of the AGS-T vs. plate? Or the JHP vs. IIIa or IV?

Under the right circumstances tungsten dust is explosive. I used to live near a plant that processed tungsten and other rare metals. The explosions were horrific over there.