Loading silver bullets... Yes, I know.

**carrguy1** · January 26th, 2020, 11:21 AM

Yes, I know it sounds funny. I know it sounds like a joke. Get all your werewolf jokes out. Someone has asked me to load about a dozen .357 pure silver (supposedly anyway, not sterling, I asked) heads he has into functional rounds. He is mainly looking at this as a novelty that he doesn’t plan to shoot because he thinks they will be cool to have.

My question to everyone is does anyone have any idea what silver will do, if anything, to my carbide die. My guess is the seating die is the one I’m asking about more than the crimping die? From what I could find online silver doesn’t seem to be too much different than lead or copper and pure silver is softer than sterling which is silver mixed with copper to make it harder. Go ahead. Let me have it.

**Yoder** · January 26th, 2020, 11:40 AM

The seating die hardly touches the bullet. It doesn't take much force to seat them. I think it would be no problem.

**abner13** · January 26th, 2020, 11:52 AM

I'd be most highly concerned about a pressure spike , depending on the powder used. I'm thinking a pure silver bullet is much harder than a hard-cast lead alloy or copper-jacketed bullet.

The Lyman cast bullet handbook shows some loads with bullets cast from straight Linotype , one of the hardest common lead bullet alloys.

Small amounts of silver are used to harden lead soldering alloys.

**stainless** · January 26th, 2020, 01:08 PM

Have you seen the bullets? Are they the length of a bullet or the length of a finished cartridge?

I bought a bunch of those a couple of years ago in different calibers and IIRC they are the length of a finished cartridge. Haven't dug them out in ages.

**fritz1919** · January 26th, 2020, 01:21 PM

If he was asking you to seat them with no powder of any kind, no primer or spent primer, for just novelty items to sit on the coffee table or whatever, I'd say no problemo.

As functional rounds? Big time NO GO. I've never seen load data that would apply.

**raxar** · January 26th, 2020, 01:25 PM

Probably best to measure them for diameter before you try it as well, since it isn't likely that they tried to make them as precisely as bullets need to be. The load data question is a good one too, they are going to be much lighter than lead so you will definitely need to weigh them.

**Jhaydeno** · January 31st, 2020, 09:53 AM

Originally Posted by abner13

Small amounts of silver are used to harden lead soldering alloys.

Silver by itself is very soft. Alloying, or adding various metals together, usually strengthens the final product because of the different sizes of the various atoms. Without getting into too much detail, those different sizes induce a strain on the typically orderly crystalline arrangements of metal atoms, and strains on the atomic level hold energy, which take energy to break, leaving a stronger finished product.

If anyone would like a deeper dive into HCP, FCC, interstitial locations, etc. I would be happy to discuss

**Edg** · January 31st, 2020, 03:22 PM

Silver is soft, watch pressure and speed I would assume both of these will be an issue if fired.

**carrguy1** · February 7th, 2020, 01:08 AM

He’s told me they are machined and .357 outside diameter. Seeing as .38 spec/.357 mag are normally .358 in diameter I figure if you ever did shoot them accuracy wouldn’t be good since you’d have a poor gas seal and may not engage rifling very well.

**JoshIronshaft** · January 28th, 2020, 07:18 PM

Just have the guy buy you a cheap seater die as compensation for the loading work if you’re worried about damaging your die, but it sounds like you’re good to go.