I was thinking back to the days of yesteryear when I would watch the Lone Ranger on TV. He shot silver bullets. Can you shoot silver bullets form a handgun? Since silver is harder than copper or lead, wouldn’t shooting silver bullets eventually destroy your gun? Just wondering.

Years back American Rifleman did a test with silver bullets.
I don't remember the exact problems but the results were not satisfactory. They didn't seem to have problems with the handguns used.

__________________
Regards, Ron
USASA 1965/69

Silver bullets hit the wallet the hardest.

__________________
Lost it all in a boat accident

i remember watching the movie "Silver Bullet" as a teenager. what model S&W did gary busey use on the werewolf?

i have 4 boxes of winchester tips.....shoot very well out of my 39-2,639,mp9 sigms sw9ve..

__________________
Scott from Canton Ohio

The other night when I had that werewolf coming at me, I wasn't worried if the silver bullets would hurt my model 66.

I know how you feel! I piss my wife off at times too.

__________________
Fidelis Ad Mortem

Howdy,
I have an old GUN WORLD magazine from the early 60's and in it they dress up in Lone Ranger and Tonto costumes and tried the silver bullet thing.
They said silver had a high melting temp (1700F I think) and they poured some pretty ugly bullets and wrecked a set of moulds but eventually got some decent bullets. Said L.R. and T surley did not cast them around a campfire.
It's a fun article.
Thanks
Mike

Maybe LR & T were casting a silver-lead alloy?

__________________
VIVERE MILITARE EST

Silver is harder than lead, so it probably wouldn't grip the rifling the way lead does.

Not to mention a LOT more expensive.

I don't believe the Lone Ranger "shot" silver bullets. He left them like calling cards. At least that was the impression I always got.

__________________
John 3:16 .

The Silver Bullets (3) - YouTube

The subject comes up every now and again, usually in relation to werewolves these days.

Back in the 80s, a company offered a line of precast silver bullets molded to look like Dracula's face. Circa 1986 or so Guns magazine featured these along with a special customized Colt Detective Special in a vampire killing kit. Wonder what ever happened to that gun....

If you google the subject, you'll find one author and her husband - that writes paranormal stuff - did some experiments. Other people have done experiments over the years too.

From memory - silver dimes don't work very well in a shotgun.

If you are plagued by werewolves, you can take silver salts and use them to fill the cavity of a hollowpoint - silver nitrate etc - and then seal it with epoxy if all else fails. You can also cut a sliver out of an old coin and epoxy it in place. This alters your bullet weight and stability so is a close range proposition. And the downside with the silver nitrate bullets if that if you are caught with them, you risk being prosecuted for having poison tipped bullets.

Anyway, while silver is harder than lead, it still isn't as hard as the steel used to make the weapon.

Getting some plastic sabots or enclosing the silver in a jacket of something else - bronze might work well - would solve the problem.

All that is on the theory of course that asking about the Lone Ranger is just a cover for your werewolf related fears, as it is for most people.

There are several custom ammunition makers that you can contact if you want some made up. If you provide the silver and the cash, I'm sure that you can find someone to accomodate making a batch.

We're fortunate, given the price of silver these days, that werewolves are less of a problem than zombies, and of course zombies can be killed (well re-killed I suppose, given that they are already dead) with regular bullets.

As for the Lone Ranger, it was always my impression that he did indeed shoot people - or rather the guns out of their hands - with silver bullets.

Someone remind me later and we can discuss why gold, when used as a projectile - does some interesting things and how you can make tank killer rounds out of it.

Presumably the idea of silver bullets - sometimes blessed by a priest - stems from the idea that silver is a cleansing agent. Folks used to throw a coin into a cask of water to purify it. There seems to have been some truth to this idea.

Lone Ranger, Go Away

__________________
I always take precautions

Wasn't it a four inch 629? It's been a while............

__________________
Rule of law, not a man.

The silver bullet the lone ranger gave out reminded me of a old radio series back in the 1940`s I listened to faihfully as a kid. "Straight Arrow". He would give out or leave a tiny golden arrow as his trademark after solveing whatever case. I had to google it.
http://www.otrsite.com/articles/artjf003.html

Straight Arrow | Old Time Radio

Guns magazine featured these along with a special customized Colt Detective Special in a vampire killing kit. Wonder what ever happened to that gun....


If it's the same one.. It sitting in the NRA Museum under the care of Jim Supica.. I saw it two weeks ago.

From the NRA website

NRANews wanted to do something special to kick off Curator's Corner during the month of Halloween. With a touch of input from National Firearms Museum Senior Curator Phil Schreier, they settled on the Colt .38 Special Vampire Gun.
Now we're not only talking about a vampire gun, we're talking about an entire vampire hunting kit. That kit comes in a coffin-shaped ebony case which holds (in addition to the sliver-plated gun) a container for holy water, a wooden stake, a mirror to check your prey's reflection, and silver bullets cast in the shape of miniature vampire heads.
When inspecting the Detective Special, one finds two bats stamped on the grip – leaving one to wonder if two vamps have already been dispatched with this wonderful piece of Halloween protection.
The gun itself is a .38 Special Detective Special. First produced during the 1920s, the Detective Special was revolution in the field of concealed firearms. Carrying a high power (for the time) cartridge and a shortened frame, the Colt ran through four issues over a period of 68 years. Changes included variations in the ejector-rod, grip design,

__________________
SWCA #2306
DAV in honor of POP

Thanks Alpo,
That saves me from digging it up. That's the one.
There is a little shop in Hannibal MO that has an old magazine rack full of these old gun mags. I get there once a year and spend 20-30 dollars and stock up on the old magazines.
Thanks
Mike

Do you own one of those too????

__________________
RIP Shipmate

Nahh.. Jim Supica just would not listen to reason and give me the keys to the display.....

__________________
SWCA #2306
DAV in honor of POP

Oregon Trail's "Laser Cast" bullets, are they not the Silver Bullet?

__________________
NRA Pistol/Rifle Inst. RSO

Len Francolini was the engraver of that set. He had been a Colt factory engraver or perhaps was still employed there when he did the project in the mid to late 80's.

Still doing fantastic work.

The Lone Ranger gave me this one back in 1949.

I didn't know until about 5 years ago that the back of the case came off and there was a compass in there.

I'll TAKE IT.... Pm to follow....

"A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty "Hi Yo Silver!" The Lone Ranger. "Hi Yo Silver, away!" With his faithful Indian companion Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains, led the fight for law and order in the early west. Return with us now to those… thrilling days of yesteryear.

The Lone Ranger rides again

__________________
SWCA #2306
DAV in honor of POP

That answers the question of what ever happened to the vampire killing Colt Detective Special.

But.... Who ordered it in the first place and why? Ponders.

I’ve never been afraid of the werewolf but I have met a few humans who gave me the jitters.

When my nephews and nieces were young, they would spend a week or two each summer out here on the farm with my wife and I. My wife would tell the kids that there were werewolves lurking in the woods at night waiting for little boys and girls. She scared the kids into not wandering out into the woods after dark.

Of course there were no werewolves but if a gray wolf howled in the night we could count on a kid or two piling into our bed.

I used to buy a bunch of little kids down in the black section of town a coke and candy bar every Saturday Afternoon when I was a Detective.
One afternoon one little kid ask me if I carried those dummy dummy bullets for killing folks. I told him that I carried Silver Bullets for killing Werewolfs that ate up little black kids and their mommies and daddies. I then took out a speed loader full of Silvertips, they were popular in the early 80s. The little kids were suitably impressed.

I made lots of cases off of the information those little kids provided in those days. We had an officer loose his Police Hat when he bailed on a hot call and didn't roll up the passenger window. I put out that I would treat the young person to a trip to Wonder Land Amusement Park and a hamburger to whoever returned the hat. Two days later I had four police hats, one that hadn't been worn by the officers in the last ten years. We all went on a trip. The ol' Chief used to laugh at me, but I had the highest closure rate of all the Detectives.

Rule 303

I cast a silver bullet years ago, for my Ruger Blackhawk (Old Model) in .45 Long Colt.
Took me all day, working with a buddy. I used silver coins, whose date was worn off. Bought them from a coin dealer in Spokane.
Used a Lyman ladle and a blowtorch to melt them. Had to heat my Lyman 454424 mould to a dull red before I finally got one useable bullet.
I loaded it in a modern case over DuPont FFFG black powder, and lubricated the bullet with Crisco as I recall.
A target was placed at about 20 feet, as I recall, on a sand bank. The bullet struck above it, to the side somewhat. We managed to dig the bullet out of the sand.
I had that bullet for many years but it's since disappeared.
You could barely see any evidence of rifling on it, and it appeared to have struck slightly tilted off-axis, judging from the scuffing on the nose. It was barely damaged. To the unfamiliar eye, it might have appeared unfired.
I used black powder, by the way, because of its low pressure. Being so much harder than even Linotype, I feared the silver would raise pressures considerably if used with smokeless powder.
Some years ago, in a paranormal site, I mentioned my experiment conducted about 1974. I also stressed that I would NOT take any orders for silver bullets. I was lucky not to ruin that mould, and it was simply far too much trouble than it was worth.
Darned if I didn't get scads of emails from people wanting me to cast silver bullets for them. I politely declined. They persisted. I vigorously said no. Some continued to hound me. I ignored them.
Sheesh ...

The late gun writer Dean Grennell tried silver bullets years ago in an early 1960s gun magazine. He even dressed as the Lone Ranger for the photos. He concluded, as have I, that it's a great deal of trouble and a silver projectile is woefully inaccurate.
Actually, gold might make a decent bullet. It's soft enough, compared to silver, but casting it would likely be problematical.

I'd steer clear of trying to cast silver bullets. You run the risk of ruining a perfectly good mould. The projectiles are, from what I can tell, not as accurate as a thrown grapefruit.
Silver is much harder than lead and would raise pressures. It resists rifling. There is nothing to recommend it.
If I really had to hunt vampires down, I'd stoke a shotgun shell with old dimes and avoid casting altogether.
"Dimes in a shotgun" worked well in a bad, inaccurate, glorifying 1970s movie about Billy the Kid, starring Kris Kristofferson.
Dang ... another myth to debunk ...

Lucky I caught you BEFORE you went out and tried to debunk this myth!
DON'T EVEN TRY IT!!
You shoot a vampire with ANYTHING other than a wood stake what you get is a really angry vampire - And it's not like they're real friendly to start with.
One bite and it's like you have to work midnights FOREVER

Always remember:
Wood is for vampires - Silver is for werewolves.

I always think S&W = guns = bullets = Silver & Werewolf
Vampires like blood = rare meat = steak.
What could be simpler?

I hope this isn't too late

__________________
In dog years I'm dead.

The paranormal doesn't scare me like some of people in this world.
However, anything that could hurt a human, can be chased away
with a light sprinkling of lead, in .38 or .45.
I thought the old silver spoon story had to do with rhe silver killing
bacteria that a child might ingest. Might've come from that?
TACC1

Sounds like two of my buddies...They decided to try to make an old Jeep pickup truck "run". So they built a 401 motor, all by themselves. And it didn't "run" very fast. Hence, their conclusion was "it couldn't be done". No thought to them not being very good at the task or anything.

So, lets get back to the silver issue. You used silver coins (coin silver) and guess what, its .900 pure. The other impurities are added to make them wear better...harder. Its just what you don't want to add. Sterling at .925 would have been a bit better (spoons are usually thinner and melt a little better.) But if you really wanted to do a good test, buy a silver round .999 pure. Its too soft to make a good coin, but maybe as good as a hardcast bullet.

What we've learned from casting bullets is if you make the alloy too hard, you experience poor accuracy. Not rocket science. And if you used a poor lubricant, maybe a better lube would help things. Worse still, a sample size of "1" without varying the hardness or the lube, or the powder charge tells you only one thing. That a coin silver bullet lubed with Crisco didn't work. Most good science experiments investigate all kinds of variables.

First, I'd suggest you try pure silver. Melt it with a cutting torch, forget the propane, it doesn't get hot enough. Heat the mold with Mapp gas. Then pour more than one bullet. Use commercial lube.

Oh, and be certain to recover your spent bullets. They will recast just fine. I think you'll see results of the same order as lead. Except its a lot of trouble and a lot more expensive.

Now if you want a practical approach, buy some lead bullets of a weight and size you already are familiar with. Then pick up a cheap silver plating kit. They sell them, or you can read about doing it and make your own from a battery charger, some silver nitrate, and the aforementioned silver round. Then plate your bullets with pure silver. Hey they do it with copper all the time. Those seem to work just fine.

Don't ask me how I know any of this. Just trust the logic.

__________________
Dick Burg