gunmandanieltex
Active Member
Yes it is cheaper than bismuth but making the bullets I think is not.
I'm led to believe its expensive to physically make the bullets from copper. Copper melts at higher temperature, is harder to extrude into wire form (which is probably how its starts life in the process) and casting on a small scale is not all that practical although I'm sure someone could do it. Lead and low melting point alloys cast easily at much lower temps, can be extruded or cast into useful sizing for insertion into copper jackets and can then be swaged to size far more easily than solid copper. Think how easy it is to hand cast pistol bullets. I have made literally thousands with an old cooker stove and hand moulds.
The copper bullets I have seen for sale so far, I have been told, have been made on CNC lathes probably from extruded wire or barstock. I don't know about small batches but making millions of heads this way, as would be necessary to match current lead based bullet production sound impractical just from a number point of view. Sounds a lot harder than a swaging machine type production line to me, although the bullets will be possibly far more consistent in weight, shape and size. Hornady, Sierra and Barnes seem to have perfected that process with lead based jacket bullets some time back. I gave up weight sorting and measuring bullets a long time ago as they are so consistent now with good quality bullets, i.e. not el cheapo bulk milsurps!
Having said that the copper bullets on sale in the UK seem to be about 40% more per bullet than their premium lead based equivalents. If you only hunt it's not much of an issue in terms of cost -200 bullets a year?? If you are a target shooter and/or have several calibers shooting thousands per year its significant.
Shotgunners do at least have steel shot on the market and proven, although I can see the sale of cheap semi autos will increase dramatically, as what's the point of wearing out an expensive Beretta shotgun with steel instead of a old £350 Hatsan for pigeon shooting? Steel proof does not mean steel wil not damage the bores quicker, it just means its safe to use - it just won't blow up!
My take on it is we need people to realise that lead bullets are not all that much of a problem. Lead is toxic, yes, but really in use there is very little risk if you take simple steps, but banning something is easier than accepting risks and taking steps to understand this and there are far worse things in the environment than lead exposure from bullets!
Also has anyone even thought about what suddenly making millions of heads in copper will do for the availabilty and therefore price of copper on a global scale? If the US ( largest civilian market) ever bans lead for ammo or worse the militaries of the world (unlikely as they do what they want), the price of copper will go through the roof. Bismuth also has supply issues. There is not a seeming endless supply of Bismuth as there seems to be with Lead. Lead is a very common element whereas global Bismuth supplies would be totally swallowed up if mass ammo making suddenly took off. World production of Bismuth in 2022 was only 4700 tonnes compared with 25 million tonnes of copper and 4.5 million tonnes of lead.
