Back in my house, I was setting up a folding table in my back yard. There was a slightly brisk breeze, but not enough to make the weather outright uncomfortable. The color on the leaves was well into changing, and the scent of the change of seasons could be felt in the air. Driving through the local towns, you can see bundles of Indian corn, pumpkins ready to be carved into Jack O’lanterns, ghosts and skeletons. The grocery stores are full of fresh, locally-ish sourced apple cider and candy, while the coffee shops and liquor stores ply their pumpkin spice lattés and beers. A perfect season, one would think, for magic.
And the tools laid out on this table were more varied than those used in past spells. Several fire bricks where laid out, on top of which rested a metal mold and a crucible. The crucible was filled with that purest of metals, silver, in the form of shavings, fillings, and scrap. Off to the side was a pair of tongs and a container full of borax, for casting flux. And naturally, at the end of the table, was a MAPP gas torch and a beer. I guess my methods are Not Safe For Work, at least from an OSHA perspective.
With the sound of a twisting knob, a rasping noise from a sparker, and the hiss of a high-temperature flame, the ritual begins. I wave the flame over the crucible full of sliver, occasionally making a pass over the metallic mold to bring it up to an acceptable temperature as well. It takes longer than I had hoped. Unfortunately I didn’t exactly think over my set-up, and the lack of a windbreak makes it a bit harder to get the silver up to its melting point. Eventually, the edges of the larger pieces of scrap begin to soften, and the silver turns into a pool of shimmering molten liquid in the center of the crucible.
Keeping the flame of the torch over the silver, I slowly lift up the crucible tongs with a heavily gloved hand. I’m wearing a leather apron just in case, but I’d prefer not to spill any silver, especially with the way precious metals prices have been shooting up. Slowly bringing the crucible over the mold, I quickly pour the molten silver into the two cavities in the mold. Then, there’s the wait for the breeze to cool the now solid forms.
After they are cooled, I bring them inside, and head to my vault. I already have a jewelers bench peg set up, along with a jewelers saw. Making sure the pan is in place underneath to catch the saw dust, I cut the sprues off the cast forms, and examine the results. Two bullets, made of silver, cast from a .45 Long Colt mold.
Of course, some people will tell you that there’s no such cartridge as .45 “Long Colt,” and that it’s just called .45 Colt. Admittedly, Colt never actually marketed the cartridge as .45 “Long Colt,” but there is historical precedence for the term. At the time the Army had two .45 caliber handguns in their inventory, the 1873 Single Action Army, and the Smith and Wesson Schofield. They were both .45 caliber, but the chamber lengths were different, with the cylinder for the Colt being longer than the Smith and Wesson. Naturally, the longer Colt cartridge couldn’t fit in the S&W. For a civilian this would be no big issue; you’d just buy the cartridge you’d need for your gun. But for an army, a multitude of cartridges can cause issues.
The risk of cartridges getting mixed up can be a major logistical headache. If a cavalry unit that had been issued Smith and Wessons was issued the Colt cartridges by mistake, they would be left without ammunition for their revolvers. So as part of an effort to prevent that from happening, the army settled on a shorter rimmed .45 cartridge, that would fit in both revolvers. Existing stocks of the longer Colt ammunition were often referred to as “Long Colt,” and the term is still used today. So anyone who tells you there’s no such cartridge is a stuck-up pendant who knows less than he thinks he does.
Naturally, I plan on using these silver bullets in a .45 LC revolver. I had asked around for a bit about the feasibility of casting these bullets, to the point of consulting with jewelers and several firearms personalities on Youtube. I mean, silver has a much higher melting point than lead, and I don’t want to ruin a perfectly fine bullet mold. One of them, who has been helpful in the past, assured me that my steel mold should be fine, so I decided to go ahead with the plan.
And, before loading a cartridge, I decided to double-check the fit in an empty piece of .45 brass. I place the bullet at the mouth of the cartridge and…*thunk* it falls straight to the bottom. Shit. I knew there was a possibility of this happening, since silver shrinks a much greater amount post-casting than lead, but I didn’t think it would be this much. I sit for a bit. I really don’t want to go back to square one, but I might need to try some other form of casting, like investment casting, in order to get this to work. Or, I realize as a flash of inspiration comes to me, I can try this.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I reached towards a storage shelf and grabbed another bag full of brass shells. I pulled one out, and checked the bullet in comparison to the case. It rested neatly in the mouth of the cartridge. Nice. So, while the bullets are too small to be loaded into .45, they fit just fine in .44-40, with its slightly smaller bullet diameter. .44-40, or .44 Winchester Center Fire, was the cartridge initially developed by, of course, Winchester for their 1873 lever action rifle. The action on this rifle actually goes back a while, before the War Between the States, to the Volcanic pistol.
That in itself was a neat gun, with the toggle-lock seen in these later guns but chambered in an unusual system. A lead bullet, with a hollow base filled with gunpowder, and a primer sealing the end. Almost like a rudimentary caseless round. Of course, you couldn’t fit that much gunpowder in it, so despite the innovative mechanism and large capacity it didn’t sell well. No one wants to trust their life to something that underpowered. Even Smith and Wesson’s No. 1, chambered in .22 short, was a better seller.
Anyways, the mechanism was used in the Henry rifle, which was chambered in a bit more respectable of a cartridge, the .44 Henry rimfire. While it wasn’t used much during the Civil war it still saw some use, and performed reasonably well, although the tube magazine that had to be loaded from the front was an issue as well as the lack of a foregrip, due to the mechanism in the magazine. The ’66 Winchester, with its yellowish gunmetal sides, improved on this with a loading gate, but still was chambered in the same rimfire cartridge. It was the 1873 that saw the first centerfire rifle in the line, and that is the one that became known as “The Gun that Won the West.” Many believe that it was the use of these rifles, along with older ‘66’s and Henry’s, that gave the Native Americans the edge at the Battle of Little Bighorn, fighting against cavalry troopers armed with single-shot carbines and single-action revolvers.
Actually, the carbines were also “model of 1873,” although they were single-shot Springfields chambered in .45-70. Technically the cavalry carbine used ammo downloaded from 70 grains of blackpowder to 55 grains, grains being the unit of measurement used for gunpowder and bullets, since the heavier load for the full-size rifle would kick harder in the shorter and lighter carbine. Overall 1873 was a pretty momentuous year for guns, with the Colt Single Action Army, the lever action Winchester, and the Army’s single-shot rifle all sharing the same year used in their model. But I digress.
The .44-40 cartridge used in the Winchester was popular, and many people wanted their revolvers chambered in the same thing. The reason is similar to the logistical issues discussed earlier, since only having to carry one cartridge for both your rifle and your pistol simplifies things greatly. So Colt eventually released their Frontier model of the Peacemaker, to accommodate this demand. This is also where it picked up the commonly used .44-40 term for the cartridge, since he didn’t want to actually refer to it using his competitors name. So having a revolver in the cartridge is perfectly historically accurate.
A purist at heart, if not a full-on luddite. I of course am going to load these with black powder. Although technically an explosive, you can still buy it for sporting or other cultural purposes without needing a federal explosives license. I run two pieces of brass through a sizing die on my press, then press a primer into the cavity at the base of the cartridge. If you don’t know anything about guns, the primer is the important part, the part that creates the initial flame when it’s hit by the firing pin. Originally made using mercury fulminate, a substance that creates an explosion when given a sharp hit, modern primers use slightly less volatile and corrosive compounds.
I then swap the die in my single stage press, and run the cartridges through this second die to help add a slight flare to the mouth of the case. Taking the cartridges out of the press again, I pour in the powder, using a drop tube. Black powder, while not as hard to work with as some people thing, can be tricky and an air pocket in the case can cause an explosion that ruins the gun. So dropping it through a tube makes it easier for the powder to settle neatly into the case. I top it off with a fur-felt wad.
Before completing the process, I need to lubricate the bullets first. I dip the base of the bullets in a mixture of tallow and beeswax, allowing the grooves at the base to fill with this mixture. Then, I place the final of the 3 reloading dies in my single-stage press, place the shell in the cartridge holder, and the bullet on top. With a firm pull of the lever the cartridge goes up into the die, the brass crimping around the bullet. Lowering the lever, the cartridge emerges. A completed silver bullet.
I sit there a moment admiring it. While lead can be surprisingly shiny right after casting, it normally doesn’t keep its luster like this silver does. Casting the bullets was a bit more elaborate of a process than it is with lead, but the finished product doesn’t seem too bad, at least at the moment.
Really there’s almost no actual practical purpose for going through this process, at least as far as conventional logic would go. I don’t mean reloading as a whole; you can often save money doing so, and you can tailor loads to perform better in specific guns. Really as an avid collector reloading your own ammo is a logical thing to do. But, normally you don’t go through this effort to make silver bullets. As I said earlier, it has different properties than lead which make it a massive pain. It’s melting point is almost twice that of lead, which can easily be melted over a kitchen stove. It’s lighter than lead, making it less stable in flight and liable to have shitty terminal ballistics. And it’s a hell of a lot more expensive than lead, edging upwards towards $30 and ounce. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t cool. And it’s not completely useless if you know what I do. As I sit there, Lia pokes her head in.
“Watcha got there?” She asks.
“Uh…A smoothie?” I reply. She doesn’t seem amused by this.
“I mean what’s with the bullet? You have that whole elaborate set-up outside, which by the way you might want to bring in soon since they’re calling for rain. But why do you need all that for reloading?”
“It’s a silver bullet.”
“What do you need that for?”
“Our next job.”
Why would I need silver bullets for work? Because my boss voluntold me to another “special” assignment..