Welcome to another Friday!

We had our first “ask anything” It didn’t go the way I expected. I was going to collect all the questions and then have Hagar make a post answering them all. Still it worked out.

I’ll offer up an “ask me anything” for myself if you all would like, see the poll at the bottom.

I’ve made my way through most of the filings in Duncan v. Bonta case. Thank you to the Michel & Associates for having everything in one place and open for us to read.

The gist of the State’s argument is that magazines are not “arms” under the scope of the Second Amendment and the good guys haven’t proven it, and even if they were within the scope of the Second Amendment there is a long history of banning guns.

More on Duncan v. Bonta next week. The state has filed multiple “briefs” in excess of 50 pages, it just takes a long time to wade through it all. Oh, for grins, the state up in Oregon is upset because one of the expert witnesses in their case used almost the same words as Massad Ayoob. This seems to be a big deal. Not that two different firearms experts came to almost exactly the same opinion in regards to magazines.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

This post has been several months in the making.  It is a follow-up to a previous post What happens when a metallurgist weapon engineer reads fantasy.

In that post I postulated that silver plated monolithic copper hollowpoints would be more effective than the Cor-Bon Powerball type silver bullets that Larry Correia describe in his Monster Hunter International series.

If you haven’t read that post yet, go back and do it.

Well, I thought about it for a while and decided to just fucking do it.

I started by purchasing Barnes 185 grain, 0.451 inch, 45 ACP TAC-XP all copper hollowpoints.

I gave them a quick bath in an ultrasonic cleaner with a commercial degreaser.

Then I sent them off for plating.

I made a bit of an estimate for a first plating spec:

ASTM B700 silver plate, Type II (99.0%), semi-bright, no chromate finish, 0.0005-in thickness.

That should give a good balance of toughness and ductility.  Pure silver is both very expensive and not particularly durable.  The addition of 1% brighters adds a little strength and reduces tarnish.

The bullets I got back looked good.

Keep in mind that a plating is only as good as the surface finish of the substrate.

If you were expecting it to look like silver jewelry, I would have had to polish the copper to a high shine.  These are bullets, this is what silver plate looks like for industrial applications, like electrical connections.

My plater was even able to adjust the current to throw the plating into the hollowpoint cavity.

That is tough to do.  Electrolytic plating usually doesn’t plate well on concave surfaces.

Now I got excited.

I checked the bullet dimensions with a micrometer.  They ranged from 0.45059 to 0.45105 inches.  The diameter was well within spec for the bore size.

The weight also was 185 to 186 grains.

The quantity of silver was low enough not to affect the diameter or weight outside the tolerance of the bullets.

I had a colleague load some rounds for me.

I’m not exactly what load data he used but it was a published, standard pressure load for the Barnes TAC-XP bullet.

Here are the loaded rounds.

Next was a live fire expansion test.

I wasn’t going to reinvent the wheel.  The Barnes bullet has an established track record of being an excellent performer.  Penetration in gel is constantly about 16 inches, with good expansion, and of course, 100% weight retention.

If you’re interested, YouTube is full of ballistic gel tests of the Barnes bullet.

I was interested in seeing how the plating handled a trip down the bore and expansion.

I trust the Bullet would do exactly what it was designed to do.

I used a Para-Ord 1911 as my platform, with an AAC TiTAN 45 can.

I fired into a barrel of water.  This would be the easiest way to capture the bullets after expansion.

Here are the results.

There is still a lot of silver still adhered to the surface of the bullets.

The bases are completely covered with silver, as is also the bottom of the hollowpoint cavity.

The sides are still plated where the bullet contacted the grooves of the rifling.

There was some plating loss were the bullets were engraved by the lands of the rifling.

The tips and underside of the pedals retained plating as well.

There appeared to be no plating loss on the front of the bullets.  It appears as though the plating was stretched and cracked in the region where the pedals underwent the most severe deformation exposing the copper substrate, but the silver is still adhered to the surface.

For a first attempt with a plating spec I made an educated guess at, I think the results are extremely positive.

Remember that I postulated that the silver affects monsters by surface contact.

The use of a silver clad bayonet on Owen’s Abomination indicates that.

Scientifically, that makes sense if you assume that silver acts as some sort of catalyst on monsters.  Precious metals, including silver, are used as catalysts in other chemical reactions.  Catalysts are not consumed, and the effectiveness of a solid state catalyst is entirely driven by surface area.

Given that assumption, it’s clear that the exposed silver surface area on a silver plated copper hollowpoint is orders of magnitude more than the surface area of a tiny silver ball in the cavity of a standard jacketed hollowpoint.

This would be a more effective bullet.

Additional, with the use of a tiny quantity of silver, plated on with a thickness of 0.0005 inches, the raw material cost of silver is substantially decreased over the silver ball design.

One ounce of silver could plate hundreds of bullets.  At current market rates of $21/Oz, the cost of silver would go from $30 per mag of ammo to $30 per case of ammo.  PUFF bounties may be high, but there is no reason to reject a cost savings on materials.

This is not the first bullet I’ve improved the performance of with metallurgy.  However, the previous design was not intended for the supernatural.

If you follow this blog you probably know of other posts I’ve done on the technical aspects of making the things that make other things dead.

It’s what I do for a living and it’s what I’m good at.

Better killing through metallurgy.

Now, better monster killing through metallurgy.

I would very much like to thank George for the silver plating job he did for my next post.

If you need something plated or blued, contact him.

He does great work.

My condolences Miguel.

Earlier today Miguel published a post The difficult thing about Liberty.

It was a very principled post and contained this picture.

Then this happened.

Well then…

Since the Second Amendment isn’t for everyone then fine, commies don’t get gun rights.

That will make it much easier to play commie lawn darts from a helicopter with them.

One agent left a highly lethal M4 carbine unsecured in his government car during a Starbucks run and had the weapon stolen, but even he received only a two-week suspension despite violating the bureau’s protocols for weapons storage, the records show.

“Although there was a lockbox in the trunk for storage of weapons and sensitive items,” the agent chose to store the rifle bag behind the car’s front passenger seat, one report shows. “While Employee was in the Starbucks, the Bucar was burglarized. The rear passenger, rear driver, and tailgate windows were broken, and the rifle bag containing the M4 was stolen.”
…
At least three dozen agents reported guns being lost, stolen or handled unsafely, including one agent who accidentally discharged his weapon and shot a hole through the floor of his hotel room.

FBI Gone Wild: Internal memos chronicle years of drunk driving, lost weapons and other misconduct | Just The News

Add to that Alcohol abuse, Sexual misconduct and an apparent lack of true punishment for the misdeeds and we have us a praetorian Stasi willing to do almost anything for their political masters.

I’m reading the transcript of Judge Benitez’s conference meeting with the 2A cases out in California.

He has four 2A cases in front of him right now. He told the state: Put together a spreadsheet like summary of all the laws, regulations, and ordinances that you feel support your case. I want just one for all four cases. You will meet with the plaintiffs to go over those laws and they can object are not.

MR. DILLON(GG): It will just be a straight list of the laws. We will have a chance to review it as Plaintiffs. And like a summary judgment, if we have a contested issue of the summary of the law that they present, we can note that contest in the — you know, a joint document? Is that what you’re —

THE COURT(St. B): Sounds reasonable. Sounds reasonable to me.

MR. DILLON: No problem. Thank you, Your Honor.

MR. KELLY(BG): Your Honor, I think we would object to that as well. I think we would want, if we need to, to introduce experts to interpret some of the laws and the standards —

THE COURT: No.

MR. KELLY: — in the language —

THE COURT: No.

MR. KELLY: — and the statute —

THE COURT: No. Look — no, no.

Mr. Kelly, with all due respect, I don’t need — every one of these experts that you’ve put forth, I have read, just like experts that they have put forth, like Mr. Copill, for example. Your experts — these are people that have, you know, biased points of view. I mean, Mr. Bosey, for example — I hope I’m pronouncing his name. The fellow who worked for —

MR. MOROS: Kimber, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Kimber. Yeah. Who at some point in time had an epiphany and realized that all the work that he’d been doing for all these years, selling these weapons to the public was not good. And now he works — he’s a consultant for Everytown — I’m trying to remember.

Anyway, look. These people’s opinions of what these statutes say, right, means nothing. It means nothing. It’s like, I remember — I think it was Justice Brier in — I think it was Bruen, who talked about, “Well, we need to have this factual record,” and this and that, what have you.

No. 702 says that the admission of expert testimony is help — is possible if, because of the expert’s knowledge, skill, or experience, it will assist the trier of fact. Okay.

But there’s nothing. I mean, I’ve read these declarations. Every one of these folks come in here with a biased — it’s not like they’re really neutral experts, okay, or they’re not experts who’ve come up on these opinions as a result of these cases, okay, doing research for these cases. These are all people that already come with preconceived ideas and opinions, but their opinion is not worth any more than your opinion or her opinion. They’re going to tell me, “Well, in my opinion, if you look at this statute, this statute means that — you know, that the State of Wyoming regulated concealed carry of brass knuckles,” and so I can read that. I can figure that out by myself.

Damn…. This Judge Benitez gets it. He doesn’t need some opinion from an Everytown shill telling him, an actual legal expert, what a statue means.

Just wow.

More later.

I admit this makes a bit of sense.

The good thing about a closet is it has lots of clothes, blankets, pillows, and other soft objects that can protect you from flying debris. But, it’s also a good idea to have a helmet, like a bicycle helmet stored in your safe place.

What to have in your severe weather preparedness kit (wkrn.com)

I do have a plain jane safety helmet from the CERT kit I was given when I took the classes, but I never thought about using it during the actual SHTF event. Truthfully I don’t even know where is it at this moment.

The selections found in Amazon are too wide to even consider here, so you are on your own and budget. My local Home Depot has also a great variety under $20 and some under $10, so we are not talking about an expensive item to get.

The rest of the article goes like this:

Have some drinking water, as well as some snacks on hand in case you are there for a while.

Don’t forget a flashlight with extra batteries. You want to have a call phone charger to charge up your phone. It’s also a good idea to have a portable radio or a NOAA weather radio on hand.

But there’s one thing that most people forget to have in their safe place.

“The CDC says that 48% of Americans don’t have a first aid kit in their home,” said Brad Greer, CEO of DrySee, a company that manufactures first aid supplies. “So, have one or two first aid kits in your home. And have basic items, bandages, antibiotic ointment, alcohol wipes.”

Somehow, I feel most if not all of my readers have a SHTF kit that surpasses these recommendations a hundred-fold. If you have not seen my previous post about the Southcom Hurricane Survival Kit, here is the link: Repost: Southcom Hurricane Survival Kit. (Hurricane Irma Blues) – Gun Free Zone

And one of many posts about First Aid kits. Search other posts at your content: Personal First Aid Kit/Oh Sh**! Pack – Gun Free Zone