Smelting (?) and a graze.

Ageless Stranger

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Basically I have two seperate problems.
The first is, what kind of damage would someone experience is they were grazed by a bullet? By grazed I mean it's scraped across the outer portion of their upper arm, cut a kind of trench into it.

Secondly, could any one describe or point to a source concerning smelting (that is, if I understand smelting properly)? My particular problem is that one of my characters is melting down a pair of iron gaunlets to use as bullets/ammo and I need to know what kind of heat he'd use,tools and general procedure.
 

Puma

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Hi Ageless - Nix on the iron for bullets - go to lead. (One of the sources of material for casting bullets these days is discarded car wheel weights). You can find information about making the lead part of a bullet by doing a google search - probably your fastest luck will come by looking for "Black powder" bullet casting. There should be articles on making the round balls and the more bullet shaped projectiles used in black powder guns. Your character would need to have a mold (usually for 6-12 at a time), a container that won't melt to hold what you're melting down (in the old days - with a very long handle), a source of heat, a way to trim off the excess (sprue). You didn't say what your period is - that's going to make a difference on materials, technique, etc. Sounds like you need to do some research.

Smelting is something entirely different from melting down and casting.

On damage - if the bullet grazed the skin/surface of the flesh - it would be like any other surface wound, except that, depending on the velocity of the bullet, the wound might not bleed as much. (That's opinion, not first hand info/fact.) Puma
 

hammerklavier

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The simple answer is that iron doesn't melt (at any temperature your hero could achieve without a blast furnace).

However, it has been used as projectiles, even in modern weapons. If the guy has a forge handy he should be able to break the iron (provided it's not actually tool grade steel) into small pieces and fire the bits out of a crude cannon or blunderbus.
 

Ageless Stranger

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Well my world is fantasy and is kindof 19th century mixed a kindof magic system but my character himself can't use magic and I just needed a rough idea of how he would go about making shots, e.g: what he would need, the conditions, etc. Cheers all.