Is that do-able? It would be lighter than lead right? And tree sap gets rock hard. I dont have a gun yet so I cant test this. You could mold it into a bullet. What do you think?

I think that such a thing would shatter, burn and/ or melt upon firing - and all that would emerge from the muzzle would be fragments. Remember, even in a low- pressure cartridge (such as a shotgun shell), chamber pressure is well above 1000 atmospheres. In any high-pressure rifle round, chamber pressures often exceed 2000 atmospheres. Such an idea might be usable as pellets in a shotgun shell, but they would be irregularly- shaped pellets, so they wouldn't pattern well.

Would never ever ever work. Neither would wood bullets, salt bullets, ice bullets, etc... etc... etc...

I could go into all of the reasons why it wouldn't work but I won't. It would take too long.

I'll just post the easiest reason........ the temperatures created inside a barrel with the gun powder burning would melt the sap before it ever got out of the barrel.

If tree sap was a good material to make bullets out of, then bullets would be made out of tree sap.

Why would you want to try this? Bullets (the metal kind) are cheap and plentiful. I can't help but question your motives for considering such a thing.

Mike

I like to think outside the box.[&o]

HUH?

Actually this has been done and it did work. The Japanese used wooden bullets in their Arisakas toward the end of WWII because of a shortage of metals. The wooden bullets splintered severely upon impact leaving terrible wounds to our soldiers...

They actually tried to mold a functional bullet out of a lot of materials like this on the TV show Mythbusters one week. They were trying to find a material that would hold together well enough to inflict a lethal wound but then dissolve inside the human body. Long story short, none worked for the reasons already mentioned above.

Many years ago my grandpa had a story he told of shooting a guy in the a-- with a 12 guage shell filled with rock salt,stealling chickens.Don't know if that really happened but do know he had some loaded up that he kept with his shotgun.

YEP! You heard Right!