3rd cast succsess

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

sunday night i melted up a batch of lead , i had been doing more reading and found in the lee book the recomendation of adding tin that even 1% tin was enough to fill out a mold

a little digging in the basment and i found some lead free sodder so mostly tin i had maybe 8 inches of it and tossed it all in the pot hoping that would be enough, well it must have been

my first attempt had left very uggly boolits mold was to cold

the second had gotten better and left decent but not perfect looking boolits soem with a few wrinkles i had figured out how to keep the mold hot enough but not quit the crisp clean shiny boolits i see here

3rd cast with the addtion of tin , left 100 very nice fully filled out wrinkle free crisp clean edged boolits and 4 rejects varried issues , but i think most were opened before cool enough

now this was a 50 cal Lee R.E.A.L single cavity mold i was borrowing i returned it and brought the owner a bag of boolits for letting me borrow his mold

being muzzle stuffers sizing isn't a concern as they fit down the bore maybe a little tough to start but otherwise fine

now i have my eye on the Lee TL430-240SWC
if i can pour nice air cooled 250 gr .50cal i should be fine pouring 240gr 44cal and water dropping them

[Smoke-um if you got-um]

Somewhere on this forum a gentleman did the math and concluded that 3 inches of the 95/5 solder was good for an additional 1 percent of tin per pound of lead. So doing the rough math and guessing that you had approx. 4 pounds melted .....you ended up with just a little less than 1 percent additional tin. Total tin/antimony depends on what you were using as your base alloy to begin with...... and so forth and so on...... :veryconfu

Mike

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

My base alloy was wheel weights , I will probably add more tin in the future.

[HammerMTB]

I cast lots of those REAL boolits for my .50, too. Most I cast are pure, but I do make some of WW, and use them as sighters and practice fodder. There's bound to be a bit of difference in the 2 boolits types, but not enough from a muzzlestuffer to bother me.
You may find the pure easier to jam down the dirty bore.
And, tho I like pretty shiny boolits, too, I am past the stage of only using those based on looks. I started experimenting with how close the holes in the target are with pretty vs. wrinkly boolits, and found that they don't have to be pretty. Fewer rejects, more shootin'
The pure has to be a bit hotter, or if you're already pretty hot, don't cook it all drossy, just get that mold good and hot. You can throw a bit of tin in the pure if you like, too. it does help fillout, and it doesn't harden pure lead to any great degree, at least not if you use reasonable amounts.
So, if you plan to shoot a critter, and want some more energy transfer, a soft boolit can help ya. Them .50's like to leave an in and an out hole. It's nice when the out hole leaks a lot.