Question about Lead source

[Dorado]

Ok, So I'm in the construction business and I got to tear out a lead shower pan this week. Its gotten me a lot of lead. I was wondering about casting it for anything other than soft boolits. I mainly cast for CAS, but I was wanting to try my hand at casting for hunting. Should I try this stuff? What do I need to do to make it hard enough? or safe enough? I'd like to cast for 357 mag.

[Rifleman55]

you need to add tin. the amount depends on how hard you want the bullets,

[Ole]

Mix it 1:1 with wheel weight alloy and you can shoot it in dang near anything.

Tin is way too expensive to use as a hardening alloy.

[uscra112]

Yep, antimony is much more effective. Linotype & it's cousins are best, but wheelweights do fine and are easier to obtain. Watch the Swappin' and Sellin' section here and you'll find some to buy within a month or so.

[Dorado]

I've got about 30 pounds of WW lead. The shower pan adds about another 20-30 pounds. So if I just mix what I have then I should be alright? What about adding antimony? Is that possible?

[docone31]

I do the 50/50 a lot. I can use them in my Muzzle loaders, and my centerfires.
Works ok.
You could do more lead to wheel weight also.

[Wayne Smith]

If you mix what you have 50/50 with ww you will have an alloy that will shoot out of a .357 with a gas check and expand when it hits. It is close to an ideal alloy for pistols.

[Dorado]

How would they perform out of a rifle? I was wanting to hunt with my Marlin 1894 18" barrel. Oh, do Y'all have any pet loads I could work up? I have a mold for a Lee 125 gr RNFP

[quilbilly]

Congratulations on the find of "pure" lead. Personally I am rather finicky about my hunting lead alloys favoring a little softer for deer and elk but a little harder for varmints and targets. My solution has been to alloy with shotgun pellets (particularly magnum pheasant or duck BB's) which have quite a bit of both hardeners, antimony and arsenic. Since those shotgun pellets are too hard for casting hunting boolits, I mix it with pure lead to get the right hardness. 70% pure always seemed about right for deer/elk while 40% pure for targets and varmints. The good news is that with the requirements for steel shot, half bags of #4 and #6 lead shot are a common find at garage sales.

[Dorado]

Soft for deer and elk? What about for hog?

[Charlie Two Tracks]

You could always just melt the WW and soft lead separately. I use straight WW for most of my boolits. Sometimes I will add 2% Tin. I try to melt an alloy in as big a batch as I can. When I first started casting, I had all kinds of different alloy mixes because I didn't have much lead at the time and smelted as soon as I got some. I now only smelt when I have enough to fill a 5 qt dutch oven and then mark what the alloy is. I load and cast for .357 and .38. The LEE .358 158 gr. RNFP can be a pretty good boolit IMO. 20 lbs of WW can give you about 875 boolits that weigh 160 grains.

[sqlbullet]

How would they perform out of a rifle? I was wanting to hunt with my Marlin 1894 18" barrel. Oh, do Y'all have any pet loads I could work up? I have a mold for a Lee 125 gr RNFP

Should be fine. I would water drop them from the mold, which will boost the hardness. I expect it will be around 18 after a week or so.

Gas check them and grab a load from Lyman's cast bullet handbook and you should be good to go.

I shoot Lee 200 gr in 308 (CETME), 30-06 (M1 Garand) and even 300 win mag (Rem 700). In 308 I have been using WC846. In 30-06 I have used H4831, Varget, Reloader 15 and WC846. For the 300 Win Mag I used H4831. I loaded them all with a target velocity between 1800-2000 fps. No leading to date with any of them.

You could use pistol powder loads and get great results at far less money. Those loads don't provide enough port pressure to cycle my Garand, which is why I look to slower than normal powders.

[Dorado]

Ok, so water dropping them would boost the hardness. There is a little tin and some antimony in the alloy. I'm not sure how much though. But would it be sufficient or hard enough to take out feral hog?

[sqlbullet]

Lots of hogs have fallen to 50/50 lead to WW.

[Dorado]

I cast some of my lead today.
Lee 125gr
http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae347/Dorado1873/100_6045.jpg
This is what I got out of it. I cast about 200-300 today and only had to throw out about 10. Tomorrow I'll try water quenching and see what I get there. Got any tips for that?

[williamwaco]

I've got about 30 pounds of WW lead. The shower pan adds about another 20-30 pounds. So if I just mix what I have then I should be alright? What about adding antimony? Is that possible?



Mix the 15 pounds of WW with 15 pounds shower pan. That should come out to about 11-12 BNH That is an ideal handgun alloy. Keep the extra ingredients in case you want to harden it or soften it. I don't think you will.

That will give you 30 pounds of an excellent alloy. It will make about 1200 .357 SWCs

I use this exact alloy in my Winchester 92, 20" bbl. Works great.

Forget Antimony. You cannot add it directly. The WW already have plenty. If you want something harder, use 100% WW that will get you BNH 14-16.

If you want something harder than straight WW, Linotype is the cheapest and easiest to use source of antimony.

[.357MAN]

I have not bought from RotoMetals, yet. When my supply starts to run low I am going to buy some of there Super Hard Alloy ( 30% antimony 70% lead ) and one tin ingot to mix with my pure lead stash. If you have pure lead, it's cheaper to buy some of RotoMetals alloys for blending than say Midway's alloys. The tin is also cheaper by ounce than what I can find locally.

[Dorado]

Is it possible for me to put gas checks on my bullets? I don't know anything about them.

[geargnasher]

Possible, yes, with special "plain-based gas checks" that you will have to make yourself with custom tools. MUCH simpler and easier just to get a mould made for commercial gas checks and then either make conventional checks or buy Hornady checks from a reloading supplier.

Sounds like you're pretty green to this, if you haven't already, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of any edition of the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook and read it carefully, all things related to cast boolits and shooting are in there, good instructions and basic information that any beginning caster really needs to know. Lots of cast boolit load data there too, and it's an excellent reference regarding alloys and how different elements work within boolit metal to meet our needs for a particular application.

Gear

[Dorado]

Yeah Gear I'm pretty green at this. I've only cast a handful of times and only for cowboy action shooting. Quality of bullet doesn't mean a lot at those loads, so long as they exit the barrel in one piece.