Gloat!!!!!!!

[Diamond-City-Bob]

Picked up #100s of roof flashing for FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!! today. Wish wheel weights were this easy. The downside is that I have to buy a muzzle loader now. Damn the bad luck.
Bob

[gregg]

Picked up #100s of roof flashing for FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!! today. Wish wheel weights were this easy. The downside is that I have to buy a muzzle loader now. Damn the bad luck.
Bob

Feel for you Bro. :-(

[454PB]

Naw, just mix it with 100 pounds of linotype and you'll have 200 pounds of 16 BHN alloy that works well for everything from magnum pistol to rifle loads.

[Ricochet]

By all means, get a muzzleloader. And a cap & ball. Or several. But you may find that stuff quite useful in centerfire cartridges. I cast up a bunch of Lee 429-255-SWC out of soft scrap. (Weighing 273 grains.) Roof flashing and plumber's lead from old sewer joints, mostly. Easily thumbnail dentable. Oven treated and water dropped, it seems to be of similar hardness to air cooled wheelweights. They shoot great out of my Super Blackhawk at about 1370 FPS with 19 grains of WC820. I recovered two of those boolits from soft, squishy clay mud today. Expanded in beautiful mushrooms to 7/8" diameter. #429244HP made from that stuff air cooled (245 grains) shot fine, but in that mud at 1470 FPS just left a gas checked bullet base with a thin fringe mushroomed out to 5/8" diameter. Blasted out big craters in the mud and flung it all over me and my Chrony.

[Buckshot]

..............Hey wait. That was MY flashing! They were saving for me :-)

..............Buckshot

[charger 1]

I'll trade you 1800 lbs of old ww's, not a zinc one in the lot................NAH JUST KIDDING:kidding:

[piwo]

Roof flashing and plumber's lead from old sewer joints, mostly. Easily thumbnail dentable. Oven treated and water dropped, it seems to be of similar hardness to air cooled wheelweights. .

Damn, sounds like I screwed up again. I'm really getting tired of doing that.:( :twisted:

I cast some bullets last night of pure plumbers lead, and they were no doubt softer then the dental lead bullets I've been casting. I then paper patched them and put them into a little toaster oven @175 - 200 degrees to dry the paper out. Left them in there too long probably because the bullets were hot to the touch. I did not wish to harden these AT ALL, since it defeats the purpose with my muzzleloader.

So how much harder can I expect these to be? Pure plumbers lead, air cooled after cast, but then heated to @ 200 degrees after...

[357maximum]

So how much harder can I expect these to be? Pure plumbers lead, air cooled after cast, but then heated to @ 200 degrees after...

I do not believe you changed anything, not appreciably anyhow....no screw up that I see. For one you did not get it hot enough, 2 you did not quench it...you should be just where you want to be.....

[R.M.]

It's my understanding that you could water quench plumbers lead bullets, and they'd still be dead soft.

R.M.:castmine:

[Ricochet]

Nevertheless mine hardens. The point is, "pure" lead may not be. Doesn't take a lot of alloy to harden with the heat treatment.

[piwo]

Well then, I have 23 bullets of plumbers lead that got hot. If anyone with a hardness tester wants to volunteer for a test, I'll gladly send you a handful for testing over the course of a year: say every 3 months do a hardness test on a pair of them. Maybe get two guys to compare readings?

Anyone interested? I"ll pop for the shipping.......

[Ricochet]

"Getting hot" doesn't harden lead alloy. What hardens it is getting it hot enough for the alloying elements (particularly antimony and arsenic) into a "solid solution" in the lead (which is unstable at low temperatures where the alloying metals are insoluble in lead), suddenly quenching it in cold water to "freeze" the solid solution so the alloying atoms can't rapidly diffuse through the lead to get together to form their usual coarse crystal structure that doesn't lock the atomic planes of the lead together in many places, then wait a while for it to form a fine crystal structure that locks the lead atomic planes in many more places. If you get it hot and let it cool slowly, you're back to the coarse, soft structure.

"Plumber's lead" isn't all the same, either. Your batch may be pure enough not to harden. Mine's not.

[piwo]

Ricochet,
so you are saying that they wouldn't harden even if they were were not "pure" lead and had arsenic in them since:

1) I didn't drop them in water and quench them
2) heated them to at least 200Fm but let them cool slowly?

You know, I know that dental lead is harder then most think, because when I drop a 1/2 lb ingot on top of a 1lb ingot from @5 inches, it PINGS and bounces off. When I do the same with the same weight ingots only with plumbers lead, the half lb ingot thuds, and sticks like there was pine tar on it. I don't have a tester, but this tells me something about the composition.......

[Ricochet]

Exactly. Heating the alloy and cooling it slowly anneals it to its softest state.

But you've got to heat it more than 200°F to either anneal or harden it. I use 475°F for my oven hardening or annealing. (Be careful; that's the melting point of linotype.)

BTW, some of these boolits of softer alloys will "clunk" when annealed, and jingle when quench-hardened.

[piwo]

Exactly. Heating the alloy and cooling it slowly anneals it to its softest state.

And so I shall sleep well tonight, with 23 416gr boolits safely in my possesion, and soft as the almighty intended...LOL :-D