Any drawbacks to too much tin?

[ShooterAZ]

I inadvertently put 1/2 pound of 95 tin/5 antimony solder into a 20 lb pot of pure lead. I intended to only put in 1/4 lb. Aside from the price of tin, any detriment to this?

[fryboy]

40 to 1 alloy ? some black powder shooters do it on purpose ( albeit they prefer it has no antimony in it lolz ) iirc elmer kieth preferred 16 to 1 for his 44 mag , but no other than cost and perhaps the size/weight of the boolits being different than your normal alloy no worries , you're just a wee bit over 2% so it should cast great , be a bit softer than say ww alloy but no worries , if it does worry you pour half of it out and add a half pot of pure and you'll be right where you wanted to be ( and then do the same thing with the half you took out , easy breezy etc )

[ShooterAZ]

It will be for 38 wadcutters.

[felix]

Yes, but how much over has to be determined by practice. If tin alone should become unglued from the passing boolit and be welded to the steel, the leading would be called tinning instead and will be much harder to take out of the barrel. ... felix

[grouch]

No. Maybe if you've got more than 10:1, but I don't know about that. I'll be surprised if 40:1
is enough to do much good with pure lead. It'll be extremely soft. It would probably be fine with an alloy with a bit of antimony, like the old clip-on lead wheel weights to harden the bullets.
Grouch

[ku4hx]

If you assume 19 pounds of pure lead (pot not brimming over) and negligible Antimony, .25 pound Tin would give you about 1.30% Tin in the batch. Hold the lead at 19 pounds and double the Tin and it goes to approximately 2.6% Tin in the batch.

Lyman #2 is 90% lead and 5% each of Tin and Antimony; it's worked for a lot of us for a lot of years for many different boolits. Other than a slight waste of Tin (according to some), you'll have no problems.

[ShooterAZ]

OK., not a problem, I poured a little off in the ingot mold, and added half a bar of linotype approx 2.5 lbs. I don't want too soft...not too hard...just right.

[ShooterAZ]

Yes, but how much over has to be determined by practice.

Still not enough tin! Poor fill-out. Back to the drawing board.

[Stick_man]

Still not enough tin! Poor fill-out. Back to the drawing board.

Not enough tin? With over 3% tin now, you should have quite a bit more than enough. If your mold is clean and up to proper casting temp, you should be able to get by with even 1% tin and get good fill-out. Is it a new mold, never used before?

Are you pre-heating your mold? What is your casting temp? I suspect the problem is something other than your tin content. An alloy such as you describe should be producing boolits that could win beauty pageants.

[fryboy]

like stick man i too think something is up with the fill out , how hot you running ? pure needs more heat than most of the alloys we use and some amount of zinc is entirely cast-able but again with more heat , back in the day they did pure with good fill out ( pure with zero tin )

i recall an old gun rag where they were shooting pure pewter boolits with awesum results ( yeah super liteweight and super fast handloads ) with no leading so i have to assume that tin doesnt umm lead the barrel per say ( altho antimony has been known to leave a lite wash in a bore )
my fav 38 boolits are made from a alloy i made just for HP's 3 to 1 ( PB /ww's ) with as little of tin added as needed , shoots great at 45 & 38 velocities and when hollowpointed they just about turn themselfs inside out , i've even used the same alloy for some conicals in the 44 bp hogleg with good results ( yeah that alloy is that soft )

[ShooterAZ]

Not a new mold, lubed and preheated on a hot plate. I got great boolits on the last casting, so I need to clean it and see what's up. Lee 6 banger. Casting at 650..+/- Maybe need to take it up to 700?

[geargnasher]

Overtinning your alloy will rear it's ugly head when you shoot them, THEN you'll know.

Refer to Felix's post, if you have more tin than antimony in a ternary alloy, the tin forms free nodules within the melt, like graphite does in nodular iron. Tin is very gummy and likes to cling to bore steel.

This happens because in a ternary Pb/Sb/Sn alloy, tin and antimony form an intermetallic bond which makes, in effect, its own element called Sb/Sn. So your 92-5-3 alloy is really 92 lead, 6 Sb/Sn, and two antimony. If it were 92-3-5 alloy, it would really be 92 lead, 6 Sb/Sn, and 2 tin. Due to the fact that the tin is on the final phase of crystallization (freezes last) it won't necessarily bond well with the lead that's already frozen, and can't bond with the Sb/Sn either (due to saturation), so it sort of just sits there in little nodules trapped in the frozen lead dentrite matrix until finally it cools enough to freeze.

Short version, keep your tin and antimony percentages equal or less tin.

Gear

[45 2.1]

A 40:1 Lead/Tin alloy is fine for your purposes. It's also a very good cast hollow point alloy for handguns as well as big boolits for the 45-70 and like rifles. Don't have any worries of having too much tin in the alloy where your at, other than expense.

[geargnasher]

A 40:1 Lead/Tin alloy is fine for your purposes. It's also a very good cast hollow point alloy for handguns as well as big boolits for the 45-70 and like rifles. Don't have any worries of having too much tin in the alloy where your at, other than expense.

You're totally right, I misread the OP. I thought he had 5% antimony in there already, somehow the "pure lead" part didn't register.

Lead/tin binary can be mixed very rich with no ill effects other than on your wallet.

Gear

[MBuechle]

Overtinning your alloy will rear it's ugly head when you shoot them, THEN you'll know.


So you're saying that I'm probably not going to like the results of a 50/50 Pb/WW +3% Sn mix in my 9mm? These are HP's and I wanted some ductility. I didn't cast many so I'm not out much. I'm assuming 1% Sb in the 50/50. I'll start my own thread so as not to hijack this one.

Mark

[geargnasher]

So you're saying that I'm probably not going to like the results of a 50/50 Pb/WW +3% Sn mix in my 9mm? These are HP's and I wanted some ductility. I didn't cast many so I'm not out much. I'm assuming 1% Sb in the 50/50. I'll start my own thread so as not to hijack this one.

Mark

Might not cause much trouble in a 3" barrel at 1,000 fps, (I've used a very similar alloy in my .45 ACP hollow-points with great results) but it sure can in a rifle. Also, if it "leads", don't blame the alloy first just because I said this, make sure your boolits fit the barrel when fired and all your other ducks are in a row.

Gear

[Larry Gibson]

So you're saying that I'm probably not going to like the results of a 50/50 Pb/WW +3% Sn mix in my 9mm? These are HP's and I wanted some ductility. I didn't cast many so I'm not out much. I'm assuming 1% Sb in the 50/50. I'll start my own thread so as not to hijack this one.

Mark

Next time you make up the alloy mix 2% tin of the WWs weight and then add the 50% lead to that. Makes a very good alloy for what you want. If expansion is not what you want (depends on % of antimony in the WWs) add 60 or 70% lead to the tin/WW alloy.

Larry Gibson

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

Not a new mold, lubed and preheated on a hot plate. I got great boolits on the last casting, so I need to clean it and see what's up. Lee 6 banger. Casting at 650..+/- Maybe need to take it up to 700?

6 bangers take some heat and warm up time , i pre heat on the top of the pot , and still not hot enough i start dropping 2 in the middle cavities , then cut and drop in the sprue pan then the end 2 a few times then the front 3 then the back 3 back and forth , i feel like i dumped 30-60 boolits in the sprue before i get really were i want it

when it is casting real well it will take 5 seconds for the sprue to freeze , then i am working tight up to to hot where they don't release as well then i slow down

i don't have a thermometer , so i have just found the feel and timing that works for me but it is always bordering on so hot that they stop dropping so well , but not to frosty. i know as soon as they stick i need to slow down a bit

i am certainly no pro but i have found what works for me

when i have to start slowing down to let the mold cool i turn the dial back till i can hear the pot turn off then i keep it so that the pot keeps going on and off to hold temp

on a mostly full 20 pound pot i never fill it to the brim , yields about 400 170 gr boolits and a bunch of warm up that got dumped in the sprue pan and thats about when i need a break , so i fill the pot up set the mold on top and come back in 20 minutes flux and start over warm up doesn't take near as long the second time but i am still usually ready for a break around 400 , with a 2x mold i am ready for a break around 100-150 so right about the same time

like i said no pro but i found what worked for me , you can probably do the same

[MBTcustom]

This is one chicken that I have chased everywhere except the coup.
I got all you fellers beat! a few years ago, I was in a position where I was getting copious amounts of 63/37 solder for free. I had over 200 pounds of the stuff, but I couldn't find WW alloy anywhere. So I decided to see if I could shoot it cut 50/50 with pure sheet lead. Having never found an alloy that the 45 or the 38 didn't like, I decided to start out slow, and cast up about 1000 boolits for each.:shock:
I was disapointed to learn that my 2/1 mix soldered my barrels in a most undesirable fashion. I began thinking that I could still use these boolits in a rifle if I were to paper patch them. I also had a rifle that was an ideal candidate for paper patched boolits, so I started researching the subject via google search. Nowhere was there more information on that subject than castboolits.com. I signed up to ask a couple simple questions and the rest is history.
What I have found is that you dont want any more than 10% tin, and realy 6% is a lot safer. Also, you never want more tin than antimony. Either run it strait pb/sn or keep the antimony level above, or equal to, your tin level. Lyman #2 is 90/5/5 and thats about as hard/tough as you ever want to be. Any more than that, and you're throwing away precious metal. The alloy that I use now has 92% lead, 5% antimony and 3%tin. and I believe that it's the ideal alloy for sub 2400fps applications.
Thats my 2 cents worth.

[HangFireW8]

Not a new mold, lubed and preheated on a hot plate. I got great boolits on the last casting, so I need to clean it and see what's up. Lee 6 banger. Casting at 650..+/- Maybe need to take it up to 700?

Shooter,

My experience is that 700F is too hot for my Lee 6-bangers, but that is for bigger stuff like 45/230 and 44. They actually shrink like they're too cold- but different. I find the ideal melt range is 625-650F and start with the mold too hot, cast slowly to bring the mold down to temp and then cast as fast as possible to keep the heat level up. If I pause at all it goes right back on the hotplate. Casting in the Summer might be a little different as to pace, I usually cast in cooler weather.

So the two problems are too cold and too hot with a narrow range of "perfect"... find that spot, and you'll have mounds of perfect boolits.

HF

[JoeTheMechanic]

i like to run my 6-gangs with the hotplate on high and the lead around 700F. after the pour, i touch the mold to a damp cloth to avoid taring the spur, then after i water drop them i put the mold back on the hot plate, wait 10 seconds or so and then pour the next set.

IMHO, frankfort arsenal's "drop out" is a must. makes smoking the mold look like a joke. the bullets often fall out as soon as the mold is open. and, at least for me, it will easily last for 50 casts without any sticking issues.