Wheel weights alone for hunting?

[stubert]

With the price of pure lead going crazy, I am wondering how straight wheel weights would work for hunting boolits. All of my hunting rounds are checked exept for a 429421 mold. I was mixing 1 lb 50/50 solder with 9 lbs of ww. would the ww be harder or softer without adding solder? Most of my hunting is for deer with a 44 mag. revolver. Thanks, Stu

[btroj]

They will work fine. Adding solder wont change hardness at all, it will make them cast a bit nicer however.
Air cool, don't water drop. Water dropping them will make for some hard bullets.

[stubert]

50/50 solder is 1/2 lead and 1/2 tin, I would think the lead might make it softer?

[jason f]

I shot a hog with a 50-70 govt. 500 grain water dropped ww. Same size hole in and out. Hog went about five feet. Had it loaded with 13 grains unique.

[btroj]

Adding a bunch of solder would make it softer but it also would end up having way too much tin. Add enough solder to add 2 percent tin at most. That will make negligible difference in hardness.

[44man]

I shoot all my deer with the .44 with water dropped WW boolits. Water dropping does not change the alloy but makes the surface harder for accuracy. Doesn't matter, air cooled or water dropped, they don't expand anyway and it is not needed in the .44. I just like WD anyway.
I use plain WW's, nothing added.
The difference in air cooled and WD in the .44 is zero at the deer. The big difference is accuracy and hitting the deer to begin with.
Nobody can prove an air cooled expands on deer because you will never find a boolit to show it. :mrgreen:

[runfiverun]

just use what you have.
cast boolits are known for straight line penetration.
there is a difference between hard and brittle.
i'd not add as much tin as you are,i add more like 0.5-1% it's enough.
i also add some soft lead to the ww mix and have no issues penetrating a deer.

[**oneshot**]

I use a coww and soft(lead pipe)75/25 for hunting in my 41mag. I'm finding I don't need but a pinch of tin with this mix.

[kweidner]

Straight acww here. No
Worries. Flattens em.

[PatMarlin]

My first deer-

Marlin 45-70, the LEE 320gr PB acww, mil surp 4895 and a bang flop at 75 yrds. Eat right up to the hole. Heavy bleed out and fantastic meat. Don't get much better.

[smoked turkey]

I agree that straight ww make for a good hunting boolit. I have taken several deer that way. The most recent was this year using a NOE-180 FNGC in a 357 Mag rifle. +1 on boolit placement being most important.

[Blammer]

All of my 44mag Ruger Super Red Hawk boolits are made from Air Cooled WW's, and I hunt with them, they work just dandy.

I'd forget the solder additive.

[MtGun44]

Unless you are having fill out problems, I'd ignore the solder. Tin is expensive and really only
needed at around the 2% level to get fill out that is crisp. After that it is nice, but really just
a waste of tin.

Note that you will be very unlikely to ever recover one of these boolits if you shoot a deer with
it. Straight thru and out is the norm, think 3D on the animal and aim for the heart/lung area from
whatever angle you are shooting and the boolit will drill straight thru.

Bill

[Blammer]

mtgun44, speaks the truth, I shot a deer quartering towards me, entered in the right shoulder, exited the left ham. :)

[Larry Gibson]

I disagree on ignoring the solder. COWWs are very low on tin content. This can cause casting fillout problems and many times if the antimony content is high the antimony is not mixed in solution well with the lead. Hard brittle spots in the bullets can easily occur along with antimony wash in the barrel which is confused with leading. Mixing the tin (I usually add 2% tin to my COWWs) gives a much better ternary alloy with the tin causing the antimony to mix muxh better in solution with the lead. This makes for a much better alloy and cast bullets. And yes it does make the bullets harder. Adding 2% tin to COWWs generally raises the BHN of 7-10 day AC'd bullets to 14-17 with 16 -17 being most common (depending on the quality of the COWWs used which varies greatly in location and content across the country).

I've shot I don't know how many 429421s with magnum loads over the last 43 years cast of WWs. Adding the tin always made for better cast bullets that shot well also. Unless you are shooting at true magnum level velocities of 1400+ fps you will get little expansion with straight WWs or with WWs + tin on most any shot into a deer.

Larry Gibson

[stubert]

Thanks everyone, one step less to do means more bullets faster!

[shorty500M]

like 44man i have used ww metal for 99.9% of my handgun boolits. Aircooled or waterdropped both work just fine for bambi. They both make hole all way thru to let air in and blood out!

[MBTcustom]

Unless you are having fill out problems, I'd ignore the solder. Tin is expensive and really only
needed at around the 2% level to get fill out that is crisp. After that it is nice, but really just
a waste of tin.

Note that you will be very unlikely to ever recover one of these boolits if you shoot a deer with
it. Straight thru and out is the norm, think 3D on the animal and aim for the heart/lung area from
whatever angle you are shooting and the boolit will drill straight thru.

Bill

I agree with this. I am the most tin rich feller on the forum, and I hardly ever use it (I trade it to folks that do for WW alloy). I am pushing 2 week old, air cooled WW boolits to 2100 FPS in my 358 rifles and maintaining reasonable accuracy. They hit like a hand grenade at those speeds. For your situation, only going 1300 or so fps, I can't imagine a need for hardening up your boolits, and while tin does add some hardness, what it really does is add toughness. Tin is extremely useful for casting HP boolits out of because the petals try to break off, and tin makes the alloy hold together better.
What I would try to do if I were you, is work on getting softer lead to work in that gun. If you are using a GC design, I would think you could almost shoot pure lead if you held your head right. I would start by cutting WW alloy with pure lead 50/50 and keep cutting it with known amounts of pure until you can't get it to shoot without leading, then add some WW back in till you are as soft as you can be and still get the job done perfectly.
This will be cheaper for you in the long run, and much more effective.

[jason f]

Newb guestion here. What is acww and coww?

[44man]

Newb guestion here. What is acww and coww?
Air cooled is dropping the boolits out of the mold onto a pad. Water dropped is dropping them into a 5 gal bucket of water.
Clip on weights have the steel clip to fasten to the rim. Stick on weights are taped on.

[44man]

I agree with this. I am the most tin rich feller on the forum, and I hardly ever use it (I trade it to folks that do for WW alloy). I am pushing 2 week old, air cooled WW boolits to 2100 FPS in my 358 rifles and maintaining reasonable accuracy. They hit like a hand grenade at those speeds. For your situation, only going 1300 or so fps, I can't imagine a need for hardening up your boolits, and while tin does add some hardness, what it really does is add toughness. Tin is extremely useful for casting HP boolits out of because the petals try to break off, and tin makes the alloy hold together better.
What I would try to do if I were you, is work on getting softer lead to work in that gun. If you are using a GC design, I would think you could almost shoot pure lead if you held your head right. I would start by cutting WW alloy with pure lead 50/50 and keep cutting it with known amounts of pure until you can't get it to shoot without leading, then add some WW back in till you are as soft as you can be and still get the job done perfectly.
This will be cheaper for you in the long run, and much more effective.
Not good with a revolver. You run into slump and skid with leading and accuracy loss.
At 1300 fps a hard WW boolit works perfect. When you increase velocity then expansion is needed but it is still best to have a hard base and a softer nose.
Soft in the .44 can expand too fast and lose penetration.
Accuracy and where you hit the animal is a priority first. A deer shot in the guts with a soft boolit is a waste. But even a good hit can make a soft boolit fail.
Hard to explain but it is the velocity versus boolit hardness. A cap and ball with a pure lead ball can kill better then a soft boolit in a .44 mag.

[MBTcustom]

I apologize, I confess, I have not dealt with the 44 Mag before. All my experience is with a 357 magnum. All I know is that I like my boolits to be as soft as possible. A GC helps a lot, but boolit size vs. hardness and also having the throats honed to the right relationship helps a lot, and it could be that my gun is the exception and not the rule. I apologize for making generalities based on one experience.
I gotta get me a 29 some day!

[runfiverun]

heck tim it's just from shooting animals.
i remember james having to have everything shooting at warp speed 4 and solid steel bhn.
not so fast and not so hard seems to work better on animals.
let the boolit do some work on it's way through,and let the deer know it's been shot.
i kinda think about it like a sliding scale with little alloy windows along the velocity line.

[ubetcha]

coww = clip on wheel weight
soww= stick on wheel weight
acww= air cooled wheel weight
wcww= water cooled wheel weight

[DLCTEX]

Straight ACWW and Lee 311-170 (no longer available) kills deer as well as any factory SP in my 30-30. I expect the Lee 309-150 I got recently to do the same and it shoots as well as the former boolit in my Marlin.

[jason f]

Thanks for the info. I water drop all my bullets. Still trying to learn some of abbreviations used on here.

[MtGun44]

AC WWts works fine for me in revolvers up to max loads in .357 and .44 mags. I suspect that if I
were loading for .454 Casull or some of the hotter loads, that I may need to worry about slumping,
but with 2400 or H110 (all I use for max loads in the mags) and a number of different non-GC
designs, I have had fine results an nada on leading.

Same with several Keith designs in .45 Colt at "Ruger only" hot H110 loads.

Bill

[44man]

I don't shoot a .357 any more but I would add some expansion but not too much. It is a balance between expansion and penetration. Smaller calibers should have some riveting of the nose. After all, it has taken many years for bullet makers to get jacketed to work over a wide range of animals.
I will be the first to say one size does not fit all! :drinks:
I have had great luck with plain old WW boolits in the .44, .475 but not in the 45-70 revolver. This one needs some expansion. Now after shooting two deer this season with the .500 JRH I am having second thoughts on it. It just might need some expansion. I killed both but had no blood trails to where I hit them. One ran towards me 100 yards before dropping. I hit him in front of the left shoulder and the boolit exited behind the right shoulder but there was almost no blood on the ground, even where he laid. I have the idea that the heavy 440 gr weight of the boolit just does not slow in a deer. It is the right velocity range of 1350 fps. I keep working on it and need to work a lot more. I still can't recommend anything or give a definitive answer for different calibers.
The .44 with the same alloy has never failed me and deer go straight up when hit, the ground is sprayed and they go about 30 yards. I would expect the .500 to hammer them but they show less reaction. The .475 is amazing and might be the best of all but I need to control barrel rise much harder. It is not an easy caliber to shoot.
Bill mentioned the .454 but I have taken PB, WW boolits to over 55,000 psi when testing primers and had superb accuracy but I don't own one of my own, never shot a deer with one so I don't know if it is too fast and needs some expansion.
I shoot a lot of deer with revolvers and got 6 this last season with 3 revolvers. I can't define the .475 because both went straight down. The .44 worked on 2 with blood everywhere and opening the deer, I had a tub of blood in the chests.
I put my faith in the .44 without fail and WD, WW boolits work just fine. But hang on! Deer shot far like 100 yards do go farther and might need some expansion because the boolit has slowed. Yet I never lost one shot farther. I never lost any hit with the .45 Colt Vaquero either.
It is still accuracy and my choice of the alloy. My old SBH will average 1-1/4" at 100 yards from a rest. I don't think you can do that with soft lead.

[shorty500M]

I don't shoot a .357 any more but I would add some expansion but not too much. It is a balance between expansion and penetration. Smaller calibers should have some riveting of the nose. After all, it has taken many years for bullet makers to get jacketed to work over a wide range of animals.
I will be the first to say one size does not fit all! :drinks:
I have had great luck with plain old WW boolits in the .44, .475 but not in the 45-70 revolver. This one needs some expansion. Now after shooting two deer this season with the .500 JRH I am having second thoughts on it. It just might need some expansion. I killed both but had no blood trails to where I hit them. One ran towards me 100 yards before dropping. I hit him in front of the left shoulder and the boolit exited behind the right shoulder but there was almost no blood on the ground, even where he laid. I have the idea that the heavy 440 gr weight of the boolit just does not slow in a deer. It is the right velocity range of 1350 fps. I keep working on it and need to work a lot more. I still can't recommend anything or give a definitive answer for different calibers.
The .44 with the same alloy has never failed me and deer go straight up when hit, the ground is sprayed and they go about 30 yards. I would expect the .500 to hammer them but they show less reaction. The .475 is amazing and might be the best of all but I need to control barrel rise much harder. It is not an easy caliber to shoot.
Bill mentioned the .454 but I have taken PB, WW boolits to over 55,000 psi when testing primers and had superb accuracy but I don't own one of my own, never shot a deer with one so I don't know if it is too fast and needs some expansion.
I shoot a lot of deer with revolvers and got 6 this last season with 3 revolvers. I can't define the .475 because both went straight down. The .44 worked on 2 with blood everywhere and opening the deer, I had a tub of blood in the chests.
I put my faith in the .44 without fail and WD, WW boolits work just fine. But hang on! Deer shot far like 100 yards do go farther and might need some expansion because the boolit has slowed. Yet I never lost one shot farther. I never lost any hit with the .45 Colt Vaquero either.
It is still accuracy and my choice of the alloy. My old SBH will average 1-1/4" at 100 yards from a rest. I don't think you can do that with soft lead.

I have had great results similiar to the .44 experience you talk of with my .45-70BFR. I use a 400g ACWW boolit at 1300 from my 10-1/2inch. Also same results as you with a .500 using 460g WDWW at 1300. Hole thru but little blood. But they all dropped within 40yards of impact

[44man]

I have had great results similiar to the .44 experience you talk of with my .45-70BFR. I use a 400g ACWW boolit at 1300 from my 10-1/2inch. Also same results as you with a .500 using 460g WDWW at 1300. Hole thru but little blood. But they all dropped within 40yards of impact
Each is different and you see it. They die for sure but I worry about thick country and no blood trails. Deer are out of sight in an instant. There is nothing more important then a blood trail here because we have so many deer that you can never track one. We were out in the snow and there was not more then a few steps between tracks and trails.
I find a lot of deer because I know their patterns and go to where they go to find first blood and it could be 100 yards. It is much better to have blood right away.
Some hunt open country and can watch a deer but not here, two jumps and they are gone.
A few say they can track any deer---sure but they have never seen tails beat to death with fresh tracks. The fact is that we need blood. The weeds, grass and brush do not show fresh tracks because many deer have already been there. I love the guys that find a broken twig after 20 deer went through.
Our woods are cow fields. Even a dog will not find a shot deer unless there is blood. We have too many deer and we don't even put a dent in the herds by hunting. It is nothing to see 25 cross a field after deer season. I drive down the roads and there are deer all over the place.
I admit it is great and if you don't have a deer in a couple of hours they just didn't go past. But I worry about diseases. Cars mash thousands.
It lets me evaluate guns and boolits much faster then a guy that sees one deer a season.
I wish I could send some of you some deer! They are like rats.

[shorty500M]

Each is different and you see it. They die for sure but I worry about thick country and no blood trails. Deer are out of sight in an instant. There is nothing more important then a blood trail here because we have so many deer that you can never track one. We were out in the snow and there was not more then a few steps between tracks and trails.
I find a lot of deer because I know their patterns and go to where they go to find first blood and it could be 100 yards. It is much better to have blood right away.
Some hunt open country and can watch a deer but not here, two jumps and they are gone.
A few say they can track any deer---sure but they have never seen tails beat to death with fresh tracks. The fact is that we need blood. The weeds, grass and brush do not show fresh tracks because many deer have already been there. I love the guys that find a broken twig after 20 deer went through.
Our woods are cow fields. Even a dog will not find a shot deer unless there is blood. We have too many deer and we don't even put a dent in the herds by hunting. It is nothing to see 25 cross a field after deer season. I drive down the roads and there are deer all over the place.
I admit it is great and if you don't have a deer in a couple of hours they just didn't go past. But I worry about diseases. Cars mash thousands.
It lets me evaluate guns and boolits much faster then a guy that sees one deer a season.
I wish I could send some of you some deer! They are like rats.

like you, i favor blood trails. My property is overgrown farmland and mature hardwood forest. 25year old set out pine trees on northern property line. Can choose from .357 up to .500 revolvers plus my Contender in .30-30 up to .444Marlin but the .44-.45s do best all around on bambi

[PhantomF4E]

Casted up some Lyman 311291 170gn for a friend. Weighed in about 180 after the gc and home brew lube . Straight clip on wheel weight . Gas checked them because he wanted to work up his 30-06 load for a remmy 700. He wasn't too sure about shooting lead out of a 700. Dropped two deer on his property though , both heart lung shots in thick brush. One dropped right there , the other he said staggered about 10 yards then dropped. He said that bullet about took the lungs out of the beasts . no recovery , but he wants more of them !!!! Sure makes shootin' rifle cheaper .

[MT Gianni]

I would let your finished product tell you whether you needed tin or not. If I add any to a Lee 17 lb pot I add about a foot length piece of 50/50.