How to mix lead off of sheetrock.

[farmer1966]

Hello y'all I have almost exhausted my hoard of valiant bullets and am ready to start casting my own. I have round 400# lead off the back of sheetrock where we remodeled a hospital xray room. My question is how to mix for casting bullets I am looking at a 220gr 41 mag. mold and a 340 gr. 454 mold. I no it needs to be harder than what it is now for casting. I don't no if I will use gas checks or not. Have read a lot on this and everyone has an opinion. Thanks a bunch. Farmer

[mongoosesnipe]

xray shielding lead is basically pure lead you will want to get some antimony and tin alot of people mix 50-50 with wheel weights and add a little tin

[farmer1966]

Will this be hard enough fer full loads? I honestly don't no much about this. I have been looking an reading everything I can. An it tends to get confusing.

[runfiverun]

you have a base alloy with nothing in it.
you want to be near 1% tin and 3% antimony if possible.
you can get there by mixing linotype with your lead at 1 part linotype to 3 parts of your lead.
you could buy super hard alloy from rotometals and mix that in to get close.
you could get some wheel weight alloy and use your soft lead to cut it down and add a little tin.
or you could get some antimonial ore and tin and add that to your alloy.

personally i'd look to get about 125 lbs of linotype and use that.

[dpunch]

I don't know your location. If your near I could give you some monotype to mix in.

[WILCO]

I honestly don't no much about this. An it tends to get confusing.

Go back to square one. Get a casting handbook, such as the one from Lymann's. Read it thoroughly.

[WHITETAIL]

+1 on getting the book.:roll:

[10mmShooter]

Hi Farmer,

Good score on the lead....as Wilco mentioned Lymans Cast Bullet Handbook(only $20) will really help you understand what you need to mix in.

Firstly with full-house mag load in .41 or .454 you will need something harder that pure 100% Lead(Pb), this is where the antinomy(Sb) comes in it make lead harder, anything roughly 5% or more of antinomy is considered "hard cast", hardball" etc. The percentage of tin(Sn) will help with mold fillout, tin has only a very very small effect on hardness.

So whats the right ratio ....will after you read Lyman Cast Bullet handbook you will find that Lyman recommends a ratio of 90% lead, 5% Antinomy and 5% tin..this is Lyman #2. Some people with tweak the ratio as needed for their specific usage, lots of people will cheat back on the tin content since it doesnt effect the hardness and cutting back on tin also lowers the cost, Tin goes for $15 a pound.

So check out Rotometals site and determine how many pounds of lead you want to mix and work out the ratios, get out your calculator. Here a quick example... say you want to mix up approximately 36 pounds of good hard alloy and you have target a ratio of 93% lead, 5% Antimony and 2% Tin, Well to get there you already had pure lead throw 30 pounds in the pot, to get the Antimony right throw 6 lbs of SuperHard Alloy(30%antimony70%lb) from Rotometals, and throw in 1 pound of bar Tin(100%)(the way they sell Tin). Now check you math

37 total pounds of alloy (92%)
1.8 pounds of Antinomy (5%)
1 pound of tin(3%)

Now cast away...also you can add Linotype, Monotype, Foundrytype..these are all different type of lead alloy with varying ratios of Lead, antiomony etc...sometimes it my be difficult to determine the exact content, also same problem with wheelweight...they all vary in the percentages.

[farmer1966]

Thanks y'all I think I will order the book and read read an read. I was raised up casting and making doll flys "jigs" for fishing, an round balls for smoke poles, figured I would start on bullets love to shoot.

[Shiloh]

Getting harder to come by.
There was a time when it was available here. It is now basically gone. The last batches here were considered HAZMAT and dealt with that way.
Wouldn't let the scavengers take it home.

MAny years ago, on a remodel, the folks where bemoaning the hauling away and the fees that would go with it. I heard that several folks said to leave it on the dock. It was all gone by Monday. It became BP balls, Minie balls, and was alloyed into a variety of different boolit material.

Ahhhh... For the halcyon days of X-Ray remodeling.