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Melvin in SC
09-20-2005, 09:02 AM
Might be a stupid question, but: If you were to cast a bullet from mag lead shot, what would the hardness be???? Would it benefit from water dropping???
Thanks,
Melvin

Bass Ackward
09-20-2005, 09:30 AM
Might be a stupid question, but: If you were to cast a bullet from mag lead shot, what would the hardness be???? Would it benefit from water dropping???
Thanks,
Melvin

Melvin,

Yes to the second question because it has arsnic in it.

But I never air cooled a bullet just from that mix. That would be an expensive endevor. Better to use the shot to alloy with a poorer mix that was cheap.

9.3X62AL
09-20-2005, 10:07 AM
An associated question for the metals people on the board, for this here social science major......the Magnum shot with small percentages of arsenic on board--does its presence significantly increase the environmental toxicity of your casting site in any way? My concern is fuming......is arsenic another heavy metal like lead, or can it "vaporize" at normal casting temps (900* F or under)?

Thank you!

felix
09-20-2005, 12:22 PM
Like antimony, arsenic is a strong poison. However, arsenic oxidizes when heated fast, causing a garlic odor. The real trick of using shot with arsenic is to put the arsenic laden shot into the pot before turning the pot on. Let it melt on top and gently mix it into the mix. However, the tell tell sign is the smell of garlic, so mix up the mix outside and not in the garage. When mixed with lead, no problems and treat just like an antimony mix. ... felix

beagle
09-20-2005, 12:36 PM
Melvin....your get some pretty hard bullets out of that mix/practice.

When Petey was with us, he made a lot of .30 and .32 bullets out of magnum shot and air cooled them.

They were hard and shot good but we recovered many "buttons" from behind his target. The ones he were making were very brittle and the bases broke off about 1/4" up from the base. I recovered many like that. Finally, he started skimming some of the antimony off and they became softer and that problem went away as far as we could tell. The softer bullets worked better in his .32-40 and .30/30 also.

If you're just punching paper it will be fine. I'm just saying that the high animony content in magnum shot may be too much of a good thing and give you brittle bullets./beagle


Might be a stupid question, but: If you were to cast a bullet from mag lead shot, what would the hardness be???? Would it benefit from water dropping???
Thanks,
Melvin