keith lead composition

[hank woll]

what was the ratio of lead/tin or whatever elmer used in his .44 and .45 bullets???

[Skipper]

what was the ratio of lead/tin or whatever elmer used in his .44 and .45 bullets???

16 to 1

[Char-Gar]

Yes, 16 -1 (lead to tin) was what Keith considered "hard cast". Today's shooters would consider that butter soft. Ray Thompson, did some testing of the 44 Magnum when it first came out recovering bullets in a snow bank. He concluded that such bullets need to be at least 20-1 in hardness.

In my 50 years of revolver shooting, I have never had any reason to think that Keith and Thompson were wrong.

[Hardcast416taylor]

Does this mean that I`ve been using the wrong lead alloy (straight wheel weight) for the past 50 years? For the last 20 years I have been getting good results with 50/50 also. I respect Elmer`s choices on guns and loads, but I use what works for me.Robert

[FISH4BUGS]

I have used, since I started casting, an alloy consisting of 5lbs of wheel weights to 1lb of linotype. I was taught that was a Lyman #2 alloy and considered hard cast. It may be Lyman#2. I really don't know.
I have shot many thousands (probably TENS of thousands) of that alloy in 380, 9mm and 45 auto machine guns and handguns. It does not lead at all.
Works for me. Each time. Every time.

[shooter93]

There are a number of alloys that will work well. None are neither right nor wrong. In Elmer's day they probably acquired lead and tin in pure form and mixed their own. Considering where Elmer lived as a young man I doubt wheel weights were all that handy.....maybe wagon wheel weights.....but local stores may very well have carried pure lead and tin given the types of guns that would still be being used locally. His alloy worked very well. Since getting ww's here is near impossible I have often thought of buying a large quantity of a lead/tin alloy similar to his and using it in all my handguns.

[Hickok]

I read somewhere that Keith pulled boolits from old 45/70 cartridges available back then and melted the slugs down for his casting, hence the 16/1 alloy.

[paul h]

Does this mean that I`ve been using the wrong lead alloy (straight wheel weight) for the past 50 years? For the last 20 years I have been getting good results with 50/50 also. I respect Elmer`s choices on guns and loads, but I use what works for me.Robert

You're not wrong, you've just found a different way of doing things. Elmer used what he could get his hands on and that worked for what he was doing. We do the same thing.

With cost of tin I can't imagine using more than 1 or 2 percent say nothing of 5 to 6%.

[MT Chambers]

In this case, larger amounts of tin would keep the bullet from shattering, while expanding well at his 1200 fps., it also helps flow when casting.

[Indiana shooter]

I run a 20-1 mix with .3% Cu in my saboted muzzle loader boolits, I am very happy with the results. I don't see an issue using a high Sn boolit for hunting as you're not going to use a lot of 'em. For target/plinking get your hardness from Sb and add just enough Sn to fill the mold.

BTW, I think I read somewhere that Keith preferred a 20-1 for HP boolits, I could be wrong though. I know he used 16-1 for most of his shooting.

[Char-Gar]

Does this mean that I`ve been using the wrong lead alloy (straight wheel weight) for the past 50 years? For the last 20 years I have been getting good results with 50/50 also. I respect Elmer`s choices on guns and loads, but I use what works for me.Robert

I don't think you are doing it wrong at all. Tin rich binary alloys like Keith used can be costly these days. WW was free for the asking for many years and I have shot many thousands of straight ACWW bullets over the years with 100% satisfaction.

I don't think there is anything magic about Keith alloys, but rather it represents the minimum hardness not and not the maximum. However it is my opinion that bullets can be too hard for most purposes. ACWW is about ideal for most handgun shooting.

[44man]

Keith also used harder but it was what he could find that he used most. Lead and tin were very cheap back then. That is not to say what he used was best.

[Harry O]

It has been a long time since I read Keith books, but I seem to remember that he had absolutely no use for wheelweights or gas-checks. It was strictly lead and tin, plain-base bullets for him. He has some mention of a 10:1 mix, but most was the 16:1 that has been pointed out above. In addition, Keith expected some leading. As long as it did not seriously degrade the accuracy, it could be cleaned out after shooting.

I have had problems trying to follow him on this. Wheelweights and gas-checks work better for me. Saves on the cost of tin, too.

[Hickok]

Does this mean that I`ve been using the wrong lead alloy (straight wheel weight) for the past 50 years? For the last 20 years I have been getting good results with 50/50 also. I respect Elmer`s choices on guns and loads, but I use what works for me.RobertBefore the internet, I too had to use anything I could find that would melt and would go through a sizer. I read in my old Lyman cast Bullet manual about Lyman #2, Linotype, and different alloys. No way I could find those metals here in "Hooterville"

No one I knew ever made cast boolits, and everyone I did ask about it always blew me off or said, "Those things will mess up your barrel, and they aren't any good for hunting." I was totally on my own when learning casting.

Wheelweight, mystery metal, and lead pipes were my scources for boolits. A lot of trial and error, but slowly things started to work. Good thing I was contrary, mule-headed, and had a "one track mind," as friends and relatives kept telling me "It won't work", "Why don't you quit messing around with THOSE bullets!"

All of you older casters probably have the same story!

And then when computers finally became "common", I found "The Cast Boolits Forum!" OH happy day, a group of folks that know how to get it done!:bigsmyl2:

[mdi]

I agree with the fellers about what was available to Kieth for his alloys. Wheel weights weren't too common before WWII, but later on they could found anywhere and everywhere, and they were of a good bullet casting alloy. It's just recently (last 10-15 years) that wheel weights have become evil, deadly poison buggers set on destroying mankind...:veryconfu

[fredj338]

I agree with the fellers about what was available to Kieth for his alloys. Wheel weights weren't too common before WWII, but later on they could found anywhere and everywhere, and they were of a good bullet casting alloy. It's just recently (last 10-15 years) that wheel weights have become evil, deadly poison buggers set on destroying mankind...:veryconfu
Actually just the last 5 years or so. Kalif banning them almost 5yrs ago started the movement. The days of cheap/free alloy are quickly coming to an end for most of us.

[quilbilly]

16 to 1
Yep. I have been reading the book of his letters to friends. 16/1 is his favorite but there are a couple he mentions using 20/1 as well.

[Blackwater]

Like Harry O. I remember him referring fairly frequently to using 1:10 mix. I think he added extra tin when he anticipated a possible need for greater penetration, like when going into bear country. For lesser game, he'd use the 1:16 mix, and I'd not want to be a griz who showed up and made himself around Elmer when he was toting either. It was just a find distinction he'd make sometimes.

And like Hickock and many more here, I suspect, I originally started casting so I could AFFORD to shoot, and shot whatever I could find that would melt. It took a while and some observation and reading to discover what would work and what wouldn't, and I suspect Elmer did it the same way, since his needs and access was similarly limited, as well as needing to watch the budget too. He just did what we've all done, and found what he could use and afford, and learned to make it work for him. No magic is involved for any of us. Just good, hard work, and noticing what works and what doesn't work so hot. Antimony is cheaper, I think, than tin, so it became the more popular alloying ingredient in lead, and it takes less of it to get it to be hard. For making bullets, though, antimony tends to make the alloy brittle, and adding enough tin to decrease or eliminate that tendency to fracture instead of expand makes a good alloy that's a bit cheaper than simple lead/tin mixes. Cheaper is better for most of us, so that's just what's available more widely, and what we've learned to use in our melting pots to make good bullets.

Alloying lead is a lot like cooking. You have to know what you want your end product to be like to know how to "season" the lead with what's available to you. That's really all there is to it.

[Sekatoa]

I've been reading Keith's autobiography, "Hell, I Was There". I'm still reading it, so not too far in it yet. In it, he states as a boy, he and his brother would dig babbitt out of the railroad box car (ballasts ?), borrow his father's round ball mold, and make shot for his sling shot. He also mentions, I believe, pulling bullets to reuse or recast for other loads, as well as digging lead of logs to reuse.
I'm no Keith expert by any means....but yeah.....I think at least in his early years, he used whatever he had available, whatever was cheap or free.

[Forrest r]

Wasn't 10 to 1 lymans original alloy, Lyman #1????

[Char-Gar]

Elmer Keith made some very significant contributions to revolvers and rifle shooting in the days before WWII. When he took a position on anything, there was no backup in him, even though he might be wrong. He may have been many things, but he was never uncertain. He seemed to lack the capacity of self criticism and to learn anything from anybody else.

Some of his revolver dictum is demonstrably false, but he would never admit that. Here are just three of his assertions that won't stand up;

1. The use of gas checks in revolvers would dramatically shorten the life of the barrel. By dramatically the range of 75% or something like that sticks in my memory. He felt the gas check interfered with the bullets base's ability to obdurate and seal the gases. He allowed as how the gas check would scrape out some lead, but other than that, were useless and negative.

2. He opined that WW metal just could not be used to cast bullets.

3. He thought that the 45 ACP required very hard bullets (Linotype) in order to hold the rifling of the 1911 pistol barrel.

I noticed in his post-war writing that he began to be inconsistent from time to time. He would write one thing and then some time later, would write just the opposite. I took that as writing from memory and conflating things in dim memory. That is just a function of age. I have posted stuff from very old memory on this board and later realized I had not got it right. I am very very cautious any more about that.

Elmer Keith was a very significant figure in the development of modern shooting, but he was still just a man with all the stuff that goes along with humanity. He was a self taught cowboy and that was the amazing thing. Other experts of his day were educated and many like Gen. Hatcher and Col. Whelen came with decades of military ordnance experience and that Keith could stand shoulder to shoulder with these guys is truly amazing.

[Char-Gar]

Wasn't 10 to 1 lymans original alloy, Lyman #1????

Here is the link to a very old thread about Lyman No. 1. You may have to copy and paste to your address bar to get it to work, but it will work.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/archive/index.php/t-76679.html

[mdi]

Actually just the last 5 years or so. Kalif banning them almost 5yrs ago started the movement. The days of cheap/free alloy are quickly coming to an end for most of us.
I escaped CA 6 years ago and at that time wheel weights had been banned for mebbe 5 years. My WW stash came to me because I worked in a Heavy Equipment/Construction Equipment shop and 4 to 6 oz. weights were common, but no retail tire shops in LA county had any "surplus" wheel weights. Californian wheel weights would fly off cars and trucks, on purpose, and sit beside the road waiting to be ground up by passing vehicles, then washed by rain down into the soil and migrating into the water table and thus poisoning the entire population's drinking water. Evil little buggers!

[hank woll]

hello all-thanks for the many answers-gives me food for thought-i can get wheel wts but i thought they were too soft-i also thought i saw or read some where that keith used a hard 10-1 most of the time-guess i was wrong-thanks again

[10mmShooter]

everyone has covered the topic very well, I think the big take away is most of us are using harder alloy's than are actually needed. Even myself, I'm having to actively mix down my "standard" revolver alloy down to about 10.5-12 BHN(I used to use 14-15 BHN). This will work for me in anything from .32 SW Long to .38/.357 to 10mm to .41 to .44. Lyman #2 is much harder than I need in any of revolvers. Shoot I can run a .432 sized 240 LRN-FP out of my Henry .44 at 1500 fps at only 12 BHN(no gas check). (Sizing and fit is KING not the hardness).

[GabbyM]

20:1 is nice hunting alloy. Tin is also $15 per pound and 5% is pricy alloy. So we use what we can scrap together.