Whiskey tango foxtrot

[sutherpride59]

I spent 3 hours the other night casting some 30 cal boolits about 1,000 with some WW lead the wife bought me for Christmas. I water quenched them about 30 min ago, set them out to dry and went to test the hardness with my Lee hardness tester. I just cast 1,000 30 cal boolits with pure lead + 2% sn. The hell do I do with all I've them now? Mouse fart loads? This would be great if my air rifle had a 30 cal barrel and power mod.

[sutherpride59]

Guess I'll just add more sn and cast me some 45 hollow points.

[John J]

Greetings

So to understand what your saying...you cast them and let them cool and then anouther day you put them into the water.

[Bzcraig]

I would remelt them into ingots and mark what they were for future alloying or sweeten with a bit of WW for pistol loads.

[Cowboy_Dan]

Give them a little time to harden up, BHN doesn't instantly go to its max. Unless I am misreading and you found out about the supposed alloy mixup some other way than by testing the boolits.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

so you cast 2000 boolits?

[runfiverun]

you can't cast them the other day and water quench them today.
you can heat treat them and water quench them today.
if so and you just pulled them from the water and tested them at about an 8 your going to want to test them again in about a week.
and again in 2 weeks.
bhn is super misleading.

[RogerDat]

It is the shift from very hot to being quenched in cold water that sets off the changes that harden the bullets. You can bake in oven to very hot and water quench. Or drop in water from mold to harden. But either way the shift from hot to cold has to be instant.

You might think about powder coating a few and see how they work, I can use softer lead alloys when I powder coat but I'm not as soft as plain lead and 2% tin at 30 cal. rifle velocities. Have used in 8mm Mauser in mild loads at 50/50 WW/Pb + 2% Sn and they were fine.

[therealhitman]

R5R and Roger are spot on from what I have seen. Water quenching is done right out of the mold. Fast cooling hardens the surface a few bhn. Size them within a few hours, as the squeeze softens them back up on the ogive and bands. Then let them sit a few weeks before loading. In my experience (using a simple Lee tester which is pretty consistant) even a couple of weeks will increase hardness where it counts, on the outside. From what I understand waiting lets the antimony in COWW alloy harden it all up naturally. By getting casting/sizing a couple of months ahead of loading I found I could mix waaaay less lino into my alloy for the same bhn as when casting, sizing and loading all in the same week.

[Gohon]

Size them within a few hours, as the squeeze softens them back up on the ogive and bands.

Hmmm...so what happens when they are fired down a barrel which certainly squeezes them much more than a sizer does.

[Shiloh]

Roto Metals sells foundry lead. 70% Pb 30% Sb. Sb being antimony.

Shiloh

[sutherpride59]

Lol sorry I see the mislead parts of my post, I cast them 3 days ago. Last night I put them in my small toaster convection oven so they would heat together evenly 500 at a time and water quenched them after an hour in the oven. I took them out and set the screen in the cold water immediately.

I wanted to see where the bhn was cuz I wanted to see how much they age harden and make me a little table for reference. 1 hour after water quenching they were a 6 for bhn. I've water quenched with WW before and the hardening was imidiate. I'll test the bhn today but I'm pretty darn sure these are just pure lead with the 2%sn I mixed in.

[therealhitman]

Hmmm...so what happens when they are fired down a barrel which certainly squeezes them much more than a sizer does.

No, think about this. You should be sizing to about .001" or .0015 over bore size so about the same "squeeze". But that is a non issue in firing as the boolit is in the bore about 1/100th of a second or less. The heat of the gas is the factor we worry about for leading and gas cutting with cast.

[TexasGrunt]

.30 cal bullets is a very broad category. Which cartridge are you going to use them in? You might be able to just powder coat and shoot.

[sutherpride59]

They were cast for 30-06. I just tested them again and got the same bhn after 24 hours. I also grabbed a culled round that was from that batch that hasn't been heat treated and it is also 6 bhn. It's confirmed these things are pure lead. i also tested the ingots that I cast these from and what's left of the batch all of them are about 5.5bhn. These are going back to the melt with a bit more sn for making some .45 hollow points.

[Plate plinker]

I would seriously look at PC if you need them harder. I am new to PC but I think it is worth a shot.

[Boolseye]

Well, clearly the lead you received was mislabeled, assuming you've tested them properly. Yup, mouse fart loads or remelt, I'd say. Hope it wasn't a two-cav!

[runfiverun]

well now we know for sure 50-1 does not quench harden :lol:
I wouldn't be too quick to just toss them though.
put a check on the bottom of a hundred and throw them down range at 14-1500 fps you might just be surprised at how soft of an alloy will shoot well.

[Gohon]

No, think about this. You should be sizing to about .001" or .0015 over bore size so about the same "squeeze". But that is a non issue in firing as the boolit is in the bore about 1/100th of a second or less. The heat of the gas is the factor we worry about for leading and gas cutting with cast.

First...one sizes over groove diameter, not bore diameter. Water dropping hardens the bullet all the way through, not just the surface. Lee instructs when using their BHN tester to file a flat spot and then test in that spot. If it were true that only the surface is hardened then following the Lee instructions would destroy that hardness. Even if sizing did soften the surface of a bullet it is so minute to not have an affect on the bullet performance.

Yes...escaping hot gasses around a bullet can and will cause barrel leading. There are two ways to alleviate that. One is to size a softer lead .002-.003 over groove diameter. Second is to use a harder alloy that can be a little closer to groove diameter but still a little larger. Whether 1/10 of a second in a sizer or 1/100 of a second in a barrel, the result will be the same if one prescribes to the theory that sizing will work soften bullet alloy.

Bullet to groove diameter, pressure, bullet lube, bullet alloy, and bullet hardness all play a roll in preventing barrel leading. To me pretty much in that order.

I've been powder coating all my casts for the last two years using nothing but air cooled wheel weights. All that is doing is replacing the lube and putting some protection of the entire bullet to barrel metal to metal contact. I've discovered I can shoot cast a little closer to to groove diameter and just a tad faster with the same results in accuracy as regular lubed bullets and zero leading. This works well up to 2200-2300 fps but I can harden the bullet alloy up considerable and darn near reach jacketed speeds in the .223 and .308 casts.

Might well be way off base as to what others think but just relating my experience and results that work for me.

[Kraschenbirn]

...I wouldn't be too quick to just toss them though.
put a check on the bottom of a hundred and throw them down range at 14-1500 fps you might just be surprised at how soft of an alloy will shoot well.

Runfiverun's post matches my thoughts. I used to shoot plain-base boolits, cast from range scrap and air-cooled (avg Bhn 8-9.5) at right at around 1450 fps from my .32-20 low-wall without any significant leading. Now, I shoot the same boolit, cast from the same scrap and PC'd, just a tad faster with NO leading, at all.

Bill

[mdi]

So, you've got 1,000 mini ingots of nearly pure lead. I enjoy casting, and 1,000 do overs would irritate me, but I'd just melt/alloy/recast...

[sutherpride59]

Well dusty bannister made a good point it is probably made from stick on WW which explains the softness of the alloy. No worries I melted them down this morning and added more tin for some 45 hollow points.

[Wayne Smith]

I have one suggestion - buy a 30-30!

[Eddie Southgate]

Hmmm...so what happens when they are fired down a barrel which certainly squeezes them much more than a sizer does.


Nothing.

[Eddie Southgate]

I spent 3 hours the other night casting some 30 cal boolits about 1,000 with some WW lead the wife bought me for Christmas. I water quenched them about 30 min ago, set them out to dry and went to test the hardness with my Lee hardness tester. I just cast 1,000 30 cal boolits with pure lead + 2% sn. The hell do I do with all I've them now? Mouse fart loads? This would be great if my air rifle had a 30 cal barrel and power mod.


You are kidding ,.....Right ?[smilie=6:

[sutherpride59]

Kidding about what? The fact that I tried to water quench pure lead boolits or that some guys have 30cal air rifles that are capable of pushing boolits like this cuz both are definitely a thing. It's cool though I already melted them down and cast some 45hollow points for chutin thangs.

[Outpost75]

Why do you need hard bullets anyway? That is BS. Just load them with 6 grains of any pistol or shotgun powder, anything you can sweep up off the floor and shoot them. No big deal.

[sutherpride59]

For shooting out to 100yards with my Garand? Why not pistol powder? Maybe because I want to work up a good load for shooting out past 100 for hunting and target shooting. From my understanding of things they need to be pretty hard to push out of a 30-06 pretty fast without leading which is what I'm aiming for. I'll play with mouse farts when I have a house with some land and enough time to just play around, for the time being I would rather develop a round for hunting deer or target shooting at distance.

[paul h]

So, you've got 1,000 mini ingots of nearly pure lead. I enjoy casting, and 1,000 do overs would irritate me, but I'd just melt/alloy/recast...

We have a winner!

I've never hesitated to melt down bullets I've cast that for some reason don't work for my uses.

I can understand the frustration, but hey, lesson learned. Hardness test any lead or alloy that you don't know the source of. I'd just order some type cast and mix as required to get the alloy you want.

[sutherpride59]

We have a winner!

I've never hesitated to melt down bullets I've cast that for some reason don't work for my uses.

I can understand the frustration, but hey, lesson learned. Hardness test any lead or alloy that you don't know the source of. I'd just order some type cast and mix as required to get the alloy you want.

Yup already melted down into 45 hp's. I'll get some clip on WW's and try again when I get some time, work is kicking my butt on time again.

[rsrocket1]

Someone did not read Fryxell's "From Ingot to Target". For effective water quenching, you need Antimony in the mix. Real wheel weights have about 5% Antimony and 1/2% Tin. 1/20% to 1/2% Arsenic helps, but shouldn't be added, some WW's actually have Arsenic in the mix and it only helps.

You could mix in chilled shotgun shot to the mix to raise the antimony level. I get my shot as reclaimed and it costs be $1/# so most of the time, I simply melt down the shot for my casting. The tin hardens the mix a tiny bit, but mostly aids in castability of the melt.

http://www.lasc.us/FryxellCommentsCBAlloys.htm

You can also download the entire book in PDF form from the lasc site.