Cloudpeak
09-25-2008, 10:59 AM
I had a marathon rendering day, yesterday. I rendered 5, mostly full 5 gallon buckets of wheel weights (which yielded one, five gallon bucket of clips.) I also melted some pure lead plumbing "items" a plumber friend gave to me.
He also gave me a couple of boxes of "slugs". One box contained "cores" of .25" diameter by 1.14" long that were marked "cores for .30 caliber load" and another box of cores that were .315" by .645" long marked ".38 caliber cores". This lead was considerably harder than wheel weights.. I kept those ingots separate. Does anyone have any idea of what these slugs might be comprised of? Perhaps cores for making jacketed bullets?
I also had a roll of "Divco" wire solder, type 300. From the feel when I was unwinding the solder, this appears to be pure lead (?) so I melted it with the plumbing fixtures and am keeping them separate.
I guess I need to buy a hardness tester but plan on "eyeball" mixing wheel weight ingots, pure lead and the "slugs". I'm figuring on melting three muffin ingots of wheel weights and one ingot of the slugs and one of the pure lead and shooting them in my, soon to arrive, Trojan 9mm using reduced loads. I'm thinking one ingot of pure lead and one of the slugs might be equal to wheel weights.
I've always taken the lazy man's way out and just cast wheel weight's and shot the bullets in reduced loads and have gotten along fine. Do you think the above plan will work OK, or do I need to start getting "scientific"?
Oh, the other day, I cast 1,800 Lee 105 gr. SWC bullets in 3 hours out of my Lee, 6 cavity mold. No rejects! No frozen spout. I pre-melted ingots on my Walmart hot plate, pre-heated the mold and had my pot hot enough that the spigot didn't "freeze". Everything worked just great and what good bullets the Lee mold drops!
Cloudpeak
He also gave me a couple of boxes of "slugs". One box contained "cores" of .25" diameter by 1.14" long that were marked "cores for .30 caliber load" and another box of cores that were .315" by .645" long marked ".38 caliber cores". This lead was considerably harder than wheel weights.. I kept those ingots separate. Does anyone have any idea of what these slugs might be comprised of? Perhaps cores for making jacketed bullets?
I also had a roll of "Divco" wire solder, type 300. From the feel when I was unwinding the solder, this appears to be pure lead (?) so I melted it with the plumbing fixtures and am keeping them separate.
I guess I need to buy a hardness tester but plan on "eyeball" mixing wheel weight ingots, pure lead and the "slugs". I'm figuring on melting three muffin ingots of wheel weights and one ingot of the slugs and one of the pure lead and shooting them in my, soon to arrive, Trojan 9mm using reduced loads. I'm thinking one ingot of pure lead and one of the slugs might be equal to wheel weights.
I've always taken the lazy man's way out and just cast wheel weight's and shot the bullets in reduced loads and have gotten along fine. Do you think the above plan will work OK, or do I need to start getting "scientific"?
Oh, the other day, I cast 1,800 Lee 105 gr. SWC bullets in 3 hours out of my Lee, 6 cavity mold. No rejects! No frozen spout. I pre-melted ingots on my Walmart hot plate, pre-heated the mold and had my pot hot enough that the spigot didn't "freeze". Everything worked just great and what good bullets the Lee mold drops!
Cloudpeak