Hard Lead?

[hooverdm]

This weekend I was melting approx 15 lbs of previoiuslly casted boolits. I had a variety of boolits from both rifle and pistol calibers. The melting went pretty much as expected until I threw in the 9mm bullets. This particular group of bullets just didn't want to melt as fast as the others. I had to turn up the heat. The melting mass went through a stage where it stirred like thick peanut butter. Is this an indication of hard lead such as linotype, or of a heavy additive such as zinc or antimony? I'll wait a while for the lead to age before putting it through the hardness tester. Appreciate your help.

Dave H
San Antonio, TX

[Freightman]

Keep your heat down as zink will ruin your mix, if they floated when everything else melted sounds like "ZN"

[GSM]

The thick portion was a "slush" zone. I get this when I melt or cool harder than WW alloy. Looks a lot like soft-serve ice cream - big crystals in it.

[runfiverun]

if those were lazercast they melt like that because of the silver content.
when i throw some of them in they pop right up to the surface and spread out in a puddle.

[Bret4207]

Antimony melts around 1300+ degrees IIRC, only by alloying it with lead/tin are we able to use it.

To me, it sounds like zinc, but I've never had much zinc to deal with. A low tin alloy, lot's of pure lead IOW, will need more heat than straight WW alloy, so that could be part of it.

[jdgabbard]

Don't mean to hijack, but you guys talk about zn contamination quite a bit. To be honest with you if I were to turn my pot up hot enough to melt the zn weights then I would have my melt way to hot. If I turn the dial up to 6 I notice the top of my melt is beggin to turn orange then purple, then blue. And the zn weights are still floating on top.

If you melt down zn your heat is too high.

[thehouseproduct]

Have there ever been zinc bullets? How would he have gotten bullets cast successfully with that much zinc in the mixture?

[weakhand luke]

National Bullet sold zinc.

[Lloyd Smale]

My guess is that those 9mm bullets were pure or close to it and they just needed more temp to melt.

[jnovotny]

I agree with runfiverun could have been an alloy with a little silver in them.

[Bret4207]

Don't mean to hijack, but you guys talk about zn contamination quite a bit. To be honest with you if I were to turn my pot up hot enough to melt the zn weights then I would have my melt way to hot. If I turn the dial up to 6 I notice the top of my melt is beggin to turn orange then purple, then blue. And the zn weights are still floating on top.

If you melt down zn your heat is too high.

I think most of the guys smelt WW outside. In bright light noticing the color change would be tough. It's recommended to smelt at as low a heat as possible to float any stray Zinc WW.

Zinc can be cast and makes a decent but very hard and light boolit. It takes quite a bit of heat to melt it right, your pot will be on high for sure, but it works. There was some interest in this 20-25 years ago.

The trouble comes when you get a substantial amount of Zinc in a lead alloy. Screws up the alloy for good casting.