Wheel weights cast too soft

[vinnyg]

Wheel weights cast too soft

I obtained a lot of wheel weights from the Chrysler dealer “mostly lead”.
I picked out and discarded what I can tell is Zinc and steel. Anyway I smelting a handful of WW I had cast a couple of dozen bullets from it.

After: I tested them only to find them as soft as the pure lead bullets that I cast from lead came. The BHN is low.
Are ww supposed to be that soft? I thought they would have come out as hard cast bullets?

[randyrat]

Give them a couple weeks to harden all the way. They are always soft when first smelted.

[Firebricker]

Even 24hrs will make a big differance. You can water drop em from the mould into cold water and get even harder boolits. FB

[MakeMineA10mm]

vinny,
In general, WWs are in-between the hardness of commercially-"hard-cast" boolits and pure lead. BUT, WW alloy can vary a lot. I've never heard of WWs being as soft as pure lead, or even close to it...

Generally speaking, WWs are about 1/2 of one percent tin, 2-4% antimony, some trace elements, and the rest lead (around 95-96% lead). WW composition boolits will usually come out about 10-12 bhn.

Pure lead or soft alloys, like 1-30 tin-to-lead usually come out 5-7 bhn, so significantly softer than WW boolits.

Hardcast usually come out around 13-17 bhn, if they're not heat-treated (very few commercial casters do this, but a few do). Commercial alloy (also commonly called "magnum alloy") is usually 2% tin, 6% antimony, and 92% lead, and it usually comes from a foundry, and so has pretty stable composition numbers.

[yondering]

Did you mix the stick on and clip on WW's? Often the stick on type are close to pure lead and will soften your alloy considerably, depending how much you mix in.

[Bret4207]

As Randyrat said, check them again in a few days. There'll be a difference. In truth that difference probably won't mean that much. Try shooting some before you get all hung up on "hardness". Boolit hardness is way overblown in importance until you get way up in pressure. Most of it is advertising hype.

[243winxb]

Do the bullets drop from the mould the correct diameter? What are you casting for, pistol target loads, or high velocity Rifle? Air colded bullets get softer over time with tin in the alloy. Oven Heat treated/water dropped bullets with 2% antimony harden as much as 3 weeks later. Higher percentages of antimony, 4 to 6% can harden in as lilttle as 30 minutes.

[fredj338]

Clip-on ww, air cooled, will come out around 10-12bhn, straight lead around 6bhn. Pretty big diff. The tape ww are near pure lead & if mixed, will soften the clip-ons to aroun 8-9bhn.

[mold maker]

All the WW I have cast turn out at 12-13 with a Saeco tester. Pretty consistent hardness for over 40 years. With the current political climate I wouldn't be at all surprised to find current and future WW to change, even to zinc contaminated alloys. Lead WW are going to be replaced with what ever is PC, so the makers will cut cost as much as they can during the change. Having a stored supply is just another way to keep shooting.

[fredj338]

All the WW I have cast turn out at 12-13 with a Saeco tester. Pretty consistent hardness for over 40 years. With the current political climate I wouldn't be at all surprised to find current and future WW to change, even to zinc contaminated alloys. Lead WW are going to be replaced with what ever is PC, so the makers will cut cost as much as they can during the change. Having a stored supply is just another way to keep shooting.
Already happening here in Kommifornia & the rest of the west coast will follow shortly. Every couple of months I get a bucket form my local tire guy & it has more & more non lead ww in it. I would suspect by this time next year, Kommifornia will be out of lead based ww all together. Stack it high & deep, it's ponly going to get worse. Lead ww have been banned in Europe for years.

[qajaq59]

Clip-on ww, air cooled, will come out around 10-12bhn, straight lead around 6bhn. Pretty big diff. The tape ww are near pure lead & if mixed, will soften the clip-ons to aroun 8-9bhn.
Thanks Fred. You just answered something I was about to ask.

[StarMetal]

A real good alloy is 50/50 lead/WW's either air cooled or tempered by water quenching or oven heating and quenching. It's all I use in my rifles.

Joe

[Springfield]

Lead WW are banned in California as of December 31st this year. My last bucket contained about 20% of the new iron weights. At least I assume they are iron, they are very hard and all say FE on them. Fortunately I started stockpiling 2 years ago.

[qajaq59]

[QUOTE=StarMetal;688900]A real good alloy is 50/50 lead/WW's either air cooled or tempered by water quenching or oven heating and quenching. It's all I use in my rifles.

Joe[/QUOTE

I sure know it works real well in both my 30-30s and the .308. It also mushrooms out to .570 when fired into fine sand. That'll be helpful if I see a hog wandering by.:castmine:

[WILCO]

[QUOTE=qajaq59;689019 That'll be helpful if I see a hog wandering by.[/QUOTE]

Nice.:mrgreen:

[vinnyg]

Yes I did melt a fair amount of the stick-on WW’s in the batch.
I should have quenched them also.

I just re checked them and they did harden a little, right now they are at 11 BHN.
Also, the bullets I melt from lead came come in at 9.8 BHN so there must be a little something else in that stuff.

So, how can I bring the WW batches up to around a 17 BHN or higher?

Wouldn’t a BHN of like 22 – 24 BHN be better for high powered rifle loads?

[qajaq59]

Wouldn’t a BHN of like 22 – 24 BHN be better for high powered rifle loads? I thought the same thing and was shooting very hard bullets with moderate success. Then I noticed that Bret and a few others kept talking about the fit being more important then the hardness so I slugged the barrel, changed my sizing die, and tried a 50/50 ww/pb (roughly 9 bhn) alloy to see how that was. It has worked out very well in the .308 and especially in the 30-30. However I do use gas checks and my loads are only about half way to max.

[Bret4207]

ff.

So, how can I bring the WW batches up to around a 17 BHN or higher?

Wouldn’t a BHN of like 22 – 24 BHN be better for high powered rifle loads?


Why? Why should a harder alloy be "better for high power rifle loads"? The common answer is "...because the advertisements all say it's better..." or "...I dunno, it just SEEMS like it would be better..." or "...it'll lead less...". And then you have to define "high powered rifle load". It's not as simple as that.

First, with any boolit, comes fit. The boolit HAS fit the individual gun. The better it fits, the better it will work for you. Without proper fit you're not going to get your best results. An undersized boolit will never give good results and an oversized boolit won't chamber. Between those two lays the sweet spot your gun is looking for. Then you need to think about pressure and how the boolit reacts to the loads your using. And then comes performance on game if you're hunting.

In very broad terms, proper fit will be somewhere near the throat size of your rifle. Obviously you can't go larger than your throat but how much smaller is up to you to find. Once you get a reasonable fit (assuming you have concentric cartridges and a boolit design the gun likes in the first place) you need to establish the nose fit in the leade, if any. Sometimes the gun will be extremely forgiving and shoot well with the boolit any old place. Other times (more common) it'll want to be kissing the leade or off the leade .005 or more. Sometimes it'll want a good firm contact. All this alters the pressure curve and burn rate. It also may prevent or cause boolit obturation and that may or may not be a good thing in that particular gun.

At this point I'll venture the opinion that IME you can have the hardest lead alloy you can get with a Bhn way above 30 and if you don't have your ducks in a row you'll have a wild shooting, leading monster on your hands. NO AMOUNT OF HARDNESS WILL ELIMINATE PROBLEMS. Sometimes it will just make things worse.

So lets say you get things perking along with a 12 Bhn ww alloy and are getting good shooting at 16-1700 fps. Perfectly reasonable expectation to have with something like a 30-30, 308, 8mm, 35 Remington or 30-06. There's not a lot of cans and rocks that need more than that. You've got near zero leading over 50 shots in 50 degree to 80 degree weather and nice round groups of 1.5-2.0 inches. Perfectly fine plinking ammo from an off the shelf rifle. You might play with your seating depth a bit and find you can tighten the groups by 1/2-3/4". You recover some spent boolits and note no signs of problems. But you want to go faster for hunting. You do the common thing and to a harder alloy because "harder is better", all the ad's in "Huntin' and Shootin''" magazine say so. So you getcha some "hardball" alloy and pour some boolits. Using the same loads with the new alloy you might get 6" groups because you've changed the burn rate/pressure curve and the fit. You have to go back to square one. Or, you might get the same general accuracy at 1600 fps but as you build to 2200fps you find the groups open and you get leading. Or it might fall to pieces at 1947 fps and that's all there is to it. Or it might hang together to 2400 fps. Sheer Bhn isn't a guarantee that it will work. You changed your alloy not because of any problem you observed, but because an ad said you should. Maybe you get a barn burner load in that 308 that'll do 2400 fps and hold 2" at 100 yards for 5 shots. So you take that "hardball" alloy and pop a nice buck at 35 yards and after tracking him for 7 hours you recover him. You find your hardball alloy wasn't ductile at all and shattered.

There are a million scenarios that can play out in this. My point is that going to a harder alloy for no reason beyond "..don't I need a harder alloy?..." is not the correct answer. If you want to run a hard alloy that's fine. There are people here who never shoot over 17-1800 fps that run linotype blends and they are perfectly happy. To many of us just getting a few pounds of linotype would be cause for celebration and we'd hoard it for special loads. Others buy "hardball" alloy and it works fine for them. Most of us seem to be using WW alloy and many soften it with range skrap to make it go further. Some heat treat or quench that alloy and bring it from 9-12 Bhn to over 16 Bhn. Others use the WW as is and get well over 2200 fps in the 30's, 32/8mm's and 35 cals with no problems. A couple of the more advanced members report running 50/50 ww/lead alloy at well over 2200 fps in the small bores and I saw another post where a member was over 2800 fps in a 30 cal with ww!!! But they all worked on fit and with the pressure.

Long story short? You can water quench your ww to increase the hardness. You can add antimony and other trace elements to bring the AC alloy over 20 Bhn. None of that will ensure better performance. It's just not that simple.

[243winxb]

how can I bring the WW batches up to around a 17 BHN or higher? Add antimony. BHN of 15 air cooled with gas check is ok. Make sure you have 2% tin in the alloy. Bullet size should be .002" to .003" over groove diameter for a rifle bullet, if it will fit the chamber.

[PatMarlin]

Well written Bret... :drinks:

[vinnyg]

Thank you Brett and the rest of you guys
Very informative I appreciate it very much.

Vinny

[Hammer]

I have had a lot of trouble with leading in a 38 Super load and have just tried water dropping to see if it will help. These were not particularly hard bullets but were all "harder" than 90-5-5 would cast. I have been trying to figure out why. Some even tumbled before they cleared the comp and ended up keyholing the targets...... Any other suggestions?

[Bret4207]

First off, what are your barrel specs, particularly the throat size? What are you sizing the boolits to? As a very broad rule trying the largest diameter boolit that will chamber and feed at the correct COAL is a good place to start. Tumbling can be indicative of a few things- pushing them too slow, too fast, too much pressure overcoming the shear strength of the alloy or the most common problem, an undersized boolit being boosted a little faster than it can handle.

[Gohon]

Is there really such a thing as a correct COL, other than not exceeding the maximum COL? Especially on something like the 45 ACP that head spaces on the mouth of the cartridge. My thoughts are the proper COL is dependent on the bullet being used. For example with my 1911 and loading a 200 grain RFN, if I go by the COL in the book the round does not load properly and there appears to be some set back taking place. This particular cast which is from a Lee mould has a very wide meplat and very little ogive. When I pulled the barrel out and dropped the round into it, the rim was noticeable above the part that is flush with the breech face. Once I seated the bullet where the rim was flush with the, for lack of the proper term breech face stub, I ended up with a 1.153 COL and everything functions well. I think the book called for a 1.22 or something like that but the final COL was far below the recommended COL.