Stick on WW's - hard 'nuff for what I want?

[Fenring]

Hi everyone.

I've been casting Lyman .44 Devastator's for hunting from my .44 carbine, using air cooled clip on WW's.

My hunting pal has just got himself the Lee 310g FP GC .44 mould and has a supply of stick on WW's.

As I understand it, stick on WW's are softer than clip ons - almost pure lead?

My question is, will water quenched stick on WW's be hard enough to use to cast the 310gr pills for hunting use (loaded to around 1400-1500fps for hogs) with GC's?

Or, should we just use air cooled clip on WW's for these ones as well and be done with it?

[Nasty Shrubbery]

In my relative density tests of alloys in water, I find;
Lead Antimony Tin
Clip-on WW 95% 4.5% 0.5% 13.5BHN from a hot mold, air cooled and aged 1mo.
Stick-on WW 97% nil 3.0% 5.3 BHN " " " " " "

Because antimony present, arsenic is there. This allows the alloy to respond to quenching.
Stick-on WW's, as soft as they are would lead the bore but good before you can think up of working out a good load. The other folks here can answer that better than I.
Have fun

[JIMinPHX]

Straight stick on WW are good for black powder use. For what you are doing, clip on WW would be much better. You can mix & match some if you need to. A 50/50 mix would probably be OK. You might get away with 2:1 or maybe even 3:1 of you water drop. Straight stick on WW don't harden worth jack when you water drop them. You need some clip on WW or other hard lead alloy mixed in there. A little bird shot will work well as a mixer too. Magnum chilled shot sweetens the alloy right up, even a little better than regular bird shot does. Lineotype & it's siblings (monotype, steriotype, etc) are the high end of alloying leads. They have high percentages of hardening agents mixed in.

The numbers that NS just posted sound about right to me.

[runfiverun]

i mix in 25% soft with my ww's and air cool for bout everything.
i water drop for the rifles.
and leave air cooled for the lever guns and revolvers.
a 375 win marlin has been the only rifle that has even given me a problem over 1400 with plain base.
once i go over 1600 i usually firm the alloy up and g/c.

[fredj338]

Water dropping stickon alloy isn't going to harden it much if at all. The aircooled clipon ww should be fine to 1400fps, about all you'll get out of the 310gr IMO.

[Fenring]

Thanks guys. We'll just use the clip ons and use the stick ons for other things.

[AriM]

not hard enough. also water quenching will do little to help. antimony content is low and so is arsenic. water dropped WW should be good, but it all depends on your loads chamber pressure. do you have a printed or at least approx. PSI for your load. That is what should determine the BHN. It should not be a "guess". Or should I say, you would probably have best results with a calculated alloy. One which is properly mated to your chamber pressure/pressure curve.

Then again, it might not be critical to you. Hunting is not slow fire pistol/bullseye shooting.

I would think a softer HP, at a lower velocity would work best. Maybe a load that is mated to an alloy with a BHN of around 11-12. Maybe 18 at the top of the scale?