20 lead to 1 tin OK for 9mm?

[beetle]

Hi,
I am brand new to casting and new to this wonderful forum. I have a small quantity of 20 to 1 alloy, and am wondering if this will be OK as is to cast with the Lee TL356-124-2R 9mm mold. I plan on starting with 4.4 grains of bullseye for this 124 grain bullet.

Also, my ingot of 20:1 alloy is a segmented ingot....is a hacksaw the best/proper way to cut the ingot into usable size?

Thank you very much.

John

[Cherokee]

IMO the alloy is too soft and your powder charge too high. Lyman recommends 4.2 Bullseye MAX, so I would start with 3.4 and work up. Try some cast with your 20/1 alloy and see how it works but my experience indicates the need for an alloy with about 3% antimony, 5% tin is more than needed - say 2 or 3%. Just my opinion.

And - Welocme to the forum and to the world of casting.

[David2011]

Hey, Beetle,

Welcome to the site. One commercial caster on the site whacks his ingots on a pallet to break them apart. If your segments aren't larger than the capacity of the pot maybe that would work for you. A hacksaw wouldn't waste too much metal but- have you ever tried to saw lead? It gets pretty gummy and grabs the blade. A propane torch would separate it at the thin areas more easily than a saw. and you could catch any drips in a metal can or on an old cookie sheet.

David

[9.3X62AL]

A hacksaw would likely work well. My wife's uncle used a Sawzall to fit 1" x 4" and 2" x 4" ingots and slabs (2500# worth) into a sailboat he built for ballast. I got the sawdust and end pieces, total was about 150#.

I've never tried lead/tin alloy in 9mm--always lead/antimony/tin, and usually 92/6/2.

[randyrat]

I don't shoot 9mm, but from past experience i would go as low as you can and still work the slide.

Work your way up with powder until it starts to lead. Make dang sure your bullet is as fat as possible and still chamber, also watch so your bullet doesn't get squeezed down by your die set. Hope that all makes sense.

It is possible to use 20-1 but you may have to go with a slower burning powder

[mike in co]

i shot swaged lead in a nine.....shaved the entire length of the bbl.

i shoot hard in a nine, but i dont shoot slow....

me thinks if you shoo tthat mixture at that load...your next question will be

" how do i get the lead out" or "my nine wont shoot cast boolits"


mike in co

[Ole]

I like the 358 Lee RNFP 125 grain mold in my SWmodel 59, sized to .357". My alloy is fairly soft (10-11BHN) and I have used 4.0 grains of Bullseye, but I prefer 4.0 grains of WW231/HP38.

As already mentioned, try to use the biggest bullet that will chamber in your pistol.

[MT Gianni]

My first 9mm mold was that mold and I used a softer than ww alloy. I no longer own the mold or shooter anything softer than ww in a 9. I would not expect tumble lube to help at all with that soft of an alloy.

[lwknight]

It has been my experience with 9mm that harder boolits work better than semi-hard boolits. I never even tried 20:1 thinking that its entirely too soft.
The thing is that a 9mm is really a SD gun and you will shoot a lot in practice so leading may be a real problem.
In contrast a 6" 357 magnum is more of a hunting type gun that generally don't get shot as much in practice with full power rounds. So softer lead with expanding properties is more tolerable in the hunting type guns even if it does lead up the bore a little bit.

[beetle]

Thank you all for the replies. After reading them, I think I will shop for a new alloy. The Rotometals link at the top of the page looks interesting. I am not much of a scrounger due to time restraints so I will try and find a good alloy to purchase for the 9mm, and for the .311 7.62x54 I wish to cast for. Again, thanks. This seems to be a very friendly site.

John

[Ole]

beetle:

I'm not going to discourage you from buying from Rotometals, but if you're patient, you can usually get WW ingots for close to $1/lb from our swapping and selling forum.

Water dropped wheel weight alloy should be plenty hard for any pistol round- including 9mm.

[george1980]

how much 20/1 do you have if its enough to be worthwhile for both of use i'd trade wheel weight ingots for it

[chris in va]

After extensive testing (and lots of failures) I've boiled it down to the 358-125-RF mold sized at .358 and water dropped. Air cooled opens my groups up.

[405]

Plenty of opinions out there so my .02 cents.

20:1 is too soft for your application. Up the hardness to 18-20 BHN. Your connected link soft ingots may not "break" apart. If not then just take a hatchet or sharpened chisel and cut- easiest to use a hatchet (or chisel) with a hammer end. Lay the blade on the section to cut and use a hammer to drive it thru. Sawing lead gives me the heebie-jeebies in more ways than one.

Since you have a "known" alloy of 20:1 all you need is some antimony to get the hardness up. The easiest would be to find some linotype or monotype. Some simple math for mixing the ratios along with something like a Lyman manual could get you in the balllpark for desired hardness. Not all wheelweight alloys are created equal so may be a cr**pshoot when trying to target a specific BHN hardness. I don't water quench or do any kind of tempering to harden alloy. I just mix lead, tin, antimony to a target BHN and air cool. That way I know my bullets won't change BHN very much over time.... they are what they are when cast.

[geargnasher]

One caveat about mixing that 20:1, someone reminded me the other day about "overtinning" your alloy. You need to make sure you have and equal or greater amount of antimony than tin or the tin will form soft spots of pure tin within the alloy. Tin and antimony form an intermetallic compound in lead alloys when present in equal amounts and any leftover tin gets pushed into blobs as the alloy solidifies. Not a problem if you have extra antimony, it blends with the lead evenly and the lead/antimony blends with the tin/antimony compound to make a homogenous mixture with a crystalline structure.

The short version is that WW's have somewhere around 3% antimony and not very much tin, the alloy you have should be 5% tin, so if you mix clip-on wheel weights 50/50 with the 20:1 you should have a really good alloy in the 12-13 bhn range. You could even go heavier on the WW proportion up to about 75% and still have plenty of tin for good fillout.

Gear

[lwknight]

Good point Gear.
I would suggest thinning the 20:1 50/50 lead and then adding Rotometals "Superhard " at 1 SH to 4 of your thinned 20:1 to basically get hardball. 2-6-92.
I never went all out to prove it true ( except in the extreme ) but , appearantly too much tin can counter the antimonmys' hardening and will age soften somewhat.

[Echo]

OK, >MY< Dos Centavos - What Gearnasher said. Mix 50-50 w/clippies. enough Sn for fillout, and enough Sb for hardness. If AC is not satisfactory, try water-dropping.
I picked up 220+ lbs of WW's from a local Big O tire place, for 25 cents per. Don't shun the big chains. Some are locally owned...

[cajun shooter]

Lyman #2 at 15 BHN is plenty for lead bullets from the 9 mm if you are shooting the correct size for your bore.