Good alloy for 44?

I have 74lbs of xray shielding (assuming pure or nearly pure lead) and am driving myself batty trying to decide the best mix to alloy.

I'm going to cast 250gr SWC using an RCBS 44-250k mould. The bullets will be used in the 1000-1200 range (might push them a bit faster, but not more than 1400), mainly for target/plinking, but maybe for deer hunting as I get more comfortable with the casting process. Lube will be BAC or Carnauba Red.

I'm buying Super Hard alloy and tin from Rotometals and trying to keep it as close to $100 as possible.

I thought about going with 2/6/92, but that seems a tad hard even when air cooled. I thought about reducing the SH Alloy and increasing the pure lead to get something close to 1.9/5/93.1. That would give me a couple more pounds of material for the same price.

Would 1.9/5/93.1 make a good all purpose bullet when air cooled?

Chris

You could even reduce it some more. Otherwise, yes, that will work wonderfully.

How's 16-1, lead to tin? IIRC, Elmer Keith used this or maybe 20-1 whilst developing the 44 Mag...
Tim sends

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Originally Posted by outdoorfan

You could even reduce it some more. Otherwise, yes, that will work wonderfully.

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Both the tin and the antimony or just one of the two metals?

Will the 1.9/5/93.1 mix heat treat well if I need a harder bullet? That's what I'm looking for, a bullet that air hardens to a medium BHN (low to mid teens), but can be heat treated or water dropped to get somewhat harder for special applications.

Chris

My understanding is that you need arsenic (only a trace of it) in the alloy in order to effectively heat treat it. I tried HT'ing linotype once, and it didn't work. Plain old ww's have the arsenic in them. Lead shot is a good source of arsenic, if you want to add some in separately.

The other thing to remember is not to have more tin than antimony in an alloy you want to heat treat. 1.9% tin is just about right for good mold fillout. You could probably even reduce that to 1%. I primarily use an alloy of 2/1 ww/soft lead that has only about 2% antimony in it. I can heat threat it all the way up to 25 bhn or so. If I were you, I would settle into about 1/3/96. But, once again, you will need some arsenic in that to heat treat it.

Cool. Thanks!

Chris