Cww + sww

[Frank]

I smelted two buckets. What do I have?

[Russ in WY]

Well if U smelted them together , U have a Blend now .. usually the alloy of both are somewhat different. The Sww is much softer & has other material in it . the Cww will be considerably harder . In the future I would suggest keeping them separate .
My 2¢ Russ.

[454PB]

Theoretically, you now have an alloy containing 1.5% Sb, .25% Sn, and 98.25% Pb.

[geargnasher]

I smelted two buckets. What do I have?

A nonferrous alloy

Need more info to give an even remotely accurate guess. How many pounds of stickies vs. clipies? Were all the clipies the plain, soft kind, or were many of them fancy, patterned, painted, etc. (these kinds are usually as hard as clipies)? How many of the stickies that you melted down were zinc?

Gear

[Frank]

454PB:

Theoretically, you now have an alloy containing 1.5% Sb, .25% Sn, and 98.25% Pb.

Let's say it was 50/50. If it is water dropped what kind of hardness could I get?

geargnasher:

How many of the stickies that you melted down were zinc?

I didn't go over 750'F. I did remember a few floating on the top with the clips.

Russ in WY:

The Sww is much softer & has other material in it

What other material does it have?

[454PB]

I'm guessing here.........18 BHN after two weeks.

[Frank]

454PB:

I'm guessing here.........18 BHN after two weeks.

Great. I need to cast some and see how they do. I'll report back. Thanks, for the good follow-up, 454PB.

[Frank]

I didn't cast, but I did a BH test on the muffin. It was 8.2.

[Russ in WY]

Sww : Re [other material] , that was just a guess. As the Sww I have gotten seem to be very flexible & some what lighter in weight then the 1st Sww that I saw yrs ago. Personally I don't even try to smelt anything other then clips anymore after I weed out the Fe & Zn ...

[Frank]

OK, I casted boolits. I added a little Sb & Sn, air cooled BH 13.4, water dropped BH 19.

So the bottom line is I'm glad I didn't sort. I just took what I had in the bucket, smelted it, took the junk off the top and now I have a good alloy I can easily go up or down with. I utilized the pure which isn't now sitting by itself alone in a bucket, but it is being utilized for boolits and that gave me lots more alloy for boolit making.

In these times of scarce ww's, bringing both sides together, like left vs right, cww's with sww's, provided for the maximum level of quantity and quality with the least amount of effort.

Thx

[geargnasher]

Frank, if you're heat-treating (water-quenching), you could easily be better off to dilute your clipies with stickies, as this makes a much tougher and more malleable alloy that "springs back" after being stressed and yet resists shear. This is particularly valuble in revolver boolits, hunting boolits, and match boolits.

If you can dilute even 30% and water quench the boolits while they are still quite hot (cut the sprue early), you should achieve at least 22 bhn, yet have all the benefits of malleability and deformability of a boolit that is only, say, 10 bhn.

Gear

[Frank]

geargnasher:

Frank, if you're heat-treating (water-quenching), you could easily be better off to dilute your clipies with stickies, as this makes a much tougher and more malleable alloy that "springs back" after being stressed and yet resists shear. This is particularly valuble in revolver boolits, hunting boolits, and match boolits.

If you can dilute even 30% and water quench the boolits while they are still quite hot (cut the sprue early), you should achieve at least 22 bhn, yet have all the benefits of malleability and deformability of a boolit that is only, say, 10 bhn.

Gear

That makes sense. People keep talking about ww's + wd. I was doing that, even adding Sb but the boolits were getting too hard. I have a batch of 475's and they look perfect but their BH is 33. My 45 Colts are 36. Can you believe that? I had to drop the load on the 475 because I was sticking brass with the std load. It's good to be back in the malleable and ductile range. You're right about the heat. When the melt temp was raised 50'F for another mold, the water drop BH became 21.