When & why would you prefer range lead over wheel weights?

[PB234]

Thanks in advance for helping a new guy understand this.

[btroj]

I prefer which ever one I can get easily and cheap. I currently have lots of range scrap and can get more each trip to the range. That pretty well sums things up for me.

[williamwaco]

I always prefer reclaimed bullet cores over WW.

BUT

If I had to smelt them I would not even consider reclaimed bullet cores. Been there, done that. It was a nightmare and I had 48% waste. ( 100 pounds of bullets produced 52 pounds of ingots. )


.

[blaser.306]

The vast majority of the ( bullets ) that are fired on our indoor range are made by a Co. out east and they claim that their copper plated projectiles start out with a hard cast core containing 6% antimony! All of the range scrap that I get ( and I have a few thousand lbs ) rings like a bell when dropped onto cement. I have yet to do an actual hardness test but it seems to alredy be fairly close to WW material.

[geargnasher]

I prefer range scrap when I can tell pretty much what it is and need a low-antimony alloy for heat-treated hunting boolits. Sometimes WW have low enough antimony for that (2% or so), but range scrap usually doesn't have all the other junk in it that WW have which can give "false hardness" or affect casting quality.

Gear

[sqlbullet]

When you have range scrap and don't have isotope lead, that is when I would prefer it.

As gear says, range scrap has some unique and desirable qualities.

[zomby woof]

I use WW and RS as my two alloys to blend. For 45 acp I could run straight RS, but I always add a little WW. For rifle (I never go past 2000fps) I may go 50/50. I always add a little tin.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Sometimes WW have low enough antimony for that (2% or so), but range scrap usually doesn't have all the other junk in it that WW have which can give "false hardness" or affect casting quality. Gear

OK, I'll bite, what is "false hardness" ?

If I can guess first...
is it hardness that isn't toughness ?
That is, toughness that comes from a balanced amount of antimony and tin in a lead alloy.
Jon

[Frank46]

I used to mine the pistol berm at our old range. Most of the hard core pistol shooters all used commercial hard cast boolits. I had a buddy who used to shoot no less than 300 rounds at one shot. When we moved to the new range I always wondered just how much lead has been washed down the berm. Unfortunately its all over grown now where trees have grown up where the road used to be. So when I smelt down the old range stuff it goes in a separate bucket and used to harden up wheel weights. Frank

[WILCO]

I prefer range scrap over WW's because my RS is readily available as WW's have been outlawed.

[cf_coder]

For me, I'll take either isotope lead or wheel weights over range scrap. At our ranges, we don't get a lot of cast being shot, so you end up with a lot of jacketed cores or cheap plated bullets. This will usually work just fine for .38 or .45 with a bit of tin added to it, but for anything else, you need something harder. I'll mix it 50/50 with my ww/isotope stuff and water quench for my higher velocity .357 and 44 mag gas loads.

I'd love to find a range where most folks shot commercial lead loads...

[sh00ter787]

Being in England, 95% of the bullets that I dig out of the sand at our range are lead, not jacketed. No matter when I dig the resulting alloy works out at about 14bhn when air dropped and I very rarely have to put any tin or anything into the mix.
For me it IS a gold mine!

[geargnasher]

OK, I'll bite, what is "false hardness" ?

If I can guess first...
is it hardness that isn't toughness ?
That is, toughness that comes from a balanced amount of antimony and tin in a lead alloy.
Jon

Jon, I'm not really sure. By "false" I mean there is stuff in WW metal that gives it hardness by means other than the typical antimony/tin additions and that this hardness doesn't equate to the same "toughness" we expect from our ternary boolit metals. I had a large batch of clippy weights plus 1% tin I added myself analyzed because it would air cool to 16 BHN repeatedly. It had right at 2% antimony, but a surprising amount of other impurities in it (like calcium, for one) that I believe brought the hardness way up from what it should have been. It's important to note I "smelted" this long before I knew about using sawdust to remove stuff like calcium. With 2% antimony and 1% tin is should have been about 10 BHN or so, so the other junk in it was making it harder, but "harder" in different ways than ternary Pb/Sb/Sn alloys usually work. The stuff works fine, but is really prone to "antimony wash" even though it doesn't have much antimony in it, and it is fairly brittle, so much so that when diluted 50/50 with pure lead and water-quenched it is still much more brittle than a 50/50 mix of a 94-4-2 foundry alloy I have. In other words, this WW alloy I have doesn't work like it should, and makes lousy "tough and malleable" hunting boolits when diluted and heat-treated. Range scrap usually works well for the "tough but malleable" boolits quite well when heat-treated because it doesn't have all the junk trace impurities that WW metal typically contains.

WW metal is great for most stuff, but with some specialty alloys it doesn't behave like it should, doesn't heat-treat like it should, and is very unpredictable. Sometimes it matters, much of the time it doesn't, but when it does, I use range scrap or more "known" alloys.

Gear

[evan price]

In all honesty it depends on the actual alloy. Range scrap is not all the same. If it is mostly 22 rimfire it is really soft, nearly pure alloy. If it is a lot of commercial cast boolits it will be hard like Lyman #2. The actual alloy of range scrap varies with what's been shot at that range. I smelt range scrap in 75# lots to homogenize it somewhat. Mine runs 8-10 BHN air cooled.

Wheel weights used to be a lot harder than they are now. Still they are good antimonious lead and can harden up in water quenching. Not much tin in there anymore. Mine lately have been around 10-12 bhn air cooled. I save my clip WW for magnums.

Basically what you shoot determines what qualities you need in an alloy. How well your molds cast determines how much tin you need. You just take whatever base alloy feedstock you have access to- be it range scrap, wheel weights, isotope cores, whatever- and add what you need to make it do what you want- tin, pure lead, antimonious lead, etc.

Me, I like simple molds for simple pistols, and range scrap water quenches to 12 BHN and works great for me, besides being nearly free.

[Alan in Vermont]

For me it's all about economics. Right now I'm digging a little scrap every time I go to the range. I'm end up bringing more home than I put in so I'm slowly increasing my stash. If I had to pay for it I would buy WW before I would range scrap as the price is usually about the same.

[Powellcole5490]

I went to our range today and grabbed a full 5 gallon bucket. I probablly should have thought about it before filling it to the top because the Mother hefer was HEAVY! I accidentally scrached my wife's 4Runner in the process (fun conversation). I do have one question and I don't mean to steal a topic here but our rangle lead falls into a pit of water so everything I have is soaked. Anybody have good methods for drying everything out before ingotizing? I know I can start with a cold pot and get rid of the water that way but it would take FOREVER because I have a butt load to melt down. I was thinking of spreading it all out on a piece of plywood in the summer sun. What do ya'll think?

[btroj]

Sunning it will dry much of the surface water off. It will NOT get th water trapped inside some of those mangled bullets. It is that trapped and hidden water that is the big danger.
Range scrap always starts in an empty pot. That pot may be hot from a previous smelt but it has no molten lead in the bottom. The hot pot with even damp lead will sizzle but not steam explosions or tinsel fairy that way.

[jabo52521]

I agree. Here in south Texas WW are still cheap and plentiful. Range lead sells at a premium here.

[lwknight]

I have had good luck with range scrap. It comes out pretty soft because there are not many cast shooters around here. I get a good price for the jackets too.
It seems that lately most COWW are small and a large percent of the weight is the clips and
zinkies and steel. Its pretty hard to get a good run of useful WWs these days.

[Bigslug]

No reason to be married to one over the other. Hardness can be controlled - just supplement your scroungings with the occasional purchase of pure lead and tin to work into the mix.

With wheel weights, you're going to have to skim off clips, and you're going to need to think about separating the lead from the non-lead (see this excellent sticky: http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=139839 ) Since lead weights seem to be disappearing, I would tend to think of them as a bonus, but not necessarily a primary source.

The degree to which smelting range lead will be a PITA will depend greatly on what kind of range you're getting it from. If you aren't set up to hardness test or re-alloy (GET THERE!), you at least know that it was born to be a bullet in the first place. My one big RS smelt to date was mostly unjacketed, but contained some jacketed stuff. On most of those, the lead melted out of the jackets, and I used a tempura "spider" to fish out and jiggle the jackets to minimize waste. There were a few military .45 hardball slugs that had a disc of jacket material attached to the back and stamped in place by the rest of the jacket. Couldn't get any lead out of those at all - which SUCKS because there's probably 200+ grains in each of them. Scrap from a military range could then be not very productive.

I've not done exhaustive research on it, but I would guess a lot of bullet cores would be fairly close to pure lead (Why wear out core swaging equipment with harder alloys or mix in expensive hardening metals when the jacket handles that part of the process for you?) Lately, I've been able to supplement the pile with lead from shotgun slugs that's been splattered against a steel target - pretty much pure with very little sand ground into it.