Add copper to your alloy for tougher CBs.

[felix]

Tin and Bismuth are at least 50-50 commensurate for sure. I don't know about how much Tin is needed to completely accommodate Copper, or vice-versa ... felix

Beg, borrow, steal spent pellets from match ranges. These European pellets come in three weights, something like 16, 18, 21 grain forms in the 22 caliber. They cost between 3 and 5 cents each brand new. They have a good percentage of bismuth. Save these pellets for augmenting your proven BEST shooting small caliber boolits. You can tell by weighing finished boolits. Bismuth boolits are heavier (2-3 percent). Do this in lieu of copper for getting a certain percentage of increased accuracy over a standard mix. ... felix

[swheeler]

swheeler - try skimming a lot of the 'stuff' off and just process a smaller amount into your melt. Pennys are 24 gram zinc with a .00015 Cu plating, after '72 I think. Any Cu not in the Pb or Sb or Sn will be free Cu which has a high melt temp. You don't want the free Cu in the melt. Hopefully I'll get some casting done next week after everything settles down here.

Thanks Popper. I know you mean 24 grains of zinc, so that would make the copper 15 grains per penny. So I added over 3/4 ounce of copper and 1 1/4 ounce of zinc. I believe I can remove the free cu by skimming the blue off the top(sound right to you), after I get the melt I have now up to a temp hot enough to be full liquid state. Then if the 1.26 oz of zinc is replaced with copper by your method I will have 9 pounds of an alloy with .875% copper.

[303Guy]

Thanks. I'll attempt to dissolve it directly into the tin alloy I have in the pot already. My last trials only got about 1% copper in (or less). I want a balance between toughness and hardness for slump resistance and malleability i.e. shatter resistance with expandability.

At what point does copper and tin become a bronze as opposed to a solution? Can bronze be dissolved into lead or lead/tin?

And while talking zinc-lead, why not dissolve brass into the lead/tin if possible?

[swheeler]

Someone used brss left over from trimming cases, in this thread maybe.

[badgeredd]

I doubt we can even get close to making bronze, considering the primary metal in bronze is copper. Here's a link about bronze...Ifound several others.

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-bronze.htm

Edd

[madsenshooter]

I've researched the bronze thing in the past. There's even a leaded bronze, but melt temps are still higher than we're going to get. I pulled my AR off gunbroker, I don't think a ban is going to float. Not without a war.

[runfiverun]

pepto is bismuth.
that's the bismo part of the name.
you might still can buy bismuth shot from some sources.
it usually has 5% tin added to it to keep the brittleness somewhat under control.

[JackQuest]

So, to summarize: no one has yet worked from pure Pb forward (and published results in this thread), everyone has been extracting Tin out of WW or Lyman variant alloys along with Zinc.

Procedure would be to deliberately contaminate pure Pb with known percentage of Zinc then extract Zinc with Copper Sulfate to establish Cu percentage.

About 1% copper appears to be a good place to start in pure Pb, with perhaps 2-4% Tin added for flow. Expect much greater hardness than Tin alone. Quench harden then let sit at room temp or even in the freezer to extend hardness. Expect bullet dimensional expansion over time, meaning don't size and lube right away? (I thought sizing inherently softened Pb alloys, maybe brain is old)

Once this alloy is established (or maybe 2% Cu), consider 50/50 with clean WW alloy to add the Arsenic necessary to quench harden even further. Antimony from WW just a plus for hardness at this point.

Have I got that right, 'cause I'm sitting on a lump of pure Pb in ingots and a lump of clean WW in ingots.

[JackQuest]

Popper:
Many thanks for the clarification! Since Tin is much easier to get (and work with) in high concentrations than antimony it makes sense to alloy for a final mix with whatever antimony the WW provide, approx. 1% Cu and then boost the Tin for mould fill out and flow.

I hand separated all the zinc WW from my last batch of wheel shop metal and melted it separately and poured off in ingots. Not much metal total, but for a 1% straight trade of zinc to copper, it's a place to start.

[swheeler]

I took the nine pounds of 50/50 that I added 552 grains of zn +345 grains of copper to(in the form of pennies) and put it on the turkey fryer today. After 45 minutes I had a melt that was bright blue on top with about a half inch of silver oatmeal. I started fluxing, lots of fluxing with candles, lots of candles and stirring with a piece of split lodgepole firewood! I ended up with about four pounds of shiney silver alloy. I left this on the turkey fryer and sprinkled a heaping tablespoon of copper sulphate on top, it turned white and I smashed it against the side of the pot, stirred and it turned dark grey/black. I skimmed this off and repeated 2 more times until what I had left was white after mashing and stirring. I skimmed off the white powder and took the pan in and poured the alloy into my casting pot set on 10/high. Took 314299 mold and put handles on, set on stove burner on high, went out and fluxed alloy in the pot, dropped ladle in and went back to get the mould. I cast 6 bullets air cooled and 6 bullets water dropped. The alloy cast pretty much as normal, a quick glance showed bullets well filled out and lightly frosted, sprue took approx 8 seconds to freeze, I did notice that the sprue puddle did not draw in as is normal with the 50/50. These bullets will be weighed and measured and compared to 50/50 alloy bullets. I will add some picturs later, the amount of dross was amazing!

[badgeredd]

Pat,

IMHO, I doubt that anything about this would be of great interest to JA. I've seen how he and a couple others have reacted to an idea they didn't have or hadn't used in the past their selves. He and they are who they are. I think that has already proved to be true within the last few weeks.

Edd

I stand corrected. Joe IS interested! And I quote:

"I'm going to try the copper alloy again. I wasn't satisfied with the previous attempts and have gotten some answers on a better way to blend up the alloys. The amount of copper in the mix is one of the issues. I've now been told that there should be a little amount of copper, more not being better in this case. I'll give that a try. They sure need to age pretty long from what I was told. I'll cast the first batch up for the 5.56 NATO since that 7 twist AR will be a real good test for the accuracy part of it, then go from there. I need to assemble my alloys and I'll start."

Interesting the change of heart and that there is information now available that sounds so very familiar to me.

Edd

[swheeler]

Dross, you want dross, here's about 5 pounds of it. Notice the white CS after it cleaned up.

[swheeler]

It took a while but hopefully worth it!

[fixerupper]

swheeler..... Quick question. How many pennies per pound did you use. When the weather warms up I plan to do a trial sample as well... except rather than 50-50 with wheel weights, Im going to use 50-50 iso-lead. I might even try this with pure pb.

I was thinking of one penny per pound, using pennies minted after 1982. Pennies minted after 1982 are all 97.5 zinc with 2.5 copper plating. They also weigh 2.5 grams each. Pennies minted before 1982 are much higher in copper.

And much off thread.... but, if you find a 1943 copper penny..... its worth thousands of dollars. DONT MELT IT....

[swheeler]

2.55 pennies per pound of 50/50, that should give an alloy with .8% cu with a 1;1 exchange of zn to cu

[swheeler]

I stand corrected. Joe IS interested! And I quote:

"I'm going to try the copper alloy again. I wasn't satisfied with the previous attempts and have gotten some answers on a better way to blend up the alloys. The amount of copper in the mix is one of the issues. I've now been told that there should be a little amount of copper, more not being better in this case. I'll give that a try. They sure need to age pretty long from what I was told. I'll cast the first batch up for the 5.56 NATO since that 7 twist AR will be a real good test for the accuracy part of it, then go from there. I need to assemble my alloys and I'll start."

Interesting the change of heart and that there is information now available that sounds so very familiar to me.

Edd

Edd he's always over here mining data can't stay away!

[Manbeast]

What a cool idea! I work in a metallurgical lab and have access to an xrf analyzer. If interested, I could scan different alloys to check concentrations in alloys.

[swheeler]

What a cool idea! I work in a metallurgical lab and have access to an xrf analyzer. If interested, I could scan different alloys to check concentrations in alloys.

How large of a sample do you need and what would it cost?

[badgeredd]

How large of a sample do you need and what would it cost?

I've thought that once I am relatively happy with an alloy and know I can repeat the process EXACTLY I would like to get some samples analyzed to know exactly what I have. To me that is a key point...to have a repeatable alloy. Part of my personal problem with the copper sulfate method is the great amounts ot dross folks are getting. It seems more dross is coming out than the weight of the zinc going in. I am assuming some of the dross is tin too. So Again my question is how does one know what he is getting?

Edd

[swheeler]

That was the sample I was wondering about getting tested. Now the copper sulphate did end up coming out white after being smashed and stirred, but the amount of dross I got equaled the amount of alloy left? I used a box of six of the small candles, the ones that are 1.25 dia and 1.25 hight, a box of birthday candle,24, a handfull of sawdust and a pine stick to stir. This whole process took about 2 hrs from start to finish, and I started with alloy that cleans up with one fluxing of a pea size piece of wax. I think the penny process isn't the way to go!