simple Hi-Tek coating

[marky123]

Smelt them with pleasure Trevor

[ioon44]

Square containers do something similar naturally.

Yea, but round bullets in a square container just don't seem natural.

[marky123]

Pewter for alloying?

[TexasGrunt]

Pewter will help with mold fill out but not with hardness.

[marky123]

Tin is $79/kg here but antimony is $23

[Grmps]

Pewter is a malleable metal alloy, traditionally 85–99% tin, with the remainder consisting of copper, antimony, bismuth and sometimes, less commonly today, lead. Silver is also sometimes used. Copper and antimony act as hardeners while lead is common in the lower grades of pewter, which have a bluish tint.
If tin is expensive Buy old , junky pewter items at thrift stores or garage sales, melt it down and use it as tin.

[Ausglock]

hit some of the old print shops for stereo type or Linotype.

Or go mine the stopbutt of your ranges

[marky123]

This is finest stamped English pewter so its 98% tin,from the RMS/SS Orcades no less.Cheers!

[Ausglock]

A good source of Anitmony is Hard chilled shot. Download the alloy calculator and input your weights.

[marky123]

Antimony is on the way
Choo Choo hi tek train

[Ausglock]

In what form?
Is is alloyed into lead already?

Is is virtually impossible for the home caster to add pure antimony into lead directly.

[marky123]

No I'll add it directly to the 327C melting point lead pot what could go wrong

[HI-TEK]

No I'll add it directly to the 327C melting point lead pot what could go wrong

Antimony melts at very high temperature than Lead. I am not sure, but I believe that the Lead has to be 500-600C or may be more to help dissolve in the Antimony.
I do not recommend any one to mix in Antimony, unless it is pre alloyed with Lead. You can buy High percentage Antimony alloy bullion from commercial Lead producers. That is safest and simplest way to introduce Antimony into the batch.
That way you do not have to deal with severe high Lead melts, which are dangerous for several reasons.

[dikman]

Marky, I've found the cheapest way is to collect range scrap from my local pistol range (like Trev suggested). Downside is it's a fair bit of work collecting, washing, smelting and pouring into usable ingots. But it's all part of the fun.

I recently bought a $1500 lathe, completely funded by selling smelted and cleaned range scrap. (Time to start keeping some for myself, I guess).

[marky123]

how does it fare with HT?

[Ausglock]

Range scrap coats and shoots fine.

[HI-TEK]

New Colour. It was aimed as being Black Pearl.

Results,

[dikman]

Range scrap coats and shoots fine.

What he said, Marky. The stuff I get is pretty well all commercially made, I don't think too many in the club are casting/coating their own. There's some .22 mixed in (close to pure lead) but most of that falls through my sieve. It's tested out to 12-15 BHN, which I suspect is pretty typical for commercial stuff (Trev will correct me if I'm wrong).
No problems with coating, plus I'm experimenting with diluting it down 50:50 with pure lead. Still coats fine.

[Ausglock]

When I was mining my range, the range scrap was around the 12BHN. this included .22 bullets.
Fine for 38/357, 44, 45 as is. And 9mm/38Super when water dropped.

The new Black Pearl is blacker than the Black K-15. It has a silver sparkle to it, Rather than the gold sparkle of the Texas Tea.

[Ausglock]

Black K15 for comparison.