simple Hi-Tek coating

[HI-TEK]

I didn't think aluminum alloys melted at lead alloy temps?

Pure aluminum melts at something like 1220 F. Alloys tend to melt at lower temperatures, but the. Lowest I could find on a quick search had what I think was a solidus temp of 890 F.

Maybe zinc? Regardless, whatever the alloy is in those slugs, if it messed up the alloy it still bites.

kevinC
There are numerous alloys under the banner of "White Metals" or low melt alloys, which can be low enough to melt with Lead alloys..
These can be mixtures of Tin, Cadmium, Selenium, Magnesium, Indium, Gallium, (possibly Arsenic)and our favourite Zinc.
These can be also combined with Lead.
There are many low melting point alloys, most are secret mixes, ranging from melting points, 80C to about 350C.
Some of these metal alloys are possibly suitable for projectile manufacture, but depending on composition, prices may become a barrier.
They will certainly interfere with coating, and may be sold/used in Copper Jacketed ammo.
Recovering scrap is always a gamble, as you really don't know what you are getting, then, problems galore.
I saw a metal that melts at about 80C, (in hot water). Some Gallium alloys can melt in the hand.
Most interesting stuff.

[kevin c]

I was going to say that I wouldn't expect any of those to be found in commercial bullet alloys, but the poster above mentioned that imported Chinese ammo may have been the problem, and I've come to the reluctant conclusion that the country my great grandparents emigrated from has manufacturers who are clever enough to copy just about anything with ersatz materials, and unethical enough to sell them to anyone (including their fellow countrymen).

So it could be that aluminum or cadmium or some other junk was in the alloy. It certainly would make the ammo junk, as well as any salvaged bullets and the recovered metal made from them.

[HI-TEK]

I was going to say that I wouldn't expect any of those to be found in commercial bullet alloys, but the poster above mentioned that imported Chinese ammo may have been the problem, and I've come to the reluctant conclusion that the country my great grandparents emigrated from has manufacturers who are clever enough to copy just about anything with ersatz materials, and unethical enough to sell them to anyone (including their fellow countrymen).

So it could be that aluminum or cadmium or some other junk was in the alloy. It certainly would make the ammo junk, as well as any salvaged bullets and the recovered metal made from them.

kevin C
You would be surprised at what can be found in alloy mixtures. One was Niobium in Lead alloy, and the other is Bismuth in Lead alloy. These are not common metals and are expensive, but, I hate to infer it, but some may think that getting rid of such materials can be easily made by adding them to host metals like Lead.
Things like Cadmium come from recycled Acid Batteries, and if Lead is not properly furnaced/treated, these remain there for unsuspecting users.
Arsenic is also used to harden Lead alloys.
Some Lead speciality alloys for radiation shielding can have very strange additive metals to enhance properties required. Once these Lead radiation shields are recycled, and blended with other Lead that is also recycled, who knows what will be final composition.
Unless a very thorough assay is done on alloys, no one knows details.

[Tazza]

Thankfully, so far, i have had no issues with recycled lead. It's softer than commercial hard ball lead due to .22 and jacketed projeciles that make it into the mix, but coated and sized correctly, i have had no issues with it, never leads up or has bonding issues.

I'm sure if an assay was done, there would be undesirables in it, but i'd like to believe they are in such small quantities, that it will never cause any issues. Be it zinc from shooters making their own from recycled wheel weights and they missed a few zinc ones, very easy to do.

[Ausglock]

Be careful when melting down the red and Purple coated Federal bullets. They are not you normal bullet alloy. They look "wrong" when the coating is removed and seem to melt "lumpy", not shiny smooth.

[Stephen Cohen]

I highly doubt the alloy in my previously mentioned post was actually aluminium but one could certainly be forgiven for thinking it was, I have kept a piece that dripped out of my Lee pot and after a couple years has not discoloured or oxidised. When I use range scrap these days I ditch any hardball jacketed beforehand. The berms at my range are sandy so I can fill a couple 20 litre buckets in 15 mins, but I have plenty of CWW so I am in no hurry to use range scrap. I have to admit that Joe has opened my eyes to the danger of smelting unknown lead alloys and old car batteries which I believe should be sent to scrap. Regards and Merry xmas to all. Stephen

[Avenger442]

Processing old car batteries has certain health hazards that has always kept me from considering it.

Like Stephen COWW are just too cheap and accessible to make me want to consider other stuff. After you have been through a couple of thousand you can spot the steel and zinc. And I cross check with a pair of side cutters. They will not even dent the zinc weights. Bullets cast with them are fairly consistent weight.

I have mined the range berms near my house once. Didn't have problems coating them but, even though it was free, it was just too much work and dirt for what I got. Berms are okay when it has been raining. But when it is dry lead is not so accessible.

[Stephen Cohen]

Processing old car batteries has certain health hazards that has always kept me from considering it.

Like Stephen COWW are just too cheap and accessible to make me want to consider other stuff. After you have been through a couple of thousand you can spot the steel and zinc. And I cross check with a pair of side cutters. They will not even dent the zinc weights. Bullets cast with them are fairly consistent weight.

I have mined the range berms near my house once. Didn't have problems coating them but, even though it was free, it was just too much work and dirt for what I got. Berms are okay when it has been raining. But when it is dry lead is not so accessible.

I tend to agree that CWW are easier to smelt but even they are starting to become a mystery as to what they contain these days. Regards Stephen

[kevin c]

I am also fortunate that I have a good source for clean antimonial lead, though there was a time just a few years ago when I mined my club's berms. I had it analyzed: 2% Sb and the rest lead. The copper and brass jackets and a bit of dross were the only waste.

Now though, while there's still a lot of jacketed with soft lead and commercial cast shot at my club's action pistol matches, a lot of the agencies and even the Coast Guard who rent our ranges on weekdays are using "nontoxic" lead free ammo, which also means a lead free projectile. Some have gone to frangibles, also lead free. The lead yield on berm mining might be trending downwards.

Come to think of it, I still have a full unprocessed five gallon bucket of range scrap from years ago. I wonder if in a few more years folks will look at it the way they do now with old stashes of wheel weights that have no steel or zinc.

[Avenger442]

I agree that there are more zinc and steel now than when I started. But it is still worthwhile to go through the bin. Actually it has worked somewhat in my favor that there are more weights that are not lead. It caused the price to come down and they base their price to me on what they are selling it for. The Owner lets me sort at the yard so I buy more lead. That wasn't an option at the tire places. So their weights were a little more than the yard and I quit going there. Theirs end up at the yard anyway. I check all of them again when I process them. The yard almost always has a lot of soft lead scrap lead pipe, flashing, and stuff I don't recognize. I buy the flashing but the other stuff stays since it is unknown. I've been told the flashing is about 99% pure.

Don't know how many pounds of cast and coated bullets I have. Every time I get a new mold I have to check it out by casting some. I still have about 400 pounds of processed wheel weights that I did when i first started. Total I probably have about 700 pounds of ingots and working on 1000. That's a lot of bullets even in rifle. About 200 pounds of it is soft wheel weight and lead flashing ingots. Everything is marked on the ingot. I don't usually smelt the wheel weights until I have 100 pounds or more. And every batch of weights has probably had some cast out of it.

Back when I first got the BHN gauge I ran test on some of my stored and it all was about the same BHN. I'm not going to say there are absolutely no contaminants in any of it but it all cast, coats and weighs almost the same. Guess I've been lucky.

I've got a question kind of off topic. What kind of brass are you guys using? Remington, Winchester, Hornady, Starline pistol or rifle.........? For those of you that have used several which one do you like best and why?

[Ausglock]

Merry Christmas to everyone.
My pistol brass is a bit of a mix.
38 Supercomp is all Starline
38 super is a mix
9mm is anything except S&B. S&B is crap.
45ACP is mostly ex-mil. I bought 15,000 from a bloke on this forum a few years ago. back then, I could bring in brass from the US with no paperwork... not now...
44Mag is mostly remington or WIN.

[Stephen Cohen]

Avenger442, My brass is a bit of a mix, my 357 Max is Remington because they were the only ones making it at the time, my 357 Mag I have several hundred Starline, Winchester, Geco and several other I cant remember. My 223 is a mix of Norinco Military Winchester, Federal, Remington and other brands I can't remember, I try and use one brand for each different load. My 308 Win is mostly Remington and Winchester. My 375 Whelen brass is made from Remington 35 Whelen brass and mostly Winchester 30/06 brass. My 458 is all Winchester. I make the point of making all my flash holes uniform and deburring them after making them a uniform length, I believe this makes the brand of brass unimportant for the hunting ammunition I load, however I do like the 357 Starline brass. The only time I actually fuss about the brand of brass is when using my Omark mod 44 Target Rifle as it deserves every edge it can get as the superbly accurate rifle it is. Regards Stephen

[Tazza]

Be careful when melting down the red and Purple coated Federal bullets. They are not you normal bullet alloy. They look "wrong" when the coating is removed and seem to melt "lumpy", not shiny smooth.

I haven't seen any of them in the mix so far... But sadly in the future it will make it's way to the bullet trap. I wonder if they just swage *rubbish lead alloy* then coat it to not stick to the bore. As long as hi-tek keeps bonding, i'm hoping it will still work just fine to not cause leading. I do see it causing weight differences between batches though

[Ausglock]

The only time I actually fuss about the brand of brass is when using my Omark mod 44 Target Rifle as it deserves every edge it can get as the superbly accurate rifle it is. Regards Stephen

When I was Full-bore shooting back in the late 80's early 90's my Omark had a new Black Mountain barrel fitted 7.62. All my brass was ADI single flashhole brass... It was only new back then. everything used to be MFF Berdan cases. All got FLS. fired then flashholes uniformed, neck sized, neck turned, trimmed, weighed and water capacity checked and grouped into 24 case lots. ADI 144gn FMJ were also grouped by weight. Thankfully I was doing Nightshift back then and did all the prep work at work.

[Tazza]

When I was Full-bore shooting back in the late 80's early 90's my Omark had a new Black Mountain barrel fitted 7.62. All my brass was ADI single flashhole brass... It was only new back then. everything used to be MFF Berdan cases. All got FLS. fired then flashholes uniforned, neck sized, neck turned, trimed, weighed and water capacity checked ad grouped into 24 case lots. ADI 144gn FMJ were also grouped by weight. Thanksfully I was doing Nightshift back then and did all the prep work at work.

This is why i stick with hand gunning, i can't be stuffed going to that much effort on my reloading Then you hear people on FB groups big noting themselves being able to shoot blah blah at some silly range. I'm not ready to become a turd like that just yet

I'm going to have to get into rifle loading soon, we are looking at doing 3 gun matches soon, so i need to get some long boom sticks for that.

[Avenger442]

So it looks like everyone does pretty much what I do. I loaded up 300 rounds of .45 the other day with three different makes of brass. Same with .357 mag, .38 special and 44 magnum several different brands. But with the .308 I try to keep the same brand in any one shooting session. Usually Hornady or my personal favorite Remington. So far I get better groups with Remington. I've tried others but my .308s seem to like these. The 45-70 is all Hornady just because someone was running a sale. I've got a several different brands I load for .223.

I've tried outside neck turning with little success. It's one of those things that I'm still learning and testing. But de-burring the flash hole and uniforming the primer pocket seem to help a little with consistent FPS.

Ausglock how does the water capacity work? How do you do it?

I did have a coating question related to the brass. I don't usually get close to max loads but I had a few of the first rifle brass I used get some splits in the necks. Over worked and needed to be annealed I guess? I have tried annealing. Anyway, since heat is one of the things that causes brass to crack and the coating reflects heat, I wounder if it would be worthwhile to coat the brass. Would probably have to start out with new brass. And I can see some possible problem around the prime pocket and hole. And heating the brass to 375 F might have some weakening affect on the head area maybe or maybe not? Has anyone ever tried coating their brass?


Happy Birthday

[Ausglock]

Water capacity.
After doing your case prep, Seat a fired primer by hand upside down. Place the case on digi scales calibrated for grains. Zero (tare) the scales when you place a case. Fill the case with water from a syringe until it fills the case to the mouth. Note the weight in Grains. Dump the water and deprime when all are done. Group the cases by capacity in grains. This ensures that the internal case dimensions are the same from shot to shot.
I used to do 24 cases as a batch as we fired 2 sighters and 10 to count in 2 strings

[Avenger442]

Thanks
I was wondering how you stopped up the hole.

[Petander]

Holy cow,sorting cases with water capacity like that... how much difference did it make?

My personal load record is 46 mm @ 600 meters,five shots. I didn't shoot it,my instructor friend did. He sometimes tests my loads,having access to longer ranges quite frequently. We both use standard off-the-shelf Tikka T3 tacticals, 300 WM.

I never sorted cases within one lot with water,only checked and they were close enough imo. Sako brass. My hat is off to you.

[Avenger442]

You guys probably already know this but people who shoot beyond 200-300 yards and bench rest shooters do a lot of things to get an extra .25 inches or even .1 at 100 yards. At 600 yards .25 inches in 100 becomes 1 1/2 inches. At 1000 yards, well you get the idea. And yes they can act like turds, as Tazzs pointed out, when talking about pistol ranges. There are some at the range I shoot at. I personally think that extreme accuracy at any distance with any weapon requires the right weapon and a lot of careful work.

Everything revolves around consistency. Pressure consistency when the round is fired is one of the things your looking for and depends on several things. Case capacity is one of them. Usually if you weigh cases and group them according to weight you get cases that are closer in capacity. That way is assuming a difference in the thickness of the walls of the cases causing a larger or smaller volume in the case. I can see how doing an actual measurement with water might give you a better idea of capacity. And yes it does make a difference according to my measurements at the range. An added 100 feet per second up and down spreads a group.

I got hooked on the accuracy thing not too long after I started coating. And have been learning a lot about how to have consistent ammo in a rifle that will perform. The Tikka T3 Tac A1 is a nice rifle capable of .5 inch groups at 100 yards. Because my loading hasn't exceeded the capabilities of the Remington 700 and Weatherby I have, both capable of 1" or a little better at 100 yards, I haven't needed to go to the chassis rifles like the Tikka or the Ruger Precision rifles. My groups with the Remington and Weatherby were averaging 1 1/2" with Hi Tek coated lead. When I get to averaging 1" and when I've got an extra $2000 I may buy a chassis rifle. I like that Ruger chassis rifle in .338 Lapua. You can reach out and touch something with that one.

Sorry, got carried away with that one.