Can I get low enough pressure in a .357 to use 90/10 lead/tin?

[MtGun44]

That tin is way too high, just a waste of a very expensive alloying metal.

Add pure lead until you get it down to 2-3% and it will cast great.

I shoot full power .357 Mag loads with several different NO GC bullets, Lee 38 158 RF,
357429, 357477 and have zero leading ever, even with 16.3 gr of H110. This works
fine with as soft as 8 BHN with no leading and good accy.

Alloy hardness is overrated as having anything to do with leading.

Load down to .38 Spl velocities for nice plinking loads.

[njc110381]

So is there really no advantage to using this much tin? So far I've made around 10lb of 10% alloy. It's cost me less than £2. The lead is free. I pick up odd offcuts at work and never have to pay for it.

I've got enough alloy to make 450 boolits for around $2.90 and enough pewter still to make ten times that. I suppose 900 for the same cost would be better, but that's not bad! Hardly worth the effort of melting it all again, especially if the high tin content may offer an improvement over a leaner mix?

[robg]

I'm in the UK use lead pipe with a bit of lead free solder .plain base boolits work well with 7gr of true blue ,same lead gas checked can be driven as hard as you want with no leading in my trapper with 2400.there is still lead ww out there ,but harder to find.

[njc110381]

Cheers Rob. I have to be honest, once I found a load of zinc ones I kind of gave up looking!

Do you ever shoot at Severnside?

[runfiverun]

those zinc ones could be used to harden up your lead.
oh and did you know that tin initially hardens lead but it's BHN softens back up over time.
not a horrible thing since you can re-cast it and get your BHN back.

[njc110381]

those zinc ones could be used to harden up your lead.

Does that not mess up the casting though? I thought zinc in the mix was a terrible thing? Interesting about the BHN dropping over time with tin in the mix. Any idea why that is?

[runfiverun]

I don't remember how the tin alone works.
but zinc/lead alloys work quite well.
some of the old Africa hunters using black powder would mix 3% zinc in with their pure lead so they would get better penetration on the bigger animals.
now Tin in lead is an anomaly it's whole purpose really is to make the lead flow better to fill out the crevices of a mold.
if you mix zinc in with the two, the tin will leave the lead and form a bond with the zinc.
this makes a matrix chain similar to the SbSn chain antimony forms with tin.
only the ZnSn chain is stronger because the little n's are able to bond with the bigger S and Z molecules easier than the big S's are able to hold the b and n in the other chain.
unfortunately the ZnSn chain can only be so long before it affects the castability of the alloy.
and the Zn affects a SbSn alloy much more, it can only handle about 1.5% solubility.

[Shiloh]

You are wasting your tin.
10% is a LOT of tin!!

SHiloh

[HangFireW8]

I've said this before, if tin is abundant and cheap, lead and antimony is not, use what you got.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I'm in the UK use lead pipe with a bit of lead free solder .plain base boolits work well with 7gr of true blue ,same lead gas checked can be driven as hard as you want with no leading in my trapper with 2400.there is still lead ww out there ,but harder to find.

njc110381,
If you can find some Lead pipe as robg mentions, that can be good, as some Lead Pipe has antimony in it...as much as 3%. I guess it's put in there to help improve the extruding process...but the extruding process work softens it, so you can't measure the hardness it pipe form, it must be melted and cast into a boolit. Meaning, the pipe may seem soft and scratch easily, but when melted and cast, the hardness can be measured.

[robg]

I ve shot at the seven tunnel range ,is that the same one near the bridge tolls?.usual shoot at the Barry tunnel .lead gas pipe is the best very clean nearly pure. I just put a couple of yards of lead free solder (green coloured roll) and I'm good to go.

[njc110381]

The one I shoot at is the 200 yard open range by the bridge. It's accessed via the train station road.

On another note, I just found some printers type. I bought 120lbs of it. Hopefully that will last me a while because it wasn't cheap!

[Kevin Rohrer]

There is no way to look at Pewter and determine its BHN w/o using an element gun due to its changing composition over the years, so any estimation of BHN using pewter in bullet lead is a guess at best unless you have a hardness tester.

[Kevin Rohrer]

I've said this before, if tin is abundant and cheap, lead and antimony is not, use what you got.

What do you call "cheap"? Around here, Tin is $10 a pound.

[robg]

Ncj printers lead is very hard soften it a bit with roof flashing etc its got plenty of tin and antomney in it .a good plumber is a friend they are still taking out lead pipes .

[ProfGAB101]

Might try hitting up a boat yard and see if there are any old derelict sail boats rotting away which have raw lead ballast - They might even pay you to haul it (lead) away. Sometimes the ballast is bags of shot, other times they are blocks which were precast to fit.

[njc110381]

We rebuilt our house last year, so I kept all the lead from our old roof. It's what made me join the forum in fact! I knew I could use it but didn't know where to start.

I'm a gardener by trade. Quite often when we're asked to clear out an overgrown place there are odd bits of pipe and flashing lead piled up. The older generation wouldn't throw stuff like that away but these days folk just chuck it in the skip. I've picked up quite a lot of it since I found a use for it.

My thoughts are that I should stack it up somewhere while I can still find it. Lead is being banned for all sorts of uses now so I don't suppose the supply will last for ever.

[GWM]

There's nothing wrong with your alloy of 10% pewter and 90% lead. I have been using it in my .357 and for accuracy it has done very well. I do use a gas check. If you're only interested in 'no leading' it may be wasteful but if it's about accuracy it may be just right.

[njc110381]

It would be nice to hit the things that I'm aiming at! Not that it happens very often!

[gundownunder]

there is another way around the soft lead too.
Roto metals [site sponsor] sells 'super hard' you can alloy it with your soft lead to make a ww type alloy.
it's gotta be a lot more economical than tin.

Yeh, until he tries to get it shipped to Gloucestershire in England.
The only way this would be economically viable would be if he can find somebody in the south of England that can make the alloy.

I just noticed Runfiverun suggests using zinc. I recall doing some reading a while ago about using zinc in the mix and then using the zinc to draw copper into the mix. It all got a bit complicated for me, or I was over complicating it for myself, but it sounds as if it would really harden the alloy considerably.

I don't know which powders you can get over there or which mold you have, but I've just had a look in Lee's second edition, and there are 357 loads that will do what you want.
158gr bullet with 7gr HS6 15500cup
125gr bullet with 5.5gr HP38 18800cup, you can go down to 4.6gr powder on this one.
148gr wadcutter with 2.8gr Bullseye only goes 10000psi. Other powders in this loading include, Amer-select, Greendot, Reddot, Unique,IMR 700X. All these are under 16000cup
There are also a number of loads in the Lyman cast bullet handbook. This book also shows that you need to keep a close eye on your loads, because the 158gr load with HS6 goes up real quick after 7gr, 9.2gr is 35700cup, and 10.2 is 42700cup.
If you already have your mold and it is a plainbase you could add a PB gascheck which you make yourself out of recycled beercans. I've used these and they work well at reducing both leading and group size.