Was your "pure" tin actually pure tin? Or just a very high tin content alloy? What percentages did you use?
Other than cost, is there a negative to using pure tin to cast bullets? I know it's lighter.
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Was your "pure" tin actually pure tin? Or just a very high tin content alloy? What percentages did you use?
Other than cost, is there a negative to using pure tin to cast bullets? I know it's lighter.
umm yeah there is a down side.
tin will stick to your barrel.
I'd just contact one of the XRF guys here and send him a sample then you'll know what you have.
melting tin into boolits is silly when you can trade it for ww alloy at a pretty good exchange rate.
Lead Hardness tester just arrived. Getting ready to run tests.
Following instructions, but have seen where people don't wait the 60 seconds. How critical is the time?
Maybe.Originally Posted by mkj4him
Or he may have been like me, who happens to find pewter and tin more easily then wheelweights.
I give loading advice based on my actual results in factory rifles with standard chambers, twist rates and basic accurizing.
My goals for using cast boolits are lots of good, cheap, and reasonably accurate shooting, while avoiding overly tedious loading processes.
The BHN Deformation Formula, and why I don't use it.
How to find and fix sizing die eccentricity problems.
Do you trust your casting thermometer?
A few musings.
Lot of people have used BNE for testing.
Use your hardness tester to sort, then chisel off a sample piece from each hardness grouping for testing.
The people who point out that having the right hardness and flow characteristics are the real goal are correct but since tin alloy is more expensive by a lot compared to an antimony alloy to get the same hardness it just makes sense to test so you can minimize costs.
Scrap.... because all the really pithy and emphatic four letter words were taken and we had to describe this source of casting material somehow so we added an "S" to what non casters and wives call what we collect.
Kind of hard to claim to love America while one is hating half the Americans that disagree with you. One nation indivisible requires work.
Feedback page http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...light=RogerDat
So I spent some time testing several samples of the mystery ingots, some of my old WW ingots, and several bullets I've cast with all of the above. Here's what I found...please give me your opinions. (Flat spots filed on all surfaces, or tested on bullet tip flat)
"gold" alloy with T marking - BH 7.4
Lee C457-500F bullet cast with T alloy - BH 13.4 (I think I quenched this one in water)
"frosty" looking alloy with T marking - BH 11.4
"PL" marked dark alloy (pure lead?) - BH 5.0 (I think that makes it pure lead)
C457-500F bullet cast with PL - BH 9.2 (cast several days ago and air dried) why would BH be different from ingot?
My old WW ingots - BH 14.3 and another sample was 13 (??)
32 Mag bullet cast with same WW's - 14.3 (water quenched...couple years ago)
A Meister 32 cal bullet I have - BH 17.9
Another cast lead 458 bullet I purchased - BH 17.9
So what does all this look like?
lead! sorry couldn't resist. Antimony hardens with age, i'm not sure if your other blends would be softer or harder being fresh cast vs however old the ingots are. I think the "7.4 BH" on the gold ingots would be an anomaly considering the BH after cast, but I haven't used the tester myself.
It means you can sort them by hardness and find out the alloy for a batch with the same hardness from an xrf test. Nothing else will give you a real answer. You might try taking 3 or 4 ingots from each "pile" of assorted hardness and melting them together and getting your test from that mixed sample. Have found an individual small ingot can have a patch that is different than the batch or a single ingot from the pot might be different by a percentage or two. Consider your own old WW's had a 14.3 and 13 hardness test.
Scrap lead just like whiskey will be more consistent if blended in larger batches. On the plus side those samples seem hard enough to use for the most part. Or a good source. Plain lead that will water quench harden? Hmmm will be educational to hear what folks think that might be. Maybe stick on WW's?
Scrap.... because all the really pithy and emphatic four letter words were taken and we had to describe this source of casting material somehow so we added an "S" to what non casters and wives call what we collect.
Kind of hard to claim to love America while one is hating half the Americans that disagree with you. One nation indivisible requires work.
Feedback page http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...light=RogerDat
I see a common theme with everyone recommending XRF. If you can't find someone local, send to one of our members here that does it. You're making this way more complicated, time consuming, and expensive than it needs to be. You have been given hundreds of years of collective experience. But you can do with it as you wish.
I greatly appreciate all the wisdom shared. I am new to this alloy testing gig. Casting, in general, is new to me as well. Been hand loading for over 20 years, with both lead and Jacketed bullets. I will get the hang of it, but I tend to ask many questions in the process. Please forgive my ignorance. I will be boxing up a small flat rate box to send for XRF. That is the next step. But of course, I will cast some bullets and shoot them. For fun.
Just retread my post and it could have come off rude, that was not my intention. I just wanted to impress upon you that we are recommending XRF for a reason.....to get a near absolute of your alloys instead of just guessing......and possibly wasting valuable resources.
Heh, I would've already melted into large batches and started casting but Im notoriously lazy about record keeping. No harm in asking questions, some people get a bit irate repeating themselves. To me...I would've mixed up all the types you had except the "Pure lead" ones and made a huge batch of alloy for shooting.
I guess we never did ask what is your intended use for these? Your answer will let us know more about what you need, than my guessing based on what I do. If I start casting for rifles (when?) I'll be just as new and starting over again. Will probably repeat a number of questions if you hadn't been kind enough to post yours and share the wealth!
Current project is subsonic loads for my 458 socom. If I could figure out a way to cast bullets that would actually expand at those velocities, that would be great. Otherwise, I'm just trying to find a good allow that gives me the weight I'm looking for (as close to 500 gr as possible) and accurate, without leading...or tinning.
I also have moulds for 9mm, 45, 38/357 and 32. Loading for those would be desirable.
I might start casting bullets for my various rifles, like 6.5 Swiss, 7.5 Swiss, 30-06, exc...
wow, sort of covering all bases with those calibers and cartridges. If that 32 is an auto pistol NOE mold has some 312-75 molds that they just did a group buy on. Repeat of an older mold, supposed to be good for .32 auto, short enough to not compress case space while COAL will still fit in the magazine. Makes purty little baby bullets very well but I have not yet had a chance to try them out.
For the rifle you might want to do some reading of the threads on powder coating. You can get some electrostatic paint to stick to a bullet by shaking them in a #5 plastic bowl with black air soft bb's. Static charge + rolling around coats them then you bake. End up with a super hard and slippery coat on the bullet, done right you can pound the bullet flat and the paint won't come off. Coated will tolerate softer lead without leading too. Sort of like making your own jacketed.
Scrap.... because all the really pithy and emphatic four letter words were taken and we had to describe this source of casting material somehow so we added an "S" to what non casters and wives call what we collect.
Kind of hard to claim to love America while one is hating half the Americans that disagree with you. One nation indivisible requires work.
Feedback page http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...light=RogerDat
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to read up on the powder coats. Been seeing a lot of it in the forums lately. Just haven't taken the plunge yet.
It's not a 32 auto. It's a Russian 1885 Nagant revolver (7.62x38R). Funky little critter with an atrocious trigger pull, but what do you expect for $99? Actually, even with the terrible trigger pull, I find it shoots quite accurate. I have to modify my finger placement on the trigger to accommodate for the heavy pull. Anyway, I cast a 312 bullet (tumble lube style) semi wadcutter and size down to 311.
Water quenching doesn't do much to low BHN alloy. You can not get pure lead any harder with any heat treating. That is why wheel weights contain a little arsenic, so that they can be hardened cheaply. Any alloy with antimony will harden with heat treating. Make sure you are testing multiple times on the same piece, as hardness can vary depending on where you test. I have also had hardness change depending on where the ingot was in the pour. I haven't figured that one out yet, as I had 75 lbs of mixed lead, and I poured 2.5lb ingots. Some came out in the high 10's, and others came out 8.3. It was all the same batch, but I only have 2 molds, so it took me a while. I pissed me off to, as I only tested the last few, and they were the 8.3's, so I re melted the whole thing with some linotype added, and came out way to hard....
I'm a little surprised about the "gold" alloy. I would not have thought it would be that low.
COWW's should be in the 10-12 range, before water dropping. Simple water dropping out of the mold will get you 1-2 BHN.
Aging also changes the BHN. I test mine at 1 hour, and 24 hours to get a good sense of where they are. Usually the BHN increases 2-3 BHN between 1 hour and 24 hours.
Welcome the the strange world of lead hardness!
An alloy with even a little tin can yield gold color ingots if overheated.
I give loading advice based on my actual results in factory rifles with standard chambers, twist rates and basic accurizing.
My goals for using cast boolits are lots of good, cheap, and reasonably accurate shooting, while avoiding overly tedious loading processes.
The BHN Deformation Formula, and why I don't use it.
How to find and fix sizing die eccentricity problems.
Do you trust your casting thermometer?
A few musings.
"I'm a little surprised about the "gold" alloy. I would not have thought it would be that low"
And THIS is why it is all simply a guess. As banger and others have noted, analysis is the answer, and the ONLY way to know what your alloy is. We are looking at a pic of something, nothing else. Could be metal, could be plastic. We can't tell. we can only guess
Edit: I trust you know it is metal. I am saying that that is all we can tell you. It's metal, because you know it is.
Last edited by scottfire1957; 07-12-2016 at 10:53 PM.
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