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Thread: 16:1 cure time?

  1. #1
    Boolit Grand Master Tripplebeards's Avatar
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    16:1 cure time?

    I just made a 16lb batch. I melted the lead first, added a pound of pewter, mixed for a minute nonstop and fluxed. I made ignots and casted a few test boolits to test BH. How long do I have to wait...it any for 16:1 to cure?

    I googled it and the only thing I could find was someone did a test and said it took 18 hours to fully cure?

  2. #2
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    Here is a great site for answers http://www.lasc.us/

  3. #3
    Boolit Grand Master
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    by the time the hit the table
    pretty much cured when you cast them
    Hit em'hard
    hit em'often

  4. #4
    Boolit Grand Master Tripplebeards's Avatar
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    Well, something went wrong then. I just tested my 16:1 boolit. It measured 8.2 twice and the pure lead measured 9.0 with my Lee tester.

    My chart doesn't ever go that low.

    What happened and what did I do wrong?

    The lowest my Lee chart goes is .79 which says is a BH of 8.0 so my 16:1 is about 7.5 BH if I have to guess and my pure is a around 6 BH?

  5. #5
    Boolit Master
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    I don't recall, but depending on what else besides lead and tin is in pewter,
    You may have other metal in the pewter. And so, for example, if significant antimony
    was in the pewter, you may have to wait up to 3 weeks for full hardness.
    I suggest you check the hardness vs pure lead again in a week, 2 weeks, 3weeks so as to see "what's happening"
    beltfed/arnie

  6. #6
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    Make a printed copy, might help...:
    http://reloadingtips.com/reviews/lee_bnh_chart.htm



    BTW... You now have 2 topics covering almost the same thing... Kinda mixes things up there, buddy.


    G'Luck though...
    2nd Amend./U.S. Const. - "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

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    Restore the Republic!!!

    For the Fudds > "Those who appease a tiger, do so in the hope that the tiger will eat them last." -Winston Churchill.

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  7. #7
    Boolit Master
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    Quote Originally Posted by beltfed View Post
    I don't recall, but depending on what else besides lead and tin is in pewter,
    You may have other metal in the pewter. And so, for example, if significant antimony
    was in the pewter, you may have to wait up to 3 weeks for full hardness.
    I suggest you check the hardness vs pure lead again in a week, 2 weeks, 3weeks so as to see "what's happening"
    beltfed/arnie

    Antimony & Bismuth is common, sometimes Copper too. If ya keep the heat low.. they float... tin on bottom , other stuff to the top.
    2nd Amend./U.S. Const. - "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

    ~~ WWG1WGA ~~

    Restore the Republic!!!

    For the Fudds > "Those who appease a tiger, do so in the hope that the tiger will eat them last." -Winston Churchill.

    President Reagan tells it like it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6MwPgPK7WQ

    Phil Robertson explains the Wall: https://youtu.be/f9d1Wof7S4o

  8. #8
    Boolit Grand Master
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    you can get pure tin from rotometals
    pewter is a hit and miss
    Hit em'hard
    hit em'often

  9. #9
    Boolit Buddy PBaholic's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tripplebeards View Post
    I just made a 16lb batch. I melted the lead first, added a pound of pewter, mixed for a minute nonstop and fluxed. I made ignots and casted a few test boolits to test BH. How long do I have to wait...it any for 16:1 to cure?

    I googled it and the only thing I could find was someone did a test and said it took 18 hours to fully cure?
    I haven't made 16:1 Pewter/Lead, but I have done 10:1 and 20:1, so you can extrapolate from there. My measurements are +/- 0.5 BHN.

    10:1, 1 Day = BHN 8, 1 Week BHN 11.5
    20:1, 1 Day = BHN 7, 1 Week BHN 10

    Pewter does vary a bit in composition, but is mostly Tin (Sn). Tin is not a good way to harden lead.
    Last edited by PBaholic; 07-23-2017 at 04:11 PM.

  10. #10
    Boolit Buddy PBaholic's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tripplebeards View Post
    Well, something went wrong then. I just tested my 16:1 boolit. It measured 8.2 twice and the pure lead measured 9.0 with my Lee tester.

    My chart doesn't ever go that low.

    What happened and what did I do wrong?

    The lowest my Lee chart goes is .79 which says is a BH of 8.0 so my 16:1 is about 7.5 BH if I have to guess and my pure is a around 6 BH?
    Measuring hardness is not that precise. Don't get hung up on the numbers.

    Also, there is a bump in the Pb/Sn curve right around BHN 10, so measurements below 10 are not a precise.

    Pure lead will measure a BHN 5, and will not change over time. Wheel weights mix in a little Arsenic to allow for hardening, but the alloy must be cooled quickly to attain any hardness. Mixing in Sn causes the alloy to take more time to harden. Sb (Antimony) can take a month to fully harden, but can also SOFTEN the lead after that.

    Tell us what you are casting, and shooting, and we'll tell you if your lead is OK.

  11. #11
    Boolit Grand Master Tripplebeards's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PBaholic View Post
    I haven't made 16:1 Pewter/Lead, but I have done 10:1 and 20:1, so you can extrapolate from there. My measurements are +/- 0.5 BHN.

    10:1, 1 Day = BHN 8, 1 Week BHN 11.5
    20:1, 1 Day = BHN 7, 1 Week BHN 10

    Pewter does vary a bit in composition, but is mostly Tin (Sn). Tin is not a good way to harden lead.
    I'll test it again tomorrow and post the BH.

  12. #12
    Boolit Grand Master Tripplebeards's Avatar
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    I just tested it and it tested the same with the Lee tester as it did an hour out of the mold. I made two tests that measured at 8.2 and 8.3. Which is still at 7 BH. It's not getting harder. I'll keep testing it for a month but I'm going to guess its not going to get any harder. All I'm going to use the rest of pewter for is to help aid in filling out HP molds (which it worked almost too good yesterday)and stop wasting $ on pewter for tin mixes since it's not pure tin and apparently you don't know what you have untill mixed. Kinda like a mad scientist experiment. Next time I'll buy a pound of pure tin to try so I know what I have.

    I'll test in a week and post again.

    I just tested my AC COWW that I added 2% pewter and casted yesterday. Lee measurement was 7 which is 10.4 BH so I'll test that one In a week as well.

    Rule of thumb is 30 days for most lead alloys to harden correct?
    Last edited by Tripplebeards; 07-24-2017 at 01:15 PM.

  13. #13
    Boolit Buddy PBaholic's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tripplebeards View Post
    I just tested my AC COWW that I added 2% pewter and casted yesterday. Lee measurement was 7 which is 10.4 BH so I'll test that one In a week as well.

    Rule of thumb is 30 days for most lead alloys to harden correct?
    Again, Tin (Sn) is not a good hardener. Antimony (Sb) is a good hardener. Use the tin to get your boolits to sharpen a bit more in the molds. Don't get hung up on the numbers. Your values are likely skewed for a number of reasons. The Lee tester is a good tester, as the method is similar to how Brinell himself tested hardness, but it is not a precision instrument. The force you apply to the lead will change the diamter. I went up to 200 lbs of force to get better measurements. I also went to a 0.25" indent, and should probably go bigger. I have trouble with BHN above 20 as the diameter gets really small. Also, my 0.25" indent tends to mushroom pure lead a bit, so this throws off the value some. I have a cabine tester as well, and get inconsistent measurements with it. The problem is the amount of force is too low.

    The best you can do for hardness with Tin and Lead is BHN 17, which is 63% Tin and 37% Lead.

    COWW's should already be BHN 10 - 11. They contain Arsenic, so they can be hardened by themselves. Water drop them out of the mold, or heat them the just under melting temp, and quench them is cold water. You can easily get a +2 to 3 BHN bump just by water dropping out of the mold. BHN's above 20 are possible by heat treating.

    Pb/Sn Alloy does not take all that long to harden. I haven't studied that aspect much, but I would think a Pb/Sn alloy gets to it's hardest in just a couple days. Pewter can contain other elements, like Bismuth, Copper and Antimony, but is 92% to 98% Tin. Tin is expensive and a waste to use for hardening.

    There is no set rule for hardening. Pure lead is hard as soon as it cools, and never gets harder. COWW's get harder by heat treating, and will be hardest when cooled. Pb/Sn alloys need a little more time. Pb/Sn/Sb alloys can take a month to harden, but it's not that simple either. Here is a chart someone did measuring hardness with professional equipment:

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	BHN over time.jpg 
Views:	39 
Size:	45.7 KB 
ID:	200308

    You don't say what hardness you need, but COWW's is usually good enough for most handguns.

    If you need harder, heat treating COWW's is an inexpensive method.

    Mixing Linotype and lead is better way to get harder alloy. Linotype by itself is about 21 BHN. If you mix 1# of linotype, and 1# of pure lead (BHN 5), you will get 2 #'s of BHN 13 (21+5)/2 = 13. I have made this alloy, and gotten BHN 14, which aged to BHN 15 in a month. I'm not using lab grade metals, and my measurement are only accurate to +/- 0.5 BHN, but I have gotten consistent readings, close to calculated values.

    I was an engineer before retiring, and have wanted to get this BHN thing down myself, but still struggle with many aspects of it. I myself shoot .38, .357 and .45 at max loads with BHN 10 alloy, powder coated with Harbor Freight Red. So far this is the perfect mix for me.

    A month ago, I mixed up 4:1 Pb/Linotype alloy. That ends up being 96.8% PB, 0.8% Sn, 2.4% Sb. According to the online calculator I should get BHN 11 with this mix. Here is my measurments +/- 0.5 BHN:

    4:1 Pb/Lino Alloy

    1 hour BHN 8.3
    1 day BHN 9.8
    1 week BHN 11.2
    1 month BHN 13.3

    Not exactly what the calculator says it should be.

  14. #14
    Boolit Grand Master Tripplebeards's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PBaholic View Post
    Again, Tin (Sn) is not a good hardener. Antimony (Sb) is a good hardener. Use the tin to get your boolits to sharpen a bit more in the molds. Don't get hung up on the numbers. Your values are likely skewed for a number of reasons. The Lee tester is a good tester, as the method is similar to how Brinell himself tested hardness, but it is not a precision instrument. The force you apply to the lead will change the diamter. I went up to 200 lbs of force to get better measurements. I also went to a 0.25" indent, and should probably go bigger. I have trouble with BHN above 20 as the diameter gets really small. Also, my 0.25" indent tends to mushroom pure lead a bit, so this throws off the value some. I have a cabine tester as well, and get inconsistent measurements with it. The problem is the amount of force is too low.

    The best you can do for hardness with Tin and Lead is BHN 17, which is 63% Tin and 37% Lead.

    COWW's should already be BHN 10 - 11. They contain Arsenic, so they can be hardened by themselves. Water drop them out of the mold, or heat them the just under melting temp, and quench them is cold water. You can easily get a +2 to 3 BHN bump just by water dropping out of the mold. BHN's above 20 are possible by heat treating.

    Pb/Sn Alloy does not take all that long to harden. I haven't studied that aspect much, but I would think a Pb/Sn alloy gets to it's hardest in just a couple days. Pewter can contain other elements, like Bismuth, Copper and Antimony, but is 92% to 98% Tin. Tin is expensive and a waste to use for hardening.

    There is no set rule for hardening. Pure lead is hard as soon as it cools, and never gets harder. COWW's get harder by heat treating, and will be hardest when cooled. Pb/Sn alloys need a little more time. Pb/Sn/Sb alloys can take a month to harden, but it's not that simple either. Here is a chart someone did measuring hardness with professional equipment:

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	BHN over time.jpg 
Views:	39 
Size:	45.7 KB 
ID:	200308

    You don't say what hardness you need, but COWW's is usually good enough for most handguns.

    If you need harder, heat treating COWW's is an inexpensive method.

    Mixing Linotype and lead is better way to get harder alloy. Linotype by itself is about 21 BHN. If you mix 1# of linotype, and 1# of pure lead (BHN 5), you will get 2 #'s of BHN 13 (21+5)/2 = 13. I have made this alloy, and gotten BHN 14, which aged to BHN 15 in a month. I'm not using lab grade metals, and my measurement are only accurate to +/- 0.5 BHN, but I have gotten consistent readings, close to calculated values.

    I was an engineer before retiring, and have wanted to get this BHN thing down myself, but still struggle with many aspects of it. I myself shoot .38, .357 and .45 at max loads with BHN 10 alloy, powder coated with Harbor Freight Red. So far this is the perfect mix for me.

    A month ago, I mixed up 4:1 Pb/Linotype alloy. That ends up being 96.8% PB, 0.8% Sn, 2.4% Sb. According to the online calculator I should get BHN 11 with this mix. Here is my measurments +/- 0.5 BHN:

    4:1 Pb/Lino Alloy

    1 hour BHN 8.3
    1 day BHN 9.8
    1 week BHN 11.2
    1 month BHN 13.3

    Not exactly what the calculator says it should be.
    I now agree after testing tin is not a good hardener...so why and how dose 16:1 come out to a BH of 9.8-11 when mixing 6% tin with 94% pure lead with a BH of 5?

    It makes no sense.

    I would assume if I used pure tin instead of pewter I would have had a BH between 9.8-11 as soon as it dropped out of the mold since there should be no wait on hardening time for this mix I'm guessing?

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    Boolit Grand Master In Remembrance
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    I googled it and the only thing I could find was someone did a test and said it took 18 hours to fully cure?
    Triplebeards - guess you missed this in your post about mixing 16:1 alloy

    http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...=1#post4105276
    Regards
    John

  16. #16
    Boolit Buddy PBaholic's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tripplebeards View Post
    I now agree after testing tin is not a good hardener...so why and how dose 16:1 come out to a BH of 9.8-11 when mixing 6% tin with 94% pure lead with a BH of 5?

    It makes no sense.

    I would assume if I used pure tin instead of pewter I would have had a BH between 9.8-11 as soon as it dropped out of the mold since there should be no wait on hardening time for this mix I'm guessing?
    Did you look at the chart? Almost all of the alloys needed at least a day to fully attain peak harness.

    You would assume wrong. Your Pewter is 92% to 98% tin. Pure tin wouldn't change your alloy much. Actually Pewter is prefered, as it's a harder alloy than pure tin.

    Lead and Tin have a complex relationship when the two elements are combined. Here is a Phase Diagram of Pb/Sn:

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Pb Sn phase diagram.jpg 
Views:	20 
Size:	36.0 KB 
ID:	200349

    If you notice the Eutectic point is at 61.9%. This represents the lowest melting point for an alloy made of these 2 elements. The highest BHN occurs at 63% Sn, which is just over that point. Interesting, the lowest melting point and highest BHN ALMOST intersect, but not quite.

    Pure tin isn't much harder than lead, I think I recall seeing that 100% tin had a BHN of only 7. So how does combining a material with an BHN of 5 and one of 7 produce an alloy with a BHN of 17?

    Good question, and I have to say I don't completely understand it either.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by PBaholic View Post
    Here is a chart someone did measuring hardness with professional equipment:

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	BHN over time.jpg 
Views:	39 
Size:	45.7 KB 
ID:	200308
    This is a good thread and good posts.
    I just want to correct the record. I am not sure where the "professional equipment" might come from. This info and chart was produced with a LEE hardness tester by my friend Dan Theodore about 10 years ago. Dan is not with us anymore.
    He, I and others have been down this road.
    There is a back story but let's just leave it there for now.
    Carry on
    Chill Wills

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    As JBinMN posted, Use this extended chart:
    http://reloadingtips.com/reviews/lee_bnh_chart.htm

    I will also add a little advice. Get some different alloys with known Hardnesses (like COWW, Lino, Pure, and whatever else you can find), to use as standards, so you can practice and develop a good technique using the Lee tool.
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  19. #19
    Boolit Grand Master Tripplebeards's Avatar
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    So If I buy pure lead at 5 BH and add tin both from a known source...say rotometals... As soon as my bullets drop out of the mold the BH is going to be 11?

    I understand tin is not a hardener as so many have said but it has to harden 5 to 11 or this is not the recepie to 16:1 that I have been given by several posters.

    I guess thirty in days when I test them I'll find out.

  20. #20
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    I have a SAECO and an LBT tester. My experience shows that getting good numbers is very much a "technique" thing. Pushing the needle into a hidden vacuole, or maybe a localized soft spot, or putting it too close to another dimple or an edge, or no particular reason at all, can give spurious low readings. Sometimes my two testers will get into an "argument" with each other, giving different readings for the same alloy, in the same piece.

    Generally, I see "pure" lead (mostly flashing and pipes, but I have used scrap "chemical" lead) at 4-5 or so, and 16:1 is somewhere in the 8 or 9 range. The range I seek for unknown alloys is anywhere between 8 and 11 (and generally any air-cooled unknown mixture is in this range) and water-quenched range scrap goes to 14 or so.

    As Chill Wills notes, the late great Dan Theodore did a lot of work on the varying hardness of lead alloys, and there is a fair amount of literature by others around as well. The understanding I got was that there needs to be antimony or arsenic in the mix to effect the increase in hardness after casting over time. Tin, by itself, gives an immediate hardening, which limits out at maybe 11 or 12, after which, adding more is just wasting tin. Some people have gone as high as 11-1 and report improvements. All this stuff is pretty anecdotal; a lot of shooters have corroborated the value of 16-1, 20-1, 30-1 in their shooting, and a few with other alloys, but there is a mental component to shooting, too, which is affected by voodoo as much as it is by science. Sometimes even more.

    There may be more systematic, and better vetted and agreed-upon data in the metallurgical journals, but I'm too lazy to go look for it. I stick with the pop lit produced by shooters, and check it against my own experience. I, personally, have not found any difference in accuracy that I could pin on a sample of lead with hardness of 8 vs one of 11. Nor have I gotten any indication that any given batch I cast will have all its boolits at one reading or another, so I'm happy with anything within those limits. Outside that range, it's a different story on the targets. YMMV.

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