Powder coating soft lead for 44 mag?

[RED333]

ok cool how much tin should I add to 50lbs ?

2% ?

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...oy-calculators

[Lloyd Smale]

adding tin to get higher bhn isn't economically feasible. To get to about what air cooled ww is your going to have to go somewhere around 10-1 to 15-1 and at 10 bucks a lb for lead it gets expensive fast. 2 percent tin to pure lead isn't going to hardly bump the hardness level. What you need is antimony or get hardness. Or if water dropping antimony or arsenic. Even if a guy does a small amount of antimony and water drops you can get substantialy harder bullets. If you want to spend some money spend it on lineotype and alloy with that. It has tin and antimony in it and is around 2 bucks a lb vs 10 for tin. The main use for tin in bullet casting is fillout of your mold and bullet quality. that said you if you know what your doing you can make perfectly fine looking bullets out of pure lead with no tin. Id say try just adding antimony but its a real bugger to get melted and alloyed into your lead. Lineotype is hands down the easiest route to go. Even adding 10 percent lineotype and water dropping will get you some pretty hard bullets. Want my honest opinion (and many here will argue). Ive been casting for 40 years or more and in my opinion tin in your alloy is one of the most overrated things you will get advice on on a site like this. Yes it might help bullet fillout but it sure isn't necessary for fillout if your temp is correct and you keep your mold at the right temp. Over 2 percent tin doesn't add much of anything to quality bullets and using it to get hardness your going to go broke fast. the telephone and power cable sheathing Ive gotten in the past had enough antimony in it to get results water dropping. Most of it has at least 1 percent antimony in it. f I were you before I bought anything id try water dropping some as is and see if you get hard enough bullets.

[kbstenberg]

2% of 100lbs. is 2lbs. So if you have 50lbs of lead and want 2% added tin you need 1lb. of sn (pewter) I think.

[Tripplebeards]

I added 16% pewter...1 lb to 16 lbs of pure lead and it went from 5 to 6 BH to 7 to 7.5 BH. If I were you I'd go to all your auto shops and pick up a pale of COWW to add. Cheap or free and will make your lead harder in the end.

[derek45]

adding tin to get higher bhn isn't economically feasible. To get to about what air cooled ww is your going to have to go somewhere around 10-1 to 15-1 and at 10 bucks a lb for lead it gets expensive fast..........

I was asking about tin for the fill-out, not hardness

i ordered a 5lb. SUPERHARD (70% LEAD, 30% ANTIMONY) BULLET CASTING BAR from brownells

guessing it's the same as rotometals but brownells is a lot closer to me

.

[Lloyd Smale]

Like I said ive casted THOUSANDS of good bullets out of ww and even pure lead with no tin and if you have you lead temp and mold temp right you don't need any tin. By the way I don't know if you plan on casting with that super hard alloy or using it to raise hardness alloying it with pure or ww but that's WAY to much antimony as is to make bullets even for the highest velocitys and is going to no doubt get you bullets that are so brittle they fracture on impact. Even straight linotype that has 12 percent antimony is right on the border of being to brittle. I like an alloy with about 5 percent antimony for most mag handgun and rifle loads. what I would try is to add your superhard between 6-1 and 10-1 with pure and see how it casts. Or 10-1 to 15-1 to ww to make an alloy that will hold up to mag velocitys. If you want to add tin to these alloys add maybe 1-2 percent. It might make your alloy a bit for ductile and any more is just a waste of money and fillout will not improve. Really with ww alloy ive never seen where adding tin did a thing. Enough in it as is. but if it makes you feel better go for it. I used to put tin in all my alloys. Why? because I got it free from a saw mill that used it for blade guides. they went out of business and to be honest if I had 10 bucks to buy a lb of tin id take that 10 bucks to the tire shop and and see if theyd sell me some ww's. 50lbs of ww is alot more valuable to me then a lb of tin.

[derek45]

my plan is to smelt 50-70lbs of mostly pure lead, with the 5lbs 70%
antimony / 30%lead....and maybe 1lb of 95/5 tin solder

goal is 12-18 brinell for casting 44magnum bullets

(I have exhausted my supply of WW.)

[Grmps]

70# lead + 5# 70% antimony = apr. 11.6 BHN, add 2% tin/pewter to that and you'll have a great alloy.

I don't know how to calculate the hardness but when you alloy equal parts tin and antimony you get an alloy harder than the sum of each together and great fill out.
Look at 94-3-3 or 90-5-5

[galaxy]

Loads of Bacon has a fantastic series ongoing at present on the subject with PC'd boolits for his 38 and 44. I would highly recommend watching most, if not all the series (not complete yet). He recovers his loads from gel at different BHN, style of casts and at different speeds. The findings are fully tabulated (link in his comments).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Biwb...2jR2KOgzC3oiVJ

[Lloyd Smale]

mixing it with 70lbs wont get you 18bhn without water dropping but it will about put you in ww territory. Even at ww hardness if your gun is built right that alloy should shoot fine. 50lb mix might be closer.

my plan is to smelt 50-70lbs of mostly pure lead, with the 5lbs 70%
antimony / 30%lead....and maybe 1lb of 95/5 tin solder

goal is 12-18 brinell for casting 44magnum bullets

(I have exhausted my supply of WW.)