Lead/aluminum mix for cannon balls

[owejia]

Did a search yesterday for zinc/aluminum mix and in 2011 a thread about using pure zinc for bullets was being discussed. The op added some aluminum to the mix and said the aluminum cans just dissolved into the zinc and cast a nice looking bullet. Has anyone tried dissolving al cans in lead? If you did how did the alloyed mix perform? Was thinking of making some small cannon balls .735 dia to shoot in a small cannon. Don't need to reinvent the wheel if someone else has tried this will save me some time and trouble. Thanks

[Ateam]

Aluminum melts at like 1200 or so, which is hotter than I would feel comfortable bringing my lead melt to.

[popper]

Melt temp of zn is higher than Pb. Some have made Zn boolits to avoid the environment problem but they are lighter than Pb so performance suffers. I do remember the Mexican army used Cu cannon balls but the performance was terrible and they lost. I don't really see any reason to do it, Pb/Sn works fine.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

why would you want to blend Aluminum and lead?

I've heard of others casting Zinc cannon balls. If I didn't want to reinvent the wheel? I'd use Zinc.

[owejia]

Back to the original question, what are the effects of aluminum in a lead alloy ? We use several other things to alloy with lead to change how it performs/behaves so my question is has anyone tried it.

[Tom W.]

If you want to try it, go on ahead and try it. The worst that could happen is a light ball. It's not like you will be using it against living things, and it should penetrate your target. Have fun and experiment!

[Mal Paso]

Back to the original question, what are the effects of aluminum in a lead alloy ? We use several other things to alloy with lead to change how it performs/behaves so my question is has anyone tried it.

Shorten your effective range. Higher bullet speed which will drop faster.

Watched guys with a rail gun shoot aluminum at a car. Barely penetrated the first layer of metal.

Now Q metal would be a real game changer. I could have 400g no lead 44 bullets. I'll bet power plants would love to give the stuff away if it weren't for all the regulations. It could be the new "wheel weights" until the environmentoles figured it out. LOL