Alloying sheet lead with Lead-free solder?

[Wolfram Malukker]

New to all this. I see plenty of references to various methods of alloying your lead to cast good bullets, but haven't seen this one yet.

I recently was cleaning up my shop and added it all up, there's about 32lbs of clean sheet lead-it's 3/16" thick and has very little to no corrosion on the surface. However, it's danged soft stuff. It'll have to have some alloying elements added.

I dally in electronics and automotive wiring, so I always have solder on hand. 63/37 is pretty common here, but I have some nasty, awful stuff here too-it's 96.5% Tin, 3% Silver, 0.5% Copper, and 0.15% Antimony. It's terrible solder, but it's extremely common and fairly inexpensive compared to some other Tin sources.

Has anyone here used the high-tin alloy solders? Do the Silver and Copper contribute anything other than the tiny amount of copper adjusting hardness?

I am hoping to start casting for .258 caliber 65gr projectiles for .256 Magnum, and .430 caliber 280ish gr projectiles for .44 Magnum, both chambered in bolt action rifles, both in 18-20" barrels. (Probably 18", by the time the rifles are finished up) I have not yet bought molds.

[kevin c]

I understand that lots of casters use scrap solder as a tin source. Folks buy and sell it here in the Swapping and Selling forum.

If you end up with, say, one percent by weight solder in your alloy, the silver will be 3% of 1%, or only 3 parts in ten thousand, and the copper a corresponding fraction of that - and I'm pretty sure that's too low to affect your alloy in any appreciable way. I'm sure somebody will chime in if they know otherwise.

[Paper Puncher]

http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

If you haven't checked out this sight lots of good reading there.

[Wolfram Malukker]

Been reading up on it-seems that it's still cheaper to get linotype and alloy it together. A craigslist ad in the next city over has it for 1.00$ per lb.

I'm not looking to cast gobs-I work too much to get to the range during the day, and I don't do handgunning much. Too much damage to my hands in the past to comfortably shoot handguns anymore, but I love rifle shooting still. 1000-2000 bullets will last me a year's shooting.

I haven't bought any molds yet, because I've been eyeballing Ebay for used Lyman molds-I'm on the fence about buying one because I work in a machine shop, and have my own machine shop at home...I can make the mold tooling to make molds. But, do I really want to? Not really. But I might be up for modifying molds, to make the suit my needs.

[6bg6ga]

New to all this. I see plenty of references to various methods of alloying your lead to cast good bullets, but haven't seen this one yet.

I recently was cleaning up my shop and added it all up, there's about 32lbs of clean sheet lead-it's 3/16" thick and has very little to no corrosion on the surface. However, it's danged soft stuff. It'll have to have some alloying elements added.

I dally in electronics and automotive wiring, so I always have solder on hand. 63/37 is pretty common here, but I have some nasty, awful stuff here too-it's 96.5% Tin, 3% Silver, 0.5% Copper, and 0.15% Antimony. It's terrible solder, but it's extremely common and fairly inexpensive compared to some other Tin sources.

Has anyone here used the high-tin alloy solders? Do the Silver and Copper contribute anything other than the tiny amount of copper adjusting hardness?

I am hoping to start casting for .258 caliber 65gr projectiles for .256 Magnum, and .430 caliber 280ish gr projectiles for .44 Magnum, both chambered in bolt action rifles, both in 18-20" barrels. (Probably 18", by the time the rifles are finished up) I have not yet bought molds.

I would think you would need to mix your lead free solder with a bunch of straight lead in order to come u with something that I would consider casting bullets with.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Been reading up on it-seems that it's still cheaper to get linotype and alloy it together. A craigslist ad in the next city over has it for 1.00$ per lb.

I'm not looking to cast gobs-I work too much to get to the range during the day, and I don't do handgunning much. Too much damage to my hands in the past to comfortably shoot handguns anymore, but I love rifle shooting still. 1000-2000 bullets will last me a year's shooting.

I haven't bought any molds yet, because I've been eyeballing Ebay for used Lyman molds-I'm on the fence about buying one because I work in a machine shop, and have my own machine shop at home...I can make the mold tooling to make molds. But, do I really want to? Not really. But I might be up for modifying molds, to make the suit my needs.

Wolfram Malukker,
Welcome to the forum.

$1 linotype would be the way I'd go (for blending with soft lead) and save your leadfree solder for future use.

Building your own Boltguns? sounds like an interesting venture, I hope you can post some photos during the process, as well as finished guns when you are done.

[lightman]

At a dollar per pound I would jump on that linotype! But the small amounts of Silver and Copper in your solder will not affect your alloy enough for you to notice. The line that Paper Puncher posted has a lot of good recipes for alloying lead.

[Wolfram Malukker]

Unfortunately, the local seller in Nashville hasn't responded. To anyone. I think he mistyped his phone number...happens all the time.

Anyway, I found 16lbs of monotype at the scrap yard today, for $0.65 a pound. There's probably another 5 or 6 tons of lead alloys up there this week.
I have an XRF gun at work, but it's currently away from the office on an alloy verification job. Won't be home until the work is done and the plant is built.

How can I figure how much monotype to add to my soft lead to make a good .44 magnum rifle bullet? I understand how to use the alloy spreadsheet, but without knowing much more than "it's either monotype of foundrytype" it's hard to figure from there.

[knifemaker]

I would mix two pounds of soft lead to one pound of your monotype and you should end up with a alloy that is very similar to clip on wheel weights. I load for both 44 mag rifle and revolver and use clip on wheel weights to cast those boolits. They have worked fine in both rifle and revolver over the years.

[William Yanda]

"....I work in a machine shop, and have my own machine shop at home...I can make the mold tooling to make molds. But, do I really want to? Not really. But I might be up for modifying molds, to make the suit my needs. " W. M.

Please accept this in the spirit in which it is written, but there is another thread inquiring; "What is your other hobby"

[Lloyd Smale]

even at 2 bucks a lb for lino the smart move would be to sell your solder for the 8-10 dollars a lb its worth and buy 4 times as much lino and alloy your sheet lead with that. The old 20-1 lead to tin alloy was mostly used back when ww's weren't readiliy available and printers still used there lead and didn't sell it. Adding tin to harden lead is economically crazy.

Wolfram Malukker,
Welcome to the forum.

$1 linotype would be the way I'd go (for blending with soft lead) and save your leadfree solder for future use.

Building your own Boltguns? sounds like an interesting venture, I hope you can post some photos during the process, as well as finished guns when you are done.

[baogongmeo]

Four and a half to one soft to mono would be close to COWW alloy plus 1% SN by the lead alloy calculator.

[Wolfram Malukker]

"....I work in a machine shop, and have my own machine shop at home...I can make the mold tooling to make molds. But, do I really want to? Not really. But I might be up for modifying molds, to make the suit my needs. " W. M.

Please accept this in the spirit in which it is written, but there is another thread inquiring; "What is your other hobby"

Well...

My other hobby is "Short Run Manufacturing" !

And gardening. I'm unmarried, no kids, with a good job and I make my hobbies pay their own bills.

[Crash_Corrigan]

A family friend had a radiator repair business here in Vegas and one day while visiting him at his shop I noticed all around 5 gallon plastic buckets full of pieces of solder and solder spatters swept off the concrete flooring. I asked him about them and he said that he pays to have that toxic metal removed and disposed of.

I asked him if he wanted to save some money and that got his attention. I went home that day with a half dozen pails of scrap solder. Over the years I removed almost 100 pails of scap before the industry went over to plastic radiators. I was feeding a pair of Smith .38/357's and the solder cast like a dream and produced very hard and light boolits.

As time went by I obtained clamped on wheel weights and my new alloy had about 2/3 WW's and 1/3 scrap solder. I was too dumb to notice any difference other than the new alloy was heavier, softer and generally was bigger in diameter than the 100% scrap solder boolits. I have now moved my alloy supply 5 times since 2003. You can see me today driving around in my Nissan Frontier lowrider. I moved again on 5/1 and I still have yet to unload the truck's payload of casting alloy.

I must say that the ride quality is wonderful with the payload but the gas mileage lost 2 MPG and the truck does not want to stop like it used to.

[Geezer in NH]

Id's sell the 32 pounds old sheet lead [it is as close to pure as can get]

Or trade it equal to WWCO each pay shipping.

Alloying it to trade IMHO ruins it's value. ML guy's love pure and today harder to find than alloys.

But it is you to lead do what you want.