Today I did a forum search with the key words "Range scrap hardness" and had a great time reading some wonderful old posts which first of all mostly answered the question I was searching and brought up a number of other questions and answers and some other thoughts which brings me here with this question.
This question is regarding mixing the different quantities and qualities of the alloy I have to best extend it's use. I fully understand that recycled alloy is a witches brew unless analyzed and that the hardness will very dependent upon content of the collected scrap used. Just for ease of discussion I will use the term Clip on wheel weight; COWW, Stick on; SOWW, and Range scrap; RS. With this I am going to assume that SOWW is near pure lead with maybe a small amount of antimony, while COWW is harder with tin, antimony and trace arsenic. Then the RS could be almost anywhere depending on it's composition.
This is how I have my ingots poured and separated. Now the reason for the question is because of the fact that Wheel Weights are becoming harder and harder to find and come by. I have cast and shot straight COWW alloy and in pistols it has done well of course. So I am looking for advice as to the best way to stretch this COWW alloy out as I have not tried straight RS.
If this were you how would you proceed to mix these together? What proportions? Equal parts of all three? Mix the wheel weight alloy 50/50 and leave out the range scrap?
This is what I have on hand now; 31# Range scrap, 18# of SOWW and 70# of COWW. Best I can tell w/o a tester is that the RS appears to be somewhere in-between the two WW's in hardness.