Range Waste Alloy Blend advice

[monkeyhanger]

Hi folks, i am the range maintenance guy at my local shooting range. The bullit catcher is a steel plate design and collects mainly rimfire and factory cast lead bullits. I dig this out, smelt it, flux it and cast it into clean ingots using the lee 4 cavity ingot mould. We also have, seperate air gun pellet catchers, which collect the soft lead air gun pellets. I then smelt these soft lead pellets down, into lee ingots aswell. My question is, What ratio of range waste ingots, to soft lead air pellet ingots, would give a nice medium velocity alloy blend, with good mould fill, to be used in .38/.357, .44 mag and .45 colt ? Will adding soft pure lead to rimfire/factory cast range waste, give a better alloy? Any advice appreciated.

[Czech_too]

I use range lead, primarily handgun/rimfire, in all my loading, even though I have WW & type metal on hand, so I would use what you have by itself. The only thing I add, if I'm not getting good fill out, is some tin/pewter. Save the soft lead for another use.

[unclemikeinct]

I miss the old days when wheel weights were free & made really good bullets. Now you need to scrounge up what you can & make the best of it to save $$$ on shooting. Try the mixed range scrap as is to find out if it fills the molds & does not lead the barrels. If it works you are in a great place. I'm down to only a few hundred pounds of the old wheel weights. I mix in about 30 lbs of soft lead on the 100 lb. batch with about 2 lbs of scrap pewter. The bullets look better than the old WW cast bullets.. Please note they are not as hard but work really well for mid range velocity pistol loads.

[robg]

just add a bit of tin .if the molds fill out well and are close to the mold weight your good to go.

[Conditor22]

the composition/hardness will vary by the amount of what was shot into the traps (could be anywhere between 8 - 16 bhn)

What I would suggest is to test the hardness of the ingots either the day after you cast ingot to get a close idea or wait a couple of weeks to get a better idea of how hard they are (this is what I do).

I use pencils to test the hardness, (gets close enough for me) then mark the ingots with a sharpie

then I decide how hard an alloy I want and blend that ingots by the numbers

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...-testing-trick

this will give you a ballpark figure to shoot at

[fredj338]

range scrap can be anything. So pure + range scrap @ 1-1 would still be pretty soft. I would look to clip ww alloy or hardball or lino to add to the pure stuff. I have a sim issue with about 500# of sheet lead I recently fell into. I do have harder alloy to mix with though.

[Winger Ed.]

You can usually spot the cast boolits by their lube grooves in what you recover.
Most of what melts out of jackets, .22s, swaged lead factory stuff, & pellets is so soft it might as well be pure.

Depending on your range, there may not be very many cast boolits in there at all.
If that's the case, I'd melt it all together, then check the hardness, and if it doesn't cast well,
add some wheel weights or tin/solder until it does.

Unless you're really pumping up the speed-
With a good lube or powder coat you should be fine.

[dtknowles]

I would not mix the two scrap streams. I would keep the segrigaged. Treat the air gun pellets as pure and use the other scrap as is if it cast OK.

Tim

[AndyC]

I shoot almost all range-scrap with a little added tin (1-2% by weight for proper fillout of the cavities) in my handgun bullets - 9mm, .45acp and .357 mag. Bhn is around 9 - works for me, but I'm not pushing the 357 super-fast, either.

[LenH]

Believe it or don't but airgun pellets have a bit of antimony in them. I saw a documentary from the H&N factory in Germany. The guy asked about the lead pigs
they had in stock and the room was quite impressive as to the amount of lead they go through in a month. The guy asked if it was pure and the factory guy
said that it had antimony in it buy wouldn't give details. But said they ship world wide and the pellets need to stand up to shipping.

[centershot]

I would not mix the two scrap streams. I would keep the segrigaged. Treat the air gun pellets as pure and use the other scrap as is if it cast OK.

Tim

I agree with Tim, keep them separate. If the alloyed scrap doesn't fill out properly adding the pure lead pellet scrap will only make the problem worse. You may need to scrounge up some tin or pewter to end up with an acceptable alloy. The commercial casters use Hardball alloy, 92-6-2, which is harder than need be. Something for you to consider; For most handgun and low velocity rifle boolits, 30:1 alloy works really well.

[monkeyhanger]

Thanks for the replies. After i have dig out the range scrap, i sieve it into two piles , large chunks of smashed bullits , which i use for recasting and the other pile is fine lead powder/dust. Is this powder/dust of any use or should i just weigh it in at the local scrap yard?

[Conditor22]

Lead powder dust is possibly from/part of harder boolits hitting metal (factory cast usually between 15-16 bhn)-- great alloy

IF possible separate and smelt the factory cast & dust, rimfire, and pellets into 3 separate groups

WEAR A MASK WHEN DIGGING OUT THE LEAD AND SHAKE OUT YOUR OUTER GARMENTS BEFORE TAKING THE MASK OFF

LEAD DUST AND FUMES FROM SMELTING LEAD AT TOO HIGH A TEMPERATURE ARE HAZARDOUS

you can use the factory boolits for hardening your alloy

[monkeyhanger]

Yes i wear a mask and overalls when cleaning the range down and i have the ventilation extractor fan running aswell. The rimfire bullets will be mixed in with the hard cast centrefire, so no chance to separate. Air gun pellets are collected separetly and make good muzzle loading balls

[monkeyhanger]

Today folks, i decided to have a casting session, using the range waste bars i had made. On went the Lee electric furnace and in went 4 or 5 bars of clean range waste. I got the melt up to temperature with a nice clean surface, then i decided to flux the melt, giving it a good stirr with a Lee lead ladle . Normally i just start casting bullets and drop the odd ingot in when the alloy level gets low. What an improvement ! Better quality bullets, no spout clogging and a much better flow of alloy. Thats my tip from now on, even if you think your ingots are spotless, every time you top the pot up..... flux, stirr and skim.