Back to casting after 34 year hiatus

[farmbif]

sounds like your in good shape if you get all those buckets full. you have lots of options. all ive ever used in 380, 9mm and 40 s&w From mild to max velocity was straight clip on wheels weights with a bit of tin added. so maybe a pound or so of Lino added to 10 pounds wheel weights would give you a bit of that added tin and you will be shooting all you want. and with all those alloys you could experiment with Lino and pure lead in all sorts of proportions. there is no wrong answer and all of it will work

[Apple Man]

Well I got three 5 gallons pails of scrap plumbers lead, a bucket of stained glass came. This rendered down to 88 ingots averaging around 2.4 #s.

[Apple Man]

I do have to laugh at myself. The old proverb about don't ASSume anything?

Well I got half a 5 gallon pail of black powder round ball and maxi balls. I figured this would be dead soft lead? So I mixed a batch of these with linotype in a 2:1 mix, then did a scratch test on the boolits. They came in @ BNH of 16-18. I added 2.5#s of dead soft lead to the pot and they dropped to BNH 15 so another 2.5#s of soft lead was added and got them to about BNH12.

[WRideout]

For years I used straight WW for both rifle and pistol and it worked perfectly. Nowadays I use homogenized range scrap with "some" tin added for fillout. For 38 and 45 you don't need to get too fancy. It would probably cause more trouble by being too hard, rather than too soft. You do have a pretty good collection, though. With that much lino, you could think about selling some via the swapping and selling subforum to help fund your hobby.

Wayne

[Land Owner]

Read, read, and read some more, especially Fryxell's Ingot to Target. His suggestion of 49-49-2 percent PB-WW-Sn has served me well, though I am neither chasing speed nor hyper-accuracy.

Hits on target make sense. I shoot for fun and hope I never have to shoot for survival, though shots on target are the means for survival. "Across a room" handgun distance doesn't require a "super-accurate" gun or rounds, though making accurate rounds and practicing improves proficiency when life and limb are on the line.