Mixing wheel weights with pure lead

[foxtrapper]

Try to get my clip on wheel weight stash to go a little further. I do have a large amount of pure lead on hand. Bullets cast will be for handgun gas checked cartridges. Will be used for target and hunting. Trying to figure out if it would be ok to mix 50/50 ? I do have linotype to sweeten the mixture if it’s needed. Thanks

[Land Owner]

I melt 49-lbs of molten WW with 49-lbs of base-metal lead and that result is further melted with 2-lbs (a weighted percentage) of tin to achieve a 49-49-2 percent Pb-WW-Sn mix, which projectiles work very well for me.

[WRideout]

Since you are using GC boolits, you can probably get by with diluting the COWW considerably. The COWW basically contributes antimony for hardening, and your boolits won't need to be very hard.

Wayne

[Budzilla 19]

50/50 ww/ pure with 2% tin does everything for me! Handgun, rifle, powder coat them all, no problems so far. 22 caliber slugs are the exception to this, they are cast from Hardball. Try that 50/50 with 2% tin, I think you’ll like it. As always, just my opinions.

[foxtrapper]

Thank you gents! I don’t have any tin on hand but I do have linotype and a bag of #9 shot. Don’t know if those are a complete replacement for the tin or not.

[BK7saum]

No, they are not. They will add more antimony to mix and harden the alloy.

You could use less tin. than that. Melt your weighed ww alloy (49 lbs). Add 1 lb roll of lead free solder or 1lb of pewter, then cut with 50 lbs pure lead. That saves you half the cost of the tin and puts the antimony and tin in more equal percentages.

[foxtrapper]

No, they are not. They will add more antimony to mix and harden the alloy.

You could use less tin. than that. Melt your weighed ww alloy (49 lbs). Add 1 lb roll of lead free solder or 1lb of pewter, then cut with 50 lbs pure lead. That saves you half the cost of the tin and puts the antimony and tin in more equal percentages.

Thank you sir! So far 25lbs of ww and 25lbs of pb combined and cast into corn bread mould. I take the tin doesn’t soften or harden the melt but helps with filling out the bullet cavity? Can’t believe how quickly I got this done this morning!

[243winxb]

Cast a few bullets. Is the as cast diameter large enough? If no, add linotype till diameters are ok.

Your alloy is to soft for my liking. I always add 2" of Rotometals linotype bar, to my Lee 10 pound pot.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

SNIP>>>

Trying to figure out if it would be ok to mix 50/50 ?

you will be OK, until you aren't.
"OK" doesn't really get very specific for us to help you.
.
What I can say is, I only use GCs on pistol boolits when I am loading them near MAX pressures (41 Mag, 30Kpsi to 40Kpsi), and then I am using a harder alloy. You will be "OK" with a softer alloy, but you may loose some accuracy.

[foxtrapper]

you will be OK, until you aren't.
"OK" doesn't really get very specific for us to help you.
.
What I can say is, I only use GCs on pistol boolits when I am loading them near MAX pressures (41 Mag, 30Kpsi to 40Kpsi), and then I am using a harder alloy. You will be "OK" with a softer alloy, but you may loose some accuracy.

Gotcha! I did go ahead and cast the MP- 41 hammer. In the four cavity mold - two solid and two hollow point penta pins. Bullets filled out great. Now to order some powder coat from smoke ! Powder coating with be a new experience for me. I think I’ll give the wet method a try first! Thanks again to all! I’d post a pick but I’m having trouble doing so from a iPad

[35 Rem]

The 50/50 mix of Clip on Wheel Weights with pure lead plus 1 or 2 % Tin is what I use for practically everything. Plain base handgun or gas check rifle for deer hunting. Like the original poster, I started experimenting with mixing to try to stretch my stash of CoWW's further. I had about 2,000 lbs but that is not guaranteed to be a lifetime supply. I had also stashed away about 1,000lbs of pure lead over the years not knowing if it would ever be of use to me or not since conventional casting wisdom had always claimed pure lead was only of use for muzzle loaders. I approached the mixing sort of the way you would with swimming in a mountain stream in the Springtime, step in just a little bit at a time. Finally got to the point of mixing CoWW/Pure lead 50/50 and amazingly it worked and now my CoWW supply is effectively doubled so now I am buying up any soft lead I can get.

I would recommend going to Rotometal and taking the plunge for a batch of pure Tin. Get the sheared wire pieces and buy just enough to get the free Shipping. That gets about 1 lb free. Those little pieces weigh about 1/2 ounce each making it easy to measure out how many you need for a pot of lead. Then when you need a bit of Tin to toughen up rifle hunting bullets or to get better fill out you have it there and ready.

[Bigslug]

You wheel weights will let you run .357 / .44 velocities as is.

A gas check will let you soften that up and keep your velocities.

Linotype is kind of like wheel weight on steroids in that it has roughly three times as much antimony as tin. . .it just has a higher percentage of those compared to the lead. So if you're diluting wheel weights 50/50 with lead, adding linotype is really just going to steer you back toward wheel weights, so it becomes a matter of what happy medium you're looking for.

The #9 shot I had tested was 3% antimony, 97% lead, and didn't read anything else. YMMV, but I wouldn't count on any higher antimony percentage than that in the smaller birdshot sizes, or any other ingredients besides possibly arsenic.

Antimony makes hard. Tin makes tough and helps with fillout. The ability to add tin alone is where you're going to find your versatility.

[Winger Ed.]

1/2 & 1/2 is one of the all time universal favorites from way on back in the old days.
As Lead wheel weights are drying up, I'd use the least amount of them as I could get away with.

I shoot a lot of .38s & .45ACP that doing 1,000 fps at best.
For that, I'll add just enough wheel weights to get a good flow and fill out.
I don't have an exact recipe, but it's about 25% WW, maybe even a little less.

[Larry Gibson]

For a softer alloy add 2% tin to the COWWs. That will balance the antimony content with the tin and produce the sub metal SnSb which will stay in solution with the lead even during solidification. Then make small batches of 50/50 (50 alloy/ 50 pure lead), 40/60 and 30/70 and cast some bullets of each. GC, size and lube them. Then load them over your favorite load for the bullet/cartridge and test fire them.

If you want to test for expansion I suggest a bundle of sopping wet newsprint.

[gwpercle]

My free unlimited supply of wheel weights retired from the tire business ...
Looking to stretch my COWW supply I discovered 50-50 mix with soft scrap lead gives a nice hand gun boolit . It usually has a bhn around 8-9 and plain base can be pushed up to 900 fps ... If I'm going to 1,000 + fps ... I use a gas check .
Makes good 30 cal. rifle boolits for hunting too .
Boolits don't have to be hard ... size/fit is much more important than hardness alone ... and most folks use boolits that are harder than they actually need to be !
Gary

[fredj338]

I do 1-1 for pb handgun that are PC, up to about 1200fps, 9mm-hvy 45colt. I have no issues with accuracy or leading.

[243winxb]

Lyman- While antimony is used to harden the bullet, the mixture of tin is critical, for while antimony mixes with lead in its molten state, it will not remain mixed when it solidifies. If tin were not added, we would have pure antimony crystals surrounded by pure lead. A bullet of this type , while it feels hard , would certainly lead the bore and eliminate all potential for accuracy.. In a lead-tin-antimony mixture, the antimony crystals will be present just the same, but they will be imbedded in a lead-tin mixutre. As the bullet cools the tin will form around the antimony-lead keeping your bullets from leading the bore.

[Willie T]

I load .45 acp, .38 special, & .357 magnum @ .38 velocity with 50/50 (clip on/stick on wheel weights). Never pushed it much past 800 fps or gas checked it though. It casts fine for me after the mold gets pretty hot. I would also mention that I have to cast pretty fast to keep the mold temperature up or I get round corners.
Willie