? ww hardness

[gunslinger20]

I smelted ww into ingots in a muffin pan and the ingots seem to be alot softer than the ww. You can mark the ingots easily with a finger nail but not the ww. I didnt over heat the ww as i just barely liquified the melt, is this normal. I didnt use any stick on ww so i dont think i got any pure pb in the mix.

[BABore]

They're fine. Right after pouring them they will be quite soft. Almost as soft as pure. Check them tomorrow. WW's vary in makeup acrossed the country. Older WW's had more antimony and arsenic in them. Big truck weights also run a bit harder. I sort all of the stick-on WW-s from my buckets and treat them as Pb. My sorted WW's run 12-13 bhn aircooled and close to 28 heat treated. Being in the north, I get alot of truck weights.

[RobS]

BABore brings up the point of age hardening with soft readings shortly after smelting/casting. Generally, air cooled WW will range between 10-12 BHN once aged (approximately 10-14 days).

[gunslinger20]

when I remelt to cast will the boolits go back to the soft stage and have to be aged for full hardness. Are all stick ons pure pb, the reason i ask is cuz when i cast ingots i run as cool as i can to liquify so as to not get anything but ww pb. beings i sort out the non painted ww that are obviasly pb for alloying but i have a lot fo stick ons that are painted that dont seem to want to melt. I know pure has a higher melting point (621* I think)

[sargenv]

I tend to water quench all my ingots so I have an idea what they will be when I cast em.. and to aid in stacking them faster since I know they are cooled down.. When you melt them back down, they will start the soft -> hard cycle all over again.

[RobS]

Stick-on are close, but not pure lead for the most part. However as with the clip ons there are other stick-ons that are showing up which are zink or a mixed alloy of some sort that is harder. Run your smelter at 650 or so and the zink weights that you may miss while sorting will float to the top and not melt into the alloy. Stick-ons run around 6-8 BHN currently and pure lead is 5 BHN (actually a bit less). Painted wheel weights don't necessarily mean they are not normal clip-ons or stick-ons.

As for casting from your ingots, yes the alloy will age harden again, meaning it will be soft directly after casting boolits and then become harder in the days to come and stabilize for all practical purposes at a week or two.

[gunslinger20]

when you water quench the ingots and remelt to cast if you dont water quench the boolits will they be the same as if you didnt water quench at all?
Thanks for the help in advance

[RobS]

when you water quench the ingots and remelt to cast if you dont water quench the boolits will they be the same as if you didnt water quench at all?
Thanks for the help in advance

Yes the boolits would be the same hardness from either an air cooled ingot or a water quenched ingot. I really don't like water quenching ingots as there can be trapped water in the ingot and putting one into a hot melted pot of alloy can result in an eruption of the water and alloy blowing out of the pot as the water abruptly expands.

[gunslinger20]

Im going to try one for a sample of the hardness

[John Boy]

Generally, air cooled WW will range between 10-12 BHN once aged (approximately 10-14 days). Rob - I WISH! I have 2 large aged air cooled batches of WW's, about 600 or 700 lbs. One is 13.5 Bhn and the other is 15.4 Bhn. Never have I come across a 2 week old batch in the 10-12 Bhn range. Would be happy as the proverbial pig if they were because I'm a BPCR shooter

[gunslinger20]

Well I smelted my stick ons today and cast some boolits with the leftovers, the mix was pretty close to pure pb but it didnt have the tipical blue gold hue of pure pb. The boolits were very shiney like pure pb. I also cast ww boolits and water quenched they definately got hard.

[RobS]

Rob - I WISH! I have 2 large aged air cooled batches of WW's, about 600 or 700 lbs. One is 13.5 Bhn and the other is 15.4 Bhn. Never have I come across a 2 week old batch in the 10-12 Bhn range. Would be happy as the proverbial pig if they were because I'm a BPCR shooter

Is this your ingot readings or your bullet readings. Also cast alloy temp makes a difference along with ambient temps. The other day I cast some boolits in the cold garage of 18 degrees from pretty hot alloy temp and they ran at 15 BHN where as they typically run at 12.5 to 13 BHN.

All is not lost though, I brought them inside and placed them in my small covection toaster oven at 325 degrees for an hour and left them in there to cool at room temp, which annealed them back down to 13 BHN. In my oven 340 degrees will bring them down to 11.5 BHN or so. I anneal my 45 ACP hollow points down to 10.5 to 11 BHN for expansion.

[onesonek]

Will air cooled ingot's not also read softer than boolits (after aging) due the larger mass cooling slower

[lwknight]

The WW ingots that I have poured stay soft. I mean like slightly harder than pure lead
even after weeks have past.
I cast 25 pound bricks and they do cool very slowly.

[geargnasher]

I cast one-pound ingots from several different mould designs, one thing I've learned is NEVER believe that ingot hardness has anything to do with the hardness of the boolits cast from it unless you're using known alloys that do not respond to heat-treatment (i.e. pure lead or lead/tin binary), then you know what to expect anyway. Ingots cool at a much different rate than boolits, and the ingot mould temps swing wildly under most smelting circumstances so that "colors" the surface hardness of the ingot considerably.

Just melt the end of of an ingot into a ladle, preheat a mould to casting temp, and pour couple of samples. Better yet, cast some samples from each batch of ingots you "smelt" while you're smelting them, keep record of when they were cast, and track the hardness over a month period. You'll learn lots about testing, alloying, heat-treating, and the content of your ingots by doing this.

Gear

[John Boy]

Is this your ingot readings or your bullet readings.
Rob, both. No, I don't slump any of my WW bullets because they contain Sb. Instead, I alloy them down with Pb or if desired with Sn to have them fill out more in the mold. The best WW bullet alloy I've shot with black powder is WW @ Bhn 15.4 with a 1/2% of Sn added to the mix. Here's my best using this mix, 14 out of 25 bullets in the jagged hole ...
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd220/Meadowmucker/Targets/LymanPostell100Yds.jpg

A gun crank, Dan Theodore did a test comparing 1:16 and various 'WW' type alloys ... no As. He determined the best accuracy @ 200yds was obtained with a 98:1:1 - Pb:Sn:Sb alloy. The complete article is in the current issue of the Black Powder Cartridge News

[fredj338]

I tend to water quench all my ingots so I have an idea what they will be when I cast em.. and to aid in stacking them faster since I know they are cooled down.. When you melt them back down, they will start the soft -> hard cycle all over again.
News flash, when you remelt them they are no longer the wc BHN. SO adding a wc ingot that is say 18BHN to pure lead does not mean your alloy will be any harder than if they were ac ww.:wink: