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View Full Version : Things that make ya go Hmmmmmm..........



JohnH
05-24-2005, 10:32 PM
I have a Lyman cast bullet manual copyright 1973. In the section on lead alloys it shows wheel weights as containing 9% antimony, their current manual and booklets show 4%. Used to be very common to add tin at a rate of 2% or so, still is in fact, but more and more I read that folks don't add tin at all. Could it be that the current success of adding no tin to wheel weights is a result of less antimony?

felix
05-24-2005, 10:58 PM
Correct, John. ... felix

buck1
05-24-2005, 10:58 PM
I think some are just casting hotter. adding tin to ww just makes them easier to cast. I and others have cast many good bullets without adding tin. BUUUUT, tin gives you more keepers and makes casting soo much nicer.
With less surface tenshion( from tin) bullets fill out better and what antimony you do have is alloyed well.
But others here could better answer I'm sure. ....buck

44man
05-24-2005, 11:08 PM
I don't add anything to WW's for most boolits but if I add antimony for harder hunting boolits, I add a small amount of tin so they cast better. Felix and Buck are both correct. I get good boolits from straight WW's.

Willbird
05-25-2005, 06:41 AM
I have cast pure WW, but for my LY-Keith 429421 and several other moulds I have found that a ghost of tin makes a huge differance on fillout when running bottom pour, it is a tiny amount of Tin I add, 1-2 strips of lino in a 22 lb pot. Maybe it is in my head but it seems to make the sacred silver stream flow much smoother. With pure WW you can pile a sprue up like butter on a warm day, on a multi cavity mold it almost looks like YOU were Tig welding :-) , with just that trace of tin the sprue lays flat then it looks like I was Tig welding ;-)

Bill

Bass Ackward
05-25-2005, 06:42 AM
I have a Lyman cast bullet manual copyright 1973. In the section on lead alloys it shows wheel weights as containing 9% antimony, their current manual and booklets show 4%. Used to be very common to add tin at a rate of 2% or so, still is in fact, but more and more I read that folks don't add tin at all. Could it be that the current success of adding no tin to wheel weights is a result of less antimony?

John,

That is absolutely correct. That and expense. (casters are cheap) When I quote that my ACWW bullets are 14BHN, that is because I added a lot of WWs from the 60s. WW kept changing throughout the years to where they are today.

A lot of people? Well it all depends on how you cast and what you cast for. Some people add tin for the benifit of running their pots and molds cooler. If you are a ladle caster, believe me, you appreciate tin. Molding 22s or Keith type bullets, you worship tin. The second reason is that I use the same batches / loads to hunt with. Tin counters the brittlness effect of antimony. Since I want expanding not breaking bullets, I add tin. Lynotype is famous for breaking up. If you added the same amount of tin as you have in antimony, it would be just fine. Except that it would be more valuable than gold.

But the biggest reason I add tin is because all my additives are done at the batch level when I am smelting. Nothing but "pure" lead is added to the pot if I want handgun mix. Then any extra melt is drained from the pot and stored seperately, only for handgun mix. I store several batches that are probably all slightly different. Then when I add lead to my pot, I take one, one pound bar from each batch of 5 batches and only those 5 batches. This ensures .... that my mix is always 100% the same as long as those batches hold out. This way, I am not fooling around adjusting loads because my bullets are all the same. Plus, I learn how that specific mix works for expansion and can adjust my minimum and maximum ranges pretty close by guessing instead of all the time using the wet newsprint / milk jug routine.

beagle
05-25-2005, 08:44 AM
I find that I can get pretty good bullets out of WWs with a bar of pure lead added. This is on pistol bullets.

Straight WWs usually give me pretty good rifle bullets except for the Louverin designswith a bunch of bands and these usually cast better with a sweetening of tin./beagle

Leftoverdj
05-25-2005, 02:34 PM
I add tin "just because". In the long ago, I ran into a couple of batches of WW that simply would not fill out until I added tin. I cleanup and make ingots in batches of 125-135 pounds and would rather throw in a pound or so of tin than take a chance on having to redo a batch. Some, maybe most, of those batches might do perfectly well without the tin but I ain't interested enough to bother to find out. I know it's gonna work with the tin in it, so in it goes.