Will this alloy be too soft?

[HDS]

There's a company selling bars of lead they say is suitable for bullets, it's 99.5% lead and 0.5% antimony. No tin in it at all.

Is this going to be suitable as a lead boolit, or will I need more tin or antimony? I want to cast .44mag boolits with this.

[bobthenailer]

I would consider it as pure lead and alloy it as such, you will have to add antomony & tin to the mix with a formula for a harder BHN in relationship to the velocity level desired .

[mold maker]

You didn't mention the price per pound. Most any lead alloy can be made to cast usable boolits, with addition of other metals. (Sn, Sb, or Pb)
Pure lead is trading on the world market at $1.09. Scrap lead (sheet and pipe) is selling for $.60. WWs if ya can find it, is .40-.50/lb.
With a few exceptions, .5% of anything won't effect the usability, for boolits.

[HDS]

I think it's almost a 20lbs ingot for 25 euros, it's 3 euros a kilo I think. They also sell 10mm lead wire with a 10% antimony content, not sure about what that costs.

Lead is not really the problem for me, but I can't find WVs because lead ones are outlawed (can't buy new ones) but tireshops like their lead WVs so they re-use the lead, the ones I asked wouldn't give it away. So I am out of luck on finding properly alloyed lead.

I got 50 kilos of pure lead already, but I got nothing to alloy it with, been scouring for scrap and maybe cheap pewter and whatnot with little luck. I figure tin is more important than antimony and just a percent or so of it would've been enough.

EDIT: Only source of tin I have found are these 0.6kg (maybe 1.2lbs?) ingots made from 92% tin, 6" antimony and 2% copper, they are 27 euros per piece.

[Larry Gibson]

If the price is right you can add tin and have an excellent alloy for .44 Magnum bullets. Keith prefered a 16-1 alloy, lead - tin, so by adding tin that will work nicely. I use a 16-1 alloy for numerous cast bullets including .44 Magnum bullets. Just consider the cost of the alloy + the cost of tin and determine if it is worth it to you.

Larry Gibson

[HDS]

It's not the best price then, the same company sells 99.7% pure lead ingots in 40kg shape, thats almost 100lbs of lead, at whatever the global lead price is atm + sales tax. From what I am hearing here then there is no point in paying premium for half a percent of antimony.

[HDS]

Well looks like I got lucky, got my hands on 40lbs of wheel weights, however they are a mixed bag and I have no idea how many are lead or not.

[bobthenailer]

if you water drop your bullets from the mould into a 5 gallon bucket or larger [ i use a 7 gallon] of water you can mix the WW 50/50 with pb and get a bhn of approx 15 to 16 bhn . you can also do 75% ww with 25% PB . i strongly recomend to size right after casting as they get hard to push through the sizer die if you wait until the next day.

[HDS]

15-16 BHN should be good enough for a regular 44mag load if I remember correctly.

[stubshaft]

In answer to your initial question, NO, it is not going to be hard enough. if it is cheap enough you can alloy it with tin to get to 15 or 16 to 1.

[HDS]

BTW anyone know what lead composition airgun pellets have?

[HDS]

I got lucky again today. Went to the place who sold the lead ingots, didn't buy any lead but I did find 2.4 kilos, or I think 5lbs, of pure tin ingots. 39 bucks for that. Should be enough to alloy lead for a good long while at 1/40 ratio.

[HDS]

Can anyone tell me how little antimony and tin I should use with pure lead if I want to water quench to get a hardness of around 11-13 BHN? I'm not after ultra hard bullets or looking to load the hotetst rounds possible, and 11BHN was good enoughf or elmer keith too.

So what I am looking at is saving my precious tin and antimony alloys as much as possible through the use of water quenching.

[cajun shooter]

I would use the WW's that you have and some shot for loading shotshells. If they are available in Finland then the Magnum shot would be the one to use. This with some of your lead should make some good shooting bullets. Check out the stickies by Glen Fryxell for your mix.The ww's are not that hard to sort, just time consuming. Your may use a magnet to find the steel ones and the bad will float on top while smelting or be marked FE.

[HDS]

Shotshell shot is available, and very expensive. It's not really a solution I wish to pursue, buying ingots of tin and antimony via german ebay and pure lead 90lbs ingots from this local place I mentioned would be far more profitable.

But, the matter at hand now is using what I got most effectively. I was thinking 75% lead, 24% WW + 1% tin, according to the calculator it should come out at around 10BHN, water quenching that might get me to where I want to be. I do not know if there is a certain threshold for antimony or tin though before quenching has an effect?

My first priority here is using up my main stash of lead, without wasting precious alloy or wasting time on making super hard 15-20BHN bullets for performance I don't want or need at the moment.