How hard is your wheel weight bullet?

[williamwaco]

Here's why I ask: Lyman lists straight WW and 30:1 both as BNH 9. I just happen to have about a year's supply of WW ingots and enough bar solder to make up the batch with equivalent tin content to make .40-65 Win boolits for silhouettes. What do you think?




I was shocked by this question so I looked it up. It is correct. Lyman does list the BNH of wheel weights as BNH 9. The listing is on page 23 of the Lyman Cast bullet Handbook Fourth Edition. page 57 of the third edition.

I am surprised by this assertion. I do not believe it is correct. I have been casting with wheel weights since the 1950's.

When I first started using them, they were so hard they would sometimes shatter when you hit them with a hammer. That was our "hardness tester" If they shattered or just broke, we cut them 50/50 with scrap lead.

Over the years, they have been getting steadily softer. Most reverences I have seen the past few years list 12 BNH to 15 BNH.

Even Glen Fryxel lists 12. See:
http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Chap...Metallurgy.htm

I am a devout hoarder of wheel weights. I have almost 1000 pounds of standard ww ingots in my garage. The BNH range of those ingots is 12 to 14. It would not be accurate to average it to 13 because most of them are in the range of 14. I would report that the BNH of clip on wheel weights is "around" 14.

Since stick-ons appear to be nearly pure lead, I always segregate them. I don't know what the average would be if I melted them all together but the percentage of stick-ons is so small I doubt if it would make any difference. I find around five to six pounds of stick-ons in each five gallon bucket.

[44man]

Mine are 13 They water drop from 20 to 22 BHN.

[mdi]

All of my ww alloy(I have mixed several batches of old, used and new), tests out to 12 with my Lee tool.

[Mk42gunner]

The last batch I tested with my Lee tool was 12.5.

Robert

[Larry Gibson]

Lyman's 9 BHN for WWs has stymied me for a long time also. I also note the difference in WW hardness from days of yester year when I first started using them to what we find today. My clip on WWs of today also run 12 - 16 BHN. When 2% tin is added it jumps up to 16 - 18, pretty much the same as Lyman's #2 alloy.

Larry Gibson

[GLynn41]

mine are 12 and wd to 18-20
my cast hp are about 11 --i used a lee tester

[John Boy]

Presuming that the Brinells listed by posters are 'aged WW', I can concur with the Bhn hardness's listed except the Bhn 9, always in the reference articles & books

My stash of clip-on weights started about 12 years ago. In the beginning it was over 1500 lbs, but has since dwindled down to about 700 lbs. I stored them in batches based on initial meltings and tested each batch for up tp a year. The hardness ranged from 12.6 - 13.5 - 14.5 - 15.4 - 16. 8 and one batch at 19.2 for the weights a year or older

Never have had any lower than 12.6. As for the stick on weights, they are 5.3 Bhn ...98% Pb, .25% Antimony, 1.75% trace Ar, Si, Ca, Sn, etc.

Here's a chart you may want to file for reference:

Alloy BHN Specific Gravity
Lead 5 11.34
WW (stick on) 5.3 98% Pb, .25% Antimony, 1.75% trace Ar, Si, Ca, Sn, etc.
85.7% Pb + 14.3% WW 6.0 6 to 1 (Pb-WW)
83.3% Pb + 16.7% WW 6.2 5 to 1 (Pb-WW)
80% Pb + 20% WW 6.4 4 to 1 (Pb-WW)
75% Pb + 25% WW 6.75 3 to 1 (Pb-WW)
Tin 7 7.3
50% Pb + 50% Range scraps 7 50% Pb, 50% Range scraps
70% Pb + 30% WW 7.1 7 to 3 (Pb-WW)
60% Pb + 40% WW 7.8 6 to 4 (Pb-WW)
1 to 40 (Sn-Pb) 8 (8.5) 97.5% Pb, 2.5% Sn
Range scraps 8-10 98.1% Pb, 1.9% Antimony, .1-.2% tin
1 to 30 (Sn-Pb) 8.5-9 97% Pb, 3% Sn
½ Pb + ½ WW 9 for 45acp & 38sp
6 lb Pb + ½ lb 50/50 solder 9
1 to 24 (Sn-Pb) 9.6 95.8% Pb, 4.2% Sn
1 to 20 (Sn-Pb) 10 95% Pb, 5% Sn original alloy used in early bullets 11.0
1 to 16 (Sn-Pb) 11 94% Pb, 6% Sn
50% Lyman #2+ 50% Pb 11
1 to 10 (Sn-Pb) 11.5 91% Pb, 9% Sn 10.5
WW (clip on) 12 95.25% Pb, .5% Sn, 4% antimony, .025% arsenic 11.01
Electrotype 12 94.5% Pb, 3.0% Sn, 2.5%antimony
75% WW + 25% linotype 12.5 93.1% Pb, 1.1% Sn, 5.8% antimony
Lead shot 13 .5-1.0% arsenic, hardens when heat treated; ¼ of 1% arsenic.
80% WW + 20% stereotype14.5 92.4% Pb, 1.6% Sn, 6.0% antimony
Lyman #2 15 90% Pb, 5% Sn, 5% antimony 10.683
Taracorp Magnum 15 92% Pb, 2% Sn, 6% antimony (common in commercial lead bullets)
50% Pb + 50% Linotype 15 50% Pb+50% Linotype
Water quench ½Pb +½ WW18 some BHN variation
50% Pb + 50% Monotype 20 mix 50/50 with pure lead (for rifle)
Linotype 21 4% Pb, 4% Sn, 12% antimony 10.4
Water quenched WW 22 some BHN variation
Stereotype 23 80% Pb, 6% Sn, 14% antimony 11.3
Monotype 28 72% PB, 9% Sn, 19% antimony
Oven treated WW 30-32 heat treating with arsenic present to about 30 to 32 BHN
Foundry 32 62% Pb, 15% Sn, 23% antimony
Antimony 50 6.68

[pergoman]

I smelted nearly #300 on Sunday and have been checking the hardness of several ingots with a dropped ball bearing and my LBT tester. They are now about 13-14 bh using either test method. I wonder what they will be in a week?

[alfloyd]

My wheel weights almost always measure at 13 BNH with my Lee tester. I have checked about 6 different batches over the years and they all check within .5 BNH of each other.

Lafaun

[Bret4207]

My stash is mostly 25-30 years old and averages 11ish when air cooled and left to sit for a week or 3.

[DLCTEX]

Won't the boolits cast be back to the softest level of the original casting of the ingot and start the hardening process over? Most of my boolits do not wait very long to be shot. I do have some that are five or six years old, though.

[462]

That number appears in Lyman's 3rd edition, too. My boolits, cast of 100% wheel weights, measure (Lee) in the 14 BHN range.

[TCLouis]

I try to alloy up 300-400 lbs in a batch and mine has checked out 14.5 on several different occasions.

One more batch left to melt this winter and then I am in WW trouble.

[JeffinNZ]

Mine run 9-10 BHN. Never more. I sort the clip on and stick on and batch seperately.

[MtGun44]

Back in the days when that book was written, there were very few ways to test the
hardness of wwts, so they could get away with this. Now that there are multiple brands of
inexpensive hardness testers, we all know that NOW this is inaccurate.

If it was ever true, I'm not sure. Bret's old wwts show a noticable bit softer than what I
have for my wwt metal, about 12-14. I'm guessing it may have changed over the last four
or five decades.

Bill

[Marlin Junky]

Yep, 13-ish when cast hot, air cooled and aged. Mostly collected from an independent shop that does a lot of truck tires; i.e., big WW's.

MJ

[Lefty SRH]

I don't mean to change the subject of this thread, but since we are discussing WW hardness. Whats a good hardness to aim for when casting HP boolits? As far as expansion and staying together. I've if the alloy is too hard the boolits pedals will break off during expansion.

[Larry Gibson]

I don't mean to change the subject of this thread, but since we are discussing WW hardness. Whats a good hardness to aim for when casting HP boolits? As far as expansion and staying together. I've if the alloy is too hard the boolits pedals will break off during expansion.

The best alloy composition will depend on several things;

GC or PB bullet
Bullet design/caliber
Impact velocity range
Diameter of the HP
Depth of the HP
HP cavity shape
Expected amount of expansion

BHN is only half the equation. The malleability of the alloy is the other half. A good couple alloys to start testing with are WW + 2% tin/lead at 50/50 and 16-1 lead - tin. I test in sopping wet newsprint and shoot a "reference" load/bullet" into the same test material to compare the performance of the HP cast bullet to. If expansion is not enough then I increase the % of lead in the alloys to make it softer and more malleable.

Knowing what particular bullet you have in mind and the expected velocity will help get a more specific answer.

Larry Gibson

[geargnasher]

I think all of you who mentioned age-hardening effect of air-cooled, clip-on wheel weight alloys have the answer to the numbers published in the Lyman 3rd edition.

I've read that book several times, certain parts several dozen times, and if there is any mention of age-hardening in there at all I sure missed it. I'm under the impression that those responsible for publishing the alloy information may have used mostly already published information for commonly known metals such as pure and type metals, but for WW who knows. If they tested this themselves, there's no telling how they arrived at the numbers.

The Lyman alloy could have been a mix of stick-on and clip-on, (not sure how many sticky weights were around at the time, though), could have been measured within a day of casting, or could have just been a soft batch.

Keep in mind that the 9 bhn data is coming from the same source that suggests to size to groove dimension for most guns, to keep micro-groove Marlin loads under 1600 fps for best accuracy, and to cast most rifle loads fromt straight linotype. NOT the authority, IMO.

I have WW from all sorts of eras, and concur that the old ones (1960s or so) were very hard compared to most of those available today, my samples check at over 17 bhn with my Lee tester. I've averaged those from the last 10 years or so by smelting in big batches and they come out 13-14 with my Lee tester after a month. When 1% tin is added and allowed to age for a total of two months after casting, they end up around 15 bhn air-cooled and 20-22 water-quenched from a hot mould.

Gear

[jandbn]

Is it possible some of the measured BHNs in this thread are ingot measured rather than boolit measured? If so, what, if any difference is there when comparing both where the ingot and boolit are of the same stock and both are age hardened for a sufficient amount of time for the BHN of each to stabilize?

[hydraulic]

I have been shooting straight WW's in my BPCR .45-70 and have had good accuracy. Many of my companion shooters insist that best results with Black powder come with alloy of 16-1, but I have shot many bullets of that alloy and I can not see any difference in accuracy. The above posts confirm my conclusion that WW's are not that much harder than 16-1.

[cajun shooter]

I have collected my WW's from South Louisiana all my life and have never found any that were more than 9-10 BHN. This has been discussed before and I can only say that the tire companies may have some input on how they are made.
John Boy and I have compared notes in the past on this subject. He said that I must be reading my gauge wrong at one time. I use a Cabin Tree and I have lino type that test out at 22BHN so I would say that my tool is reading correctly.
One thought that did enter this empty space sitting on my shoulders was that maybe the WW's that had the possibility of being exposed to snow and road salts were made with a harder BHN than those for the deep South.
Now I know that the effects of the salt on the roads would be hard on a softer metal. Just a theory. Later David

[Shuz]

How hard is your wheel weight boolit?

It depends on the composition of the wheel weight batch. I have been scrounging wheel weights to use for boolit alloy for nearly 50 years now. I have found that hardness of clip-on weights can vary from Bhn 9 to Bhn 14 when air cooled. I have no idea how many different "brands" of wheel weights are in a given batch and based on the differing hardness values,I assume they must use different proportions of lead,tin, antimony and other trace elements. Therefore whenever I "smelt" wheelweights, I segregate the clip-on's from the stick-ons and then cast sample boolits from my smelting pot just to use as hardness testers.
The secret here is to make sure your hardness testing sample boolits are made from a mould that is up to temperature otherwise the mould will act similar to water quenching and give you an erroneous hardness reading.

[BCOWANWHEELS]

I never knew there was so much to it to make bullits