bullets coming out light

[boomfactor]

i had some lead ingots given to me and was told that they were straight wheel weights. im casting a lee 452-230 truncated cone mold,they are consistently coming out 210-213, and they seem really hard compared to straight lead ,what do you think i can do to get the proper weight? or what am i doing wrong? newbie at casting here. thanks

[ku4hx]

Increasing the percentage of lead in the alloy will cause boolit weight to go up. But WW is already about 95% lead so you're not going to get much heavier if you went with even pure lead. If your mold using straight WW alloy are casting almost 20 grains light, I'd say either your mold is mislabeled or your alloy doesn't have as much lead as you think.

It's common for a mold to drop boolits that are a not what's advertised, but yours is dropping boolits that are as much as 9% off. I'd suspect the alloy is not straight WW.

[MT Gianni]

If they are hard compared to straight lead they may well be Lionotype. If you drop one on concrete does it ring like a bell or thud like a brick? Thud=lead, ring=lino.

[DLCTEX]

I have a number of moulds that cast from a few to 10 gr. light and also a couple that cast heavy using WW. 17 -20 gr. is a lot, but throw in some mystery alloy and it may be done. Assuming good fillout I'd just shoot them and see how they do.Look carefully to see if the bands and base are filled out well. If not, a little tin, maybe as little as 1% may help. It may surprise you how much good fillout can add.

[gwpercle]

Boomfactor

you are not doing anything wrong...the alloy is not straight wheelweight. Sounds like its harder. The harder an alloy is the lighter the boolits will be. And so the heaver the boolit the softer it will be. As a rule of thumb try mixing the hard alloy with 50% pure or really soft lead .

What I do is get a batch of wheel wts. , melt em down and cast 10 or 20 bullets, weigh them very carefully and average thier weight. Write it down and keep that info. Now you know how much they should weigh when cast of wheel wt. alloy.

Next time you get some unknown metal cast a few and weigh... if they average to wheel wts you know what they are. Lighter = harder, Heavier = softer. Then you can adjust the alloy hardness to suit your needs.

gary

[atr]

add Lead !
find some pure lead and dump it in....the lead used in stain glass is pure, most diving weights used to me mostly lead, some x-ray shielding is also mostly lead.

[stubshaft]

you can figure on a variance in a Lee mold of 5 - 10 grs. but you need to add more pure lead to get them heavier. Although, there is nothing that says you can't shoot a boolit that is under or over it's advertised weight.

The key is the boolit fit and not the weight. If the light boolits you are dropping measure .453 or .454 I would NOT add pure. I will make them smaller in diameter.

[puddledog]

Mine come out to heavy c309-170-f lee mold , 177 .7 to 178.6 gns without Gas check. 50-50 mix , so when I load these( looking at 1600 to 1800 fps ) do I load to a 180 grn cast bullet and back off my powder 10% . thanks puddledog.

[Arlin]

Puddledog is more on the money. Be sure to check your loading data for the lighter/heaver bullet before loading. More or less powder can be hazardous to your health and firearm.

[boomfactor]

thanks to all for your help, i have some pure lead to add,i dont mind being off a little but that was to much for me. thanks happy casting!

[runfiverun]

they could be ww's just old ones they have been dropping the antimony content of ww's since the 50's.
they were 9% at one time, then 6% [which the trucks are about still], then they settled on 4 for quite a long time.
now they are all over the map from 4 to 3 and mostly non existent.