Alloy questions

[farmall666]

I am new to casting and have some questions about alloys.

I have: 200 lbs of wheel weight
100 lbs 50/50 solder
50 lbs pure lead
500 lbs of unknown alloy
The unknown stuff is old race car ballast. The bars vary in hardness and are varying mixtures of whatever scrap lead I could scrounge up at the time. Some is as soft as the pure lead while some is harder than the wheel weight.

I will be casting: .451 round balls for my BP revolver and
.44 mag in 240gr RNFP to be shot from a winchester 94

What lead alloy should I use for each application?

[2ndAmendmentNut]

For black powder a pure, or a very soft 1:30 alloy is what most recommend. For the 44 with smokeless as long as the Boolit is properly sized for the bore you are unlikely to notice a difference between any of your alloys.

[2ndAmendmentNut]

Btw welcome to the forum! Two things to keep in mind for when it comes to casting.

1). When it comes to diameter, bigger is almost always better.

2). When it comes to alloys, softer is generally better.

[Larry Gibson]

Mix 8 lbs of the 50/50 with the 200 lbs WWs (assuming they are all COWWs?) for and excellent all around alloy which will be excellent for magnum level loads in the .44 Magnum revolver and rifle. That is adding 2% tin to the COWWs.

I would add 1 lb of the 50/50 to the 50 lbs of lead to make a slightly less than 40-1 lead - tin alloy. This will cast very well and will work very good in the BP revolver.

The 500 lbs of ballast alloy can be used for low and mid level bullets in the 44 Magnum. You may have to add a little of the 50-50 to it to enhance its castability.

Save the rest of the 50/50 for future alloys.

Larry Gibson

[HORNET]

Were it mine, I'd save the pure lead primarily for the round balls, add enough of the 50/50 solder to the wheel weights to bump their tin content up about 1-1/2 to 2% for general use in the .44, and sort the unknown stuff into batches by apparent hardness. The bars in the batches can then be melted into homogenous lots and then tweaked to change the properties if needed. You might want to get some muriatic acid and check the individual bars for zinc before doing much with them.
A hardness tester (even the Lee or do a search for the pencil testing) helps when you work with scrounged lead of unknown pedigree. The thumbnail test is marginal at best.

[farmall666]

Thanks for the input.
I will try casting some round balls with the pure lead this weekend.
I have been reading the thread on pencil testing.
I will start sorting the unknown stuff by hardness and see what I end up with.