new guy. a little lead mixing help.

[ctious]

I have ww. And a bunch of roof vent lead. I want to mix to make a cast bullet for my 10 mm that will be hard enough to not lead my barrel but still soft enough to expand some.

I have no idea what I have to add to hit the right hardness. I can get whatever I need to.

Anyone got some ideas.

This will be for the 200 gr flat 195 and 190 gr hp group buy mold.

[500MAG]

How much WW do you have? You can go straight WW, or mix in some of the roof vent lead. Worry less about hardness and more about size & lube when it comes to leading.

[John in WI]

I read somewhere that a rough rule of thumb for expansion is that the velocity=BHN*10

I'm not sure what velocities a 10mm gets to with those heavy boolits, but let's say about 1000fps. You would need a hardness of about 10. Air cooled WW is around 12. So I guess I would try to alloy the WW about 2:1 with the roof lead (should be about dead soft) to get in the ballpark.

I've never loaded for a 10mm, but that's where I would start and test for expansion into some saturated phone books.

Good luck--sounds like a fun project!

[Defcon-One]

Yep, 500MAG is right. Size, Lube then Hardness.

I would ad 2% Tin to make the mold fill-out better. Especially for the hollow points. The Tin will make the lead flow better around the pin and nose section, it also will toughen the alloy up a bit for less fragmenting.

Try COWW lead plus 1-2% Tin for the flat nosed bullets and a mix of 50% COWW/50% Soft Lead (roof vent lead) plus 2% Tin for the Hollow points.

Make fairly small batches and test it. Then once you find what works for you, go for it!

[ctious]

I have an endless supply of ww. Family shop for the past 24 years. And still going strong. Ww are all mine. Lol.

I need to get some tin. Where is the best place to find it?

[ctious]

I will be pushing these at 1300 plus. So I think I need to pick up some hardness. Would a ww with say 20% roof vent with some tin water dropped work? Or 10% roof lead.

[Defcon-One]

At 1300+ I'd go with straight COWW or ad 2% Tin and what Antimony you can (from Linotype or Magnum Shot). Use the Soft Lead for hollow points and muzzle loader.

The best source of Tin is factory bar Solder (60/40, 50/50, 37/63 in that order! Tin % is usally first!) I have purchased quite a few factory solder bars off of this site. I do not buy ingotized solder because you never really know what you are getting. While everyone that I have dealt with here was a straight shooter, it only takes one bad apple, one bad deal, to sour the whole thing.

Next best source for Tin is pewter items with a hallmark that can be tracked to a known Tin content. But, I like the Solder better.

[runfiverun]

I will be pushing these at 1300 plus. So I think I need to pick up some hardness. Would a ww with say 20% roof vent with some tin water dropped work? Or 10% roof lead.

i'd go with the 20%.
i use about 20-25% soft mixed with my ww's and waterdrop from the mold for my gas checked rifle boolits in the 2k range.
and air cool this same alloy for my revolver- leverguns without the gas checks, those see some good velocitys of about 1200-1300 in the revolvers and up near 1600 in the leverguns.

you'll be pushing these pretty hard to get to 1300 in a pistol.
but you have to start somewhere.
make some waterdropped and some aircoled and see what your target says.
straight ww's versus mixed with the soft.
quite often i get clearly better results with one over the other and sometimes one waterdropped over the other also.
like if the ww's do better than the soft mix, then try water dropping the soft and see if things get better again.

[clintsfolly]

AS I get on the gunwale of the boat!!!! Don't get to worried about getting the % of this and that just so but keep track of what you mix to be able to repeat it. With a great supply of WW I would start about 75/25 WW/PB with all your molds. With the smelter I have I would start with 100lbs of sorted raw COWW and add 25lbs of SOWW or PB then IF I had some add TIN (1-1 1/2 lbs). Get my size right and try and wear out MY gun shooting Clint

[I'll Make Mine]

One of the easiest, if not the cheapest ways to get tin of known content is as plumbing solder. Federal law prohibits lead in this material, and among the various alloys (tin-antimony, tin-bismuth, and multi-metal types) there's always some pure tin. The nice thing is, at 2%, one pound of that expensive tin will make fifty pounds of casting alloy!