Lowering the tin content for round ball

[BCRider]

Hi all, my first post on CastBoolits.... [smilie=w:

I'm about to begin casting my own round ball. Of course along with this arises the need to use a softer grade of lead to allow the revolver balls to shave off nicely and the muzzle loading balls to easily imprint the rifling through the patch.

I've done a bit of searching on here and elsewhere and it appears that two things happen in the melting pot. First is that there is some layering that brings the tin to the surface and second that the tin tends to oxidize and turn to dross and scum more easily if the melt isn't fluxed with something.

So the question is does this happen fairly quickly? For example, if I were to melt some old scrounged bullets and lead powder from an indoor range I know of and let it sit and regularly and gently skim off the dross that forms just how long would I need to hold it there to get a nice soft lead for my needs?

Also from what I'm reading about you guys typically ADDING a bit of tin it would appear that I'm going the opposite way to what you're doing. But it's what I need at this point. It's tough to find a good supply of round ball 'round these parts. And when I do they want the world for them.

[docone31]

Kitty litter is your friend!
I use Kitty LItter on top of the melt, and I get lots of dross. I am presuming, what is not an alloy oxidizes and gets absorbed by the litter. I do not know how fast it actually is, as I leave the litter on the melt.
I have loaded with R/B made from Wheel Weight.
Loads ok.

[I'll Make Mine]

As you note, getting the lead "too hot" and letting it stand that way for a while will tend to preferentially oxidize tin, which will then skim off as dross. How long it will take to significantly reduce the tin content is the question, and I don't have a good answer. What you might consider is whether you can work a trade, your scrap lead for some pure lead or 40:1 alloy to use for your round balls. Or, you can make a guess on the tin content of your scrap (there's probably some antimony in there, too, since many casters start from wheel weights or add antimony to harden their bullets) and add pure lead purchased as ingots to soften your alloy.

[R.M.]

I assume you are talking about C&B revolver balls. You really should use the softest lead you can dig up. Harder balls like WW will put too much stress on the loading lever while seating.

[BCRider]

Yep, for my C&B black powder revolvers as well as the flintlock rifle I've got.

Trading isn't really an option since everyone I know of who might have a supply of dead soft lead would be using it for the same thing I am.

But I'm in tight with the local "Rent-A-Gun" indoor range so I can get all the lead powder and semi smashed regular bullets that I can carry away simply by showing up and helping the guys with the monthly backstop cleanout. The only thing that needs to be separated out is the shredded rubber tire chips. But in smaller amounts such as I need it's not hard to do.

But that lead is obviously too hard to use for my round ball use. Hence my question.

I'll soon have to invest in some form of hardness tester as well. That much I know. With that I can then try out this method.

Docone31, if you are using WW's I understand that it does have SOME tin. If so did you select a slightly smaller mold for your round ball use? Presently I like .457 for my Uberti Remingtons as it shaves a nice clean ring off without too much lever effort. I've loaded some WW balls in that size and I'm just about to give up with the pressure out of respect for my loading lever when it seems to pop into place. If my lead was more like that I think I'd want to go with .454 to reduce the amount of shearing force. But then I'd be wondering about how much the ball I'll get cutting into the rifling for a good spin. My thinking is that if I can stay with .457 I get a wider "land" around the waist to engage the rifling for a more positive spin.... but perhaps I'm over analyzing this... :D

I do know that I like the nice positive ring from the .457 simply for the assurance that I've gotten a really nice positive seal.

[waksupi]

Hardness and composition doesn't matter in patched round ball. I've been shooting wheel weight round balls for nearly 40 years.
You WILL need to have dead soft for the revolver. The range lead will probably work, if you stick with salvaging jacketed bullets only for that purpose.

[BCRider]

Ah!.... so the lead from jacketed bullets is softer than regular cast bullets? That's great since at least 90% of the lead I can salvage from the backstop at that range is from jacketed bullets. Mixed in is some shotgun shot, ball and slug but by far the lion's share is from jacketed handgun ammo.

[I'll Make Mine]

Yes, jacketed bullets, unless swaged by a hobbyist, have pure lead cores (most hobby swagers use very soft lead, too, but a few swage harder alloys for their cores). Commercial shotgun slugs are usually soft, too, because they're swaged, as are most commercial buckshot and punkin balls. Birdshot, OTOH, is often hardened with antimony and tin, both for better durability and because the alloy used pours better from a shot dribbler. Even unjacketed lead bullets are usually pure lead if they're commercial -- again, because the ammunition manufacturers swage, rather than cast (if you don't see grease grooves in the undeformed part, it's probably a commercial swaged bullet).

You can easily and quickly separate tire shreds by making up a saturated brine -- dissolve all the salt that will go into hot water, then let it cool; the result will be dense enough to float tire rubber, but of course lead will still sink like, well, lead. The brine can be reused indefinitely.

[runfiverun]

22's are swaged and contain a small amount of antimony and no tin.
they are often copper plated however and that will change things somewhat if you get a bunch of them

[runfiverun]

a coating of marvelux will pull metals out of a lead alloy as well as letting tin oxidize at just over 750-f.
it'll take forever to pull it out though.

[waksupi]

a coating of marvelux will pull metals out of a lead alloy as well as letting tin oxidize at just over 750-f.
it'll take forever to pull it out though.


And you have the Marvelux aftermath to deal with! [smilie=1:

[Texantothecore]

You might wish to get a couple of pounds of pure lead from Rotometals or a local supplier for your first pours as a baseline and to work out the technique. It is a bit different than pouring with tin content.

The muzzle loader will shoot anything you put into it, that patch cures many ills.

An experiment you might try is to melt your WWs and do not flux. Bottom pour an ingot or bullet, wait two weeks and perform the Staedtler pencil test. When I first started I was so excited that I forgot to flux the melt and the ingots cast differently than my more recent pours that are fully fluxed. My suspicion is that the early ingots were nearly pure lead (the tin stayed on top of the melt?) but I have not tested them for hardness.

IIRC, the pure lead requires more heat, a hotter mold and a higher cycle rate. Just find out what works.

Good luck and welcome to Castboolits.

[Freightman]

There is adds on the Trading board at the bottom of the page for "dead soft lead" go look.

[shotman]

can trade you for what you have for pure LB forLB pm or email ragebhardt@msn.com

[BCRider]

Freightman thanks for the heads up. And thanks for the offer to shotman.

But I'm just about on the opposite end of the continent from West Virginia. I'm pretty sure that it would cost as much or more per lb to ship the stuff than to buy it locally.

At present I've got about 9 lbs of the old style cast scuba weights and about the same amount in cast bullets "farmed" from the local range. Seems there's a lot of guys out my way shooting .45-70 and such and when I'm out at the 200 yard area if I follow a cut in the grass there's usually a heavy slug "growing" at the end of it... :D

[John in WI]

It does seem like a shame to take a very nice lead alloy (with some really expensive an precious tin!), and purposely remove the tin.

There are people on here who sell the good dead soft/pure stuff, and several months ago I bought some from a seller on Ebay for about $1/lb.

You might go that route until you can come up with a source of your own.

But as was stated before, FMJ and TMJ's are typically very soft. Stick on WW is typically very soft (except the plastic coated ones, I found out recently), lead pipe, lead sheathing, "roofing lead"...

I don't know if someone already mentioned it, but often times tin is added to lower the surface tension and help lead fill out a mold easier. But from what I understand (and I'm no expert), it doesn't add a lot of hardness until you crank the concentration up pretty high. Antimony is normally the one that is used to add hardness.

[garrisonjoe]

At home, no practical way to remove the tin from a lead alloy.

Trade it, or sell the range lead and buy some soft lead. That what EVERYONE does.

[I'll Make Mine]

But I'm just about on the opposite end of the continent from West Virginia. I'm pretty sure that it would cost as much or more per lb to ship the stuff than to buy it locally.

Learn and chant the lead shipper's mantra: "USPS Priority Flat Rate Box". Up to 70 lbs for the same price, anywhere in the continental USA. You can fit 10 lbs or so in the small one and ship it for under $5, or you can fit 60+ lb in the medium box and ship for (IIRC) about $12. Seattle to Miami, same price as Chicago to Evanston.

Do pack to keep that heavy stuff inside the box -- that's why you can only get 60 lbs in the medium box... ;)

[BCRider]

I didn't know about the flat rate box deal since being in Canada the border messes that up.

At the moment I simply don't have enough lead to make exchanging it worth the process for either end of the deal. But I'll keep it in mind.

I read the sticky on the pencil testing for hardness. Got me a set of Staedler pencils last night and I'm going to test all my lead out today. Gotta go start sharpening.... :D

Need to call the guys at the range and find out when they are cleaning the backstop out next too. I need to make up some round ball for the C&B revolvers SOON! I'm working on a borrowed box of 100 and I need to replace them as well as make up a stock so I can keep making smoke screens :D

[I'll Make Mine]

Aaah, darn those international borders! Sending lead across the border might complicate things even more than increasing the postage (nothing illegal about it, as far as I know, but someone is sure to sit on the package for a couple weeks while they check).

For your cap & ball revolver, I've seen a number of folks using conical bullets -- same diameter as the round ball, but shaped like a light round nose cartridge bullet. Might be easier to find locally; if you have a .44, you'd use .45 caliber bullets (typically .454" diameter); a little less simple for .36 (.375" diameter, as I recall, not a common pistol size) and .31 (.321", also less common for modern guns). Commercial swaged bullets should be soft enough, though, if you can find the right size.

[BCRider]

There simply are not as many shooters per capita up this way. So the shops seldome cater to the niche market which is the black powder crowd. Hell, I'm lucky to find stores with boxes of round ball in 4 or 5 of the possible sizes. And when I do they want $18 to $27 a box of 100.... Yep, I kid you not. NOW you know why I'm so keen on casting my own.

Trying to fit commercial bullets into the BP guns isn't a good idea. At least I'm guessing that you mean regular cast and lubed bullets used for cartridge ammo. First off I'd have to use .452gn bullets. Now that's fine but the driving bands on them are pretty big so shaving of the lead needed to seat them might get exciting. Then I'd also have to boil away the existing lube and replace it with a black powder friendly lube. The usual stuff used for smokeless turns the BP fouling into a hard tar like buildup instead of keeping it soft like beeswax and vegtable shortening does.

Mind you it does suggest that if I can scrounge that softer grade of lead from the indoor range and cast my own 180 gn shorties that I might just be able to make something like that work if I make up my own pan lube for them.

hmmmmm...........

EDITED: I just tried a 200 gn .452 cast in my cylinder. The big issue is that it simply does not want to start ramming evenly. I think I need a fairly prominent bevel base to get it started. It also takes a HELL of a tug on the lever to start it. So that worries me too in terms of long term health of the lever and pins. Mind you working with softer lead would help a lot.

[I'll Make Mine]

Actually, I was referring to commercial swaged (i.e. soft lead) bullets (which are generally sold precoated with a tumble lube on the knurled body); cast boolits are likely to be too hard (same problem as if you had round balls cast from wheel weights or similar). Hornady offers a pretty good selection, though they're likely to cost as much as their swaged round balls. They're intended for baseline loads in cartridge, though, and from memory (haven't used any in a longish time) they don't have much of a base bevel either. I've seen video of people using 'em in C&B, but couldn't tell you how they get 'em to start straight.

[grullaguy]

Welcome to the site.

I know how hard it is to ship heavy things up here. If you are not too far away, I can probably help you out.

Just PM me.

[Defcon-One]

The anwser is, NO, you can't remove enough Tin to make a difference. It would take months to do any real damage to the Tin content. I suspect that the energy bill would slow you down too.

I'd find a source for Stick-on Wheel Weights (Brand Name - "Tape-A-Weight") they are 99.75% pure lead with about .25% Tin. No Antimony, which is where most of the hardness in alloys comes from. Just enough Tin to make them cast well and give you good mold fill-out.

If you can't find any in your area, buy some here on this site. But, make sure it is only Stick-on WW lead, no Clip-on WW lead.

[BCRider]

Thanks all for the discussion so far.

I bought a set of Steadler pencils the other day and based on the pencil test sticky it looks like I've got enough lead to get started. I've got some bigger sizes of cast round ball that was given to me along with about 15 lbs of old scuba weights. In testing the hardness with the pencils I'm coming up with the Hornady round ball being 2 to 3B. The scuba weights are testing nicely at the same hardness. Namely a 3b sort of starts to make an indent but won't quite "push" any lead ahead of it before the lead point crumbles. The 2B is able to dig a shaving out.

In all these cases I shaved away the surface so that I was testing the clean inside metal about 15 to 20 thou below any "skin" or corroded metal that may be on the outside surface.

So it looks like I'm good to get started on casting some round ball for now. And I'll get back with another thread once I get ome of that range backstop lead to try as well.