Range scrap question

[Sasquatch-1]

I have been digging a bit of range scrap lately and have been getting a good mix of different types of bullets. I would say 2/3's have some sort of jacket and that is where my question lay. To the best of anyones knowlege is there a difference between the lead in the plated and those that are in the more traditional jacketed bullets?

[I'll Make Mine]

Plated bullets might be almost anything; they're cast cores before plating (though for cost reasons they'll probably tend to be softer alloys -- tin and antimony cost more per pound than lead). Traditional jacketed bullets are swaged, so the lead inside the jacket has to be pretty soft, anywhere from pure lead to around 2% tin and no more than a trace of antimony, at a guess (Speer, when I toured their facility in the 1970s, proudly claimed to be using lead that was 99.9% pure in their swaging plant, but that may have changed).

Best bet might be to segregate the plated from the true jacketed and cast and test the hardness after smelting.

[btroj]

I don't know how the cores of the different jacketed bullets vary. I don't worry over it, all my range scrap goes into a single batch.

If you really want to be precise you also need to separate different types of jacketed bullets. I have to beleive a 44 mag HP has a tour core that a 45 FMJ.

At what point does segregation become rediculous? Can anyone say that segregating makes a better bullet alloy? Can anyone prove that a random mix isn't pretty consistant from the same berm or range complex?

I keep it simple. Range scrap is range scrap. I can't get excited about a difference of .25% SB or SN in an alloy. It just isn't relevant for our work.

[mold maker]

Other than pulling out 12 ga slugs, I never worried about it. The 12 ga slugs were near pure lead. The rest run at about 10-12 hardness and shoot great. The pure lead is saved for BP loads.

[tomme boy]

The shotgun slugs seem to have antimony in them so they go straight in the mix with the other scrap I use. I used to sort them out for the muzzleloader stuff, but not anymore. Now I just try to get ahold of pure when I can.

Most of my range scrap runs about 50/50 plated to cast boolits. It tends to run about 12 for hardness. Right where I like it.

[sw282]

l get my scrap from an indoor ''handgun only '' range. lts smelt and kept seperate from my clip on ww ingots. Range ingots are softer, but not as soft as stick-ons. Since getting lead from this indoor range l have seen only a handful of cast bullets. l now have 3 piles. 60% range lead. 30% clip-ons. 10% stick-ons.

[Sasquatch-1]

The reason for the original post is that I want the softest I can get for swaging. I was just trying to find out if the difference between the plated and the true jacketed is that big of difference.

I am considering just mixing the entire lot together next time and trading for dead soft and getting what I truely want.

[btroj]

If you want dead soft then buy it or trade for it.

Range scrap tends to have some other stuff in it. I doubt even the plated bullets are pure lead.

[evan price]

Plated have antimony alloyed in the lead because the plating is not as thick or durable as a sturdy FMJ would be, The bullets will get banged around in shipping and handling and acquire dings and deformations that would be unacceptable to loaders. The thick, sturdy FMJ jacket will withstand the rigours of transportation and being chambered in a firearm better and can get away with a soft core.

Also some self defense hollowpoints have gone to an antimonial lead core to better engineer the expansion of the hollowpoint through the hardness of the core.