Chrysler steering column lead

[pmer]

Has anyone tried melting this material into boolits? I brought a few peices of this home from the salvage yard. They are over a 1/4 " inch thick and oval to half moon in shape.

I hit one with a hammer and center punch and dents like COWW does.

I guess I need to treat it like a unknown material and see what temp it melts at? And not put it in my pot for fear of contamination.

[DLCTEX]

What year model Chrysler?

[pmer]

What year model Chrysler?

I'm not sure at the moment but I can call and find out.

[pmer]

The guy I talked to today and yesterday wasn't sure about years and models. He was in the recycling department. He figured Caravans and such. He did say that it was Chrysler only though.

[pmer]

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/imagehosting/thum_17540508769d805f3d.jpg ('http://castboolits.gunloads.com/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=7148')

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/imagehosting/17540508769d817878.jpg

Well I figured when I get home today I should try and work with this lead so I fired up the LP smelter and ladel or hand poured some boolits. I didn't want to have to clean out my dripomatic if things went bad but it all seems well so far.

The first picture are the plates as they come out of the steering columns and the second one are the boolits from an RCBS 255 Keith 2 cavity mold. The three on the right are water quenched and the left ones are air cooled.

550 degrees - it was starting to melt and I could make out shapes.
625 degrees - it was melted but castings weren't too good.
675 degrees - things were going good with a nice sharp edge on base of boolit.
725 degrees - I didn't go past 725, used a lyman thermometer.

Dross - I used saw dust and didn't skim anything till towards the end of the session and didn't have that much to clean off. It had silver almost cottage cheese look to it and it didn't seem to want to mix back in so I skimmed it out.

Hardness, the air cooled boolits were a SAECO 5, (BHN 8) and the water dropped ones were not as consistant. I checked 5 and they were SAECO 6, 7, & 8,8,8. 8 being close to 14 BHN. Hardness was checked with in 2 hours of casting. It will be nice to check them in a couple weeks.

Weights and diameters, I picked air cooled boolits that had nice looking sprue cuts and they were 263 and 264 grains which seems close to what I remember this mold was doing with COWW but the OD seemed a little big at .457. So maybe they are a little heavy too.

Well that's it so far with steering column lead, gonna have to size some and let'em fly! It was nice and clean compared to COWW but you have to scrap a mini van to get one piece [smilie=l:

10-27-12
I tried some of the air cooled boolits today and they did very good with Acurrate #7 at 900 FPS. Unique was very good too at 850 FPS but this load had a little leading though.

[montana_charlie]

... Oops, wrong thread ...

[pmer]

Say guys, as long as this thread is back on page one I thought I'd ask a question about this alloy. Look at the picture of the boolits and do see you the crystaline pattern on the base of the boolit in the middle? I was wondering why that pattern is there? They all seem to have that pattern.

These boolits have hardened over time now too. The air cooled were a BHN of 8 when freshly cast and now they are at BHN 15. The water quenched seem pretty hard at near BHN 18. My SAECO tester barley sinks in that outer ring when testing them.

[jhalcott]

I got some "mystery metal" from the steel mill once that did that. I gave up worrying about it when the accuracy was one inch groups at 25 yards from a .44 mag. A deer at 50 yards got a hole clear thru quartering slightly to me. In the shoulder and out the off side ribs. Hit a rib going, in both lungs and top of the heart. It hit a rib going out and left a hole about 1" in dia..20 yard "TRACKING" JOB!