Give me your best guess?

[Whitespider]

I melted down some odds‘n’ends of hard-cast bullets that have collected over the years. Most were purchased at some point from various commercial casting outfits, a handful were cast by an old friend and were the last to melt (probably lino). I ended up with fifteen one-pound ingots. I know there is no possible way to know what the exact alloy is, but (knowing what y’all know about commercial casters) what would you guess to be “close” pb/sb/sn ? Just wonderin’ how to use them?

[OLPDon]

I have collected from our indoor range and what is used there is from 22 to 45 cal. I would venture to say that most of the shooters there use commercial lead. When I cast from that collected lead I water drop for conv/ the bhn on them after a few yrs sitting on my shelf is Bhn 18. Maybe someone here can give you a educated guess on alloy mix is.
Don

[454PB]

Actually the linotype boolits should melt first, it has a lower melting point.

I have no clue what commercial casters consider "hard". If they are using antimony, it could be 20 BHN, but if they are heat treating, it could be WW metal with some tin added for better casting. If the hardness is attained by heat treating, it is gone once you melt it down.

If you really want to know, find someone with a hardness tester, or send me a sample and I'll test it for you.

[klw]

You can actually analyze stuff like this with nothing more than a stop watch, a lead thermometer and a twenty pound furnace. The key is having phase diagrams for mixtures of lead/tin, lead/ anotimony, lead/tin/antimony, etc. It is not rocket science but it is labor intensive and probably not worth the effort.

I'd suggest using it for whatever you'd usually make out of wheelweights.

[Jon K]

Fist off, what are you going to shoot this in?
Probably not woth trying to figure out the composition, just find out hardness and add to soften or harden, or if you're just using it for short range pistol work, cast & shoot as is.

Jon

[Whitespider]

Well, I can tell ya’ that the stuff is harder than WW metal. I can’t mark it with my fingernail. If I hit it with the corner of a WW ingot, the corner of the WW ingot flattens. If I hit a WW ingot with the corner of one of these ingots, it puts a nice corner shaped dent in the WW ingot.

I guess it’s not real important to me what the exact alloy is, more curiosity than anything else. Just thought someone might know what the approximate “popular” alloy for commercial hard-cast is.

Maybe I’ll just save it for some rainy day experimenting. I’ve got about a 700 lbs of WW and some tin so it ain’t like I HAVE to use it right away. I’ve been using solder (sn)95/5(sb) for tin sweetening (at $12-$18 per lb), I thought I could use this stuff as a (tin) sweetener if I had some guesstimate of the sn/sb content.

[buck1]

92Lead/6 antimony/2tin
Just a guess.....

[MT Gianni]

If you want it tested send a couple of bullets for samples and i will run them through the hardness tester. PM for address. Gianni

[44man]

Being as hard as it is, it would make good alloying metal instead of just shooting it up. That would stretch it's use.

[Whitespider]

I sure appreciate the offers to test hardness for me (454PB & MT Gianni). But I was more interested in what y’all thought the actual alloy content was pb/sb/sn.

I was wrong in my thinking though, too new at this. I was thinking that the tin content would be higher than antimony. It’s the (sb) that makes it hard, not the (sn). I haven’t started casting any rifle boolits yet (just revolver), think I’ll save it to harden WW alloy when I try my hand at some rifle boolits (soon).

Could be that buck1’s guess of 92(pb)/6(sb)/2(sn) is real close. I use WW+2%(sn) for revolver boolits. I’ll use this stuff to harden my revolver alloy a tad for rifles.

[Cherokee]

92/6/2 seems to be the typical commercial CB alloy, so your alloy should be close to that. Saving it for rifles may be the best but I still use WW's for my rifle bullets.:castmine:

[John Boy]

92Lead/6 antimony/2tin
This ratio calculates to a Bhn of 9.76 which is a tad short of 1:20 at Bhn of 10.

My guess, if the majority was from commercial casters, the Bhn is in the 16-18 range
As for the base metals composition, with a smörgåsbord of combinations ... only a laboratory test would identify the ratios

Best advice ... do a lead test on the ingots. If they are close to one's usual Bhn that is used ... Shoot Em

[Shiloh]

Actually the linotype boolits should melt first, it has a lower melting point.

I have no clue what commercial casters consider "hard". If they are using antimony, it could be 20 BHN, but if they are heat treating, it could be WW metal with some tin added for better casting. If the hardness is attained by heat treating, it is gone once you melt it down.

If you really want to know, find someone with a hardness tester, or send me a sample and I'll test it for you.

"Hard" varies from vendor to vendor. I noticed LARGE variances when I was a consumer of commercial cast boolits. There were, and probably are, a lot of "cottage industry" commercial casters from local area's that sold/sell at gun shows or to local consumers.

It's a crap shoot as to what the alloys are. My guess is that many vendors used WW. With wheel weights being a little harder to acquire, I would imagine that a lot of small vendors have gone away.

Shiloh

[Misfire99]

I don't remember the company but I bought some "Hard Cast" bullets for my 45-70 that supposedly had silver in it. They got their raw lead from the byproducts of a silver mine. So your bullets might have some silver in them. This will make them a lot harder.

[jdhenry]

I don't remember the company but I bought some "Hard Cast" bullets for my 45-70 that supposedly had silver in it. They got their raw lead from the byproducts of a silver mine. So your bullets might have some silver in them. This will make them a lot harder.

I think the company you are refering to " Lazer cast"