New board member, and smelting newbie with some questions.

[9w1911]

I am new to the casting game but had purchased some supplies to do so years ago. i brought them out and began to cast some stuff to get the hang of it. The alloy I had was from Roto and I cast 100 44 mag bullets that I later threw back in the pot, however they were shiny. The ingots remaining were all frosty and hard to scratch or bend etc.
So here are the questions:
Can you separate an alloy with too much heat?
Can an expert tell an alloy make up by sight?
Because I smelt some pure soft roofing lead and it is all shiny. I have not changed my casting or smelting technique, I drop all boolits in water and I cool my ingot mold with water and even quench my ingots. Right now I am smelting this lead, knuckle like thing.
Smelted a solid bar this weekend and added 1lb ingot of the frosted stuff to the large lead 2x4 and got this dense, hard frosted ingots in return, it was all frosted and hard as hell to bend.
Should I mix the frosted with the shiny when I cast again?



Thank you

[cbrick]

The alloy I had was from Roto

What alloy did you buy? They have many different alloys.


I cast 100 44 mag bullets that I later threw back in the pot, however they were shiny. The ingots remaining were all frosty and hard to scratch or bend etc.

Shiny or frosty is nothing more than how hot they were when cast.


So here are the questions:
Can you separate an alloy with too much heat?

No, but too hot will oxidize the alloy at the surface in contact with air much quicker.


Can an expert tell an alloy make up by sight?

No, there is no way to do this.


Because I smelt some pure soft roofing lead and it is all shiny. I have not changed my casting or smelting technique, I drop all boolits in water and I cool my ingot mold with water and even quench my ingots. Right now I am smelting this lead, knuckle like thing.
Smelted a solid bar this weekend and added 1lb ingot of the frosted stuff to the large lead 2x4 and got this dense, hard frosted ingots in return, it was all frosted and hard as hell to bend.
Should I mix the frosted with the shiny when I cast again?

Except that you used some roofing lead and cast some ingots hotter than others there is no way to know what your using or trying to accomplish. In order to offer you suggestions we need a bit more info. What caliber? What mold? What is the Roto metals alloy? What temp is the alloy? Why are you quenching?

Rick

[9w1911]

Unfortunately I do not remember what I purchased from roto but it is hard as a rock and hard to scratch
I am using molds for 44
rcbs molds for 250gn swc kt
Rcbs 300gn swc
Lyman 240gn rnfp
..and for 45 auto
Rcbs 225gn rnfp
Lee aluminum 2 cavity 230gn RN

This is for a 4in kimber 1911 and a 44 lever Marlin with Ballard rifling.

I.quench the ingots in a tray with about a sixteenth of water when I have limited time

[cbrick]

Kinda what I was thinking, does "Super Hard" sound familiar? If you ordered Super Hard this is an alloy 70% lead to 30% antimony and is for sweetening a soft alloy (like your roofing lead) to about 2% antimony. Casting with Super hard sweetened with a little roofing lead will result in extremely brittle boolits.

Use some of this alloy to cast a few boolits of known weight and see what they weigh with this alloy. If they are indeed Super Hard boolits besides very brittle they will also be very light. If this is the case the alloy is not lost but will need to be cut way down with your soft alloy.

Rick

[9w1911]

Great !! and yes the super hard does ring a bell. Thank you again!

[David2011]

9w1911,

You have great answers from cbrick. He knows his stuff. You're putting too much emphasis on shiny and frosted, IMO. Pure or very nearly pure lead has a tendancy to make very shiny boolits over a broad temperature range. I cast a coffee can full of .36 cal. round balls for my Dad's cap and ball pistol from straight lead. Every one was really shiny even thought the mold was small and got very hot. Very shiny is pretty normal for straight lead.

Alloys become frosted when the mold temperature gets high. the hotter the mold, the heavier the frost. The frost has no effect on the usefulness of the boolit except that it can lead to the boolits being smaller than the desired diameter.


I.quench the ingots in a tray with about a sixteenth of water when I have limited time

Does this mean 1/16" of water? If so, the boolit should be immersed in several inches of water or you will have uneven hardening. Like cbrick said- why are you water dropping? If it is just to cool the boolits quickly, that may not be in your best interest as it will make antimony bearing alloys harder when quenched quickly. If you quench in 1/16" of water the boolit will be much harder on one side and I would guess that it may possibly come out of the barrel round but out of balance. I don't know of any studies on boolits that are only hardened on "one side" of a round object.

David

[9w1911]

I quench the boolits in 12 inches of water after about a 30 inch air drop, I did cool ingots I cast from all this scrap lead i purchased in 1/16" of water.