Making a "universal alloy" and smelting plan

[osteodoc08]

Well I will foray into smelting for the first time in a few days. My plan is as follows

Smelt down all the COWW I have and make muffin pan ingots. After they are cooled, I will weight them and write on them COWW, weight, date.

Step 2 will be making a universal alloy for my magnum velocity handguns and rifles. I plan on combining 9 pounds of COWW with 2 pounds of Linotype and 1/2 pound of 95/5 solder. This should, in essence, provide me with a Lyman #2 analog that can be heat treated. I will make muffin tin ingots an write #2, weight and date.

I can then use the COWW ingots and add a little tin and make my plinking and general pistol loads with it. I would in essence have 2 repeatable alloys to cover all my needs.

What do y'all think of my plan?

Then I'd be able to grab an ingot, toss it in the pot and cast away. I already have 2, 20# bottom pour pots and can use one for each alloy.

[454PB]

I prefer to make up whatever alloy I want "as needed". Once you commit to a big batch of any alloy, it's hard to undo.

[jmort]

94/3/3 will do anything you need. Heat treat or use as is. That is my "universal alloy."

[geargnasher]

I think it's a fine plan. Not what I would do, but there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Do you have personal experience shooting HT and air cooled 'Lyman #2", or is your plan based purely on research?

Gear

p.s. if it were me I'd find a source of pure lead or buy a full pig from Rotometals, then mix it half/and/half with the WW and toss in about one percent additional pure tin. HT for anything over about 15-20K psi.

[btroj]

I would do like Gear said. I find that would be a much more useful alloy. COWW with linotype added will lead to a hard, brittle alloy at higher velocities. I also think it is wasteful of both COWW and Linotype.

[bangerjim]

I mix my casting soup on the fly. I add a few # of this and that (all known alloys) to come up with what I need at the moment. That does not limit me to just a couple of choices.

Banger

[osteodoc08]

I think it's a fine plan. Not what I would do, but there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Do you have personal experience shooting HT and air cooled 'Lyman #2", or is your plan based purely on research?

Gear

p.s. if it were me I'd find a source of pure lead or buy a full pig from Rotometals, then mix it half/and/half with the WW and toss in about one percent additional pure tin. HT for anything over about 15-20K psi.


My father mixed up several "batches" of "#2" and that's mostly what I've used. I've water quenched for my top magnum loadings and rifle boolits with no ill effects.

I appreciate the criticisms. I'm basically looking for a repeatable alloy that I can stockpile and pick and choose as my heart desires based on my needs. I typically shoot revolvers of 357, 41, 44, 45, 454 and load them from mild to all out. My rifles include pistol calibers and 30/30, 32WS, 45/70.

My 45/70 is my brush gun and load hot 405gr GC designed boolits (Marlin GG).

So any alloy that covers those uses, I'm game. I was hoping to mix up 2 alloys and call it good enough.

I'm open to any and all suggestions.

[Fluxed]

COWW with a little extra tin (about 1%) works very, very well for me.

In a perfect world, I'd mix all my COWW (or whatever I had) so that as large a batch as possible was as homogenous as possible and at the lowest cost and hassle possible.

If that mix gave me problems in high velocity rifle loads, I'd add linotype to it to harden it up.

[338RemUltraMag]

Well I will foray into smelting for the first time in a few days. My plan is as follows

Smelt down all the COWW I have and make muffin pan ingots. After they are cooled, I will weight them and write on them COWW, weight, date.

Step 2 will be making a universal alloy for my magnum velocity handguns and rifles. I plan on combining 9 pounds of COWW with 2 pounds of Linotype and 1/2 pound of 95/5 solder. This should, in essence, provide me with a Lyman #2 analog that can be heat treated. I will make muffin tin ingots an write #2, weight and date.

I can then use the COWW ingots and add a little tin and make my plinking and general pistol loads with it. I would in essence have 2 repeatable alloys to cover all my needs.

What do y'all think of my plan?

Then I'd be able to grab an ingot, toss it in the pot and cast away. I already have 2, 20# bottom pour pots and can use one for each alloy.

I think the plan will work just fine, if it were me I would source some pure lead and keep it as pure. Pure lead is a lot like distilled water in the chemistry industry, it is the universal diluter, you can add it to your alloy and lower the "potency" of the alloy in question. That is an easy way to make Lyman #2 into a COWW alloy or the COWW alloy into a 50/50 alloy for hunting purposes.

[osteodoc08]

So the concensus is take the COWW add some tin (1%) as a base stock and alter it if any issues at higher velocity?

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

So the concensus is take the COWW add some tin (1%) as a base stock and alter it if any issues at higher velocity?

I used strait COWW with just enough to get good fill out. The only small flaw there is you never know how much is in the COWW metal to start with becasue
the mixes are all over the place. COWW metal can be brewed into ingots and if you find ingot hardness varies from one to another, remelt and blend as many as your pot will hold into a batch and label
it batch "one". Repeat as needed. Me, I use COWW straight, just add tin till I get good fill out, and shoot em. If you need harder boolits, drop them in water outta the mold. IF you need still harder than that, heat treat them and drop in water. Wheel weight metal is fairly easy to get to 18-20 bhn, plenty hard. The one batch I heat treated in the oven and quenched went to 27 :holysheep

[osteodoc08]

That's what I'll do then. COWW with tin (which is what I've been doing. Taking COWW ingots and adding 95/5 to up tin some with negligible antimony)

Thanks guys!

[osteodoc08]

With the Linotype. Does it need to be smelted into ingots and do you flux and everything the same way?

[bangerjim]

With the Linotype. Does it need to be smelted into ingots and do you flux and everything the same way?

If your lino is clean and shiny, you can just cut off pieces and weigh them to add in your melt. No need to flux! Only beeswax to reduce the tin back in the casting pot when it starts appearing on the top.

If your lino is old and dirty then you will probably want to smelt and flux as the other leads you use.

banger

[shadowcaster]

I prefer to make up whatever alloy I want "as needed". Once you commit to a big batch of any alloy, it's hard to undo.

I have to agree..

Start with small batches, keep written records, label your ingots, and most importantly figure out what your guns shoot the best. Isn't that really the goal? Then you will be able to repeat the process or make small changes as needed. As gear says.. get/buy some pure lead to cut any alloys that may turn out to hard. I have 4 different alloys that I use fairly regular.

Shad

[popper]

I began casting for 30/30 & 40SW. I decided to get #2 as research said it would work. It does. Then I researched more (here) and began using Roto high Sb & pure. Tried some tin too, didn't need it. Works for me.
I would do as others state, get some pure, smelt all your COWW & lino separate, a bag of shot for As/Sb, make small batches of alloy and find what works best for you. Keep good records, write on the ingots as you say. Download Bumpo's alloy calculator.

[Defcon-One]

I do exactly what you say that you want to do. Only I do not worry about wasting Tin or Linotype, I bought it to use it and I use it to make the best alloys that I can.

That said, I use only two alloys for all of my bullet casting.

Alloy #1: This is 2% Tin, 3% Antimony, 95% Lead. It is my pistol alloy. I use it for everything from 9mm to .45 ACP. The only time that I do not use it for handgun bullets is when I am loading full blown magnum ammo for .357 or .44 magnums. Then I go to alloy #2.

Alloy #2: This is Lyman #2 alloy, so 5% Tin, 5% Antimony, 90% Lead. This is what I use for my magnum handgun loads at full velocity and all of my rifle bullets. When velocities get too high, over 1500 FPS, I add copper gas checks with bullets designed for gas checks.

This combo will meet all of your needs and both alloys are very easy to cast and produce excellent results. I get very few rejects. Size them right, lube them with an appropriate, quality lube and you'll never need another alloy.

Oh Yeah, I do everything in 100 pound batches for fewer hassles and a truly homogeneous mix. Basically, I'm using the same exact alloy every time!


********Minor Correction**********

I do use one more alloy on rare occations. 25:1 alloy for hollow point bullets. Otherwise, everything above is accurate.

[41mag]

When I started a couple of years ago I had a very mixed up bunch of stuff. I had one bucket of old rusty COWW's, then I had a big pile of unknown which I came to find out was some COWW with a little of all types of plumbing lead mixed in, and then I had several boxes of 2-2-96 and several boxes of antimonial lead that I had purchased here from members who were selling it.

At the time I was only casting to feed my 454, and was looking to somewhat blend up one big batch to do so with. So I set out one Saturday morning and pulled an equal weight of ingots from each, and smelted it into a small 30'ish or so pound batch which I poured into ingots. I used the calculator to come up with a basic alloy which was equal to COWW's.

After I had this new pile of ingots I poured up a couple hundred bullets and set about testing them against my straight known WW alloy at the range. The new batch showed both within a point or two of being the same hardness and also shot just as good as the straight WW's did.

A couple of weeks later I weighed out equal piles of the whole mess, and smelted it into one huge batch of ingots. It has worked very well since and even age hardens pretty close to straight WW's. For me this was the logical answer as WW's are simply not found around here.

Since then I have added in Iso cores as well as purchased plenty of other alloy which is either CO or SOWW as well as pure and range lead. I keep everything separated and blend up batches of what I need in usually 60# or so increments. Like mentioned above keeping a base alloy is easier to add to and make what you need from it, than having one huge blend of something that you might want to treat in another form or fashion. Granted I DID make up the initial huge batch of blended alloy, but I have used it as I would have used WW's had that been what I could have located. IT has worked well for me and I still have about a hundred pounds of it to work through. I am using it for anything that is a solid whether flat based or GC'ed. So far it has worked out but I only cast for a couple of calibers of handgun.

[ShooterAZ]

While I don't have a "Universal Alloy", I do basically the same as your plan. WW is nearly impossible to get here, so I blend #50lb batches using pure, lino, and #2. For my handguns I have been blending one part lino to three parts lead(1/3/96). If I have fillout issues I may add some 95/5 solder to the pot. I also blend pure 50/50 with #2. Either of these can be water dropped to increase hardness if I want, but I rarely do. For rifles I usually use straight #2, or 2/6/92 (50 lino/50 lead). I pour into muffin ingots, and mark the ingots with a sharpie. I then store them in cardboard boxes, also marked. Iv'e only been casting for a couple of years now, but so far this has been working out pretty well for me.

[geargnasher]

Everybody has their own method of generating boolit metal based on experience, results, resources, and needs. Experiment, find out what works for you and what doesn't. Most of the people on the other side of the alloy learning curve will tend to simplify as much as possible down to just what they need, or what's close enough.

I could get by with, and mostly do, 1.5% Sb, 1/2% Sn, a pinch of arsenic, and the balance Pb for every single thing I shoot from muzzle-loaders to the .270 Winchester by only altering the amount of heat treat given. That has been my experience and in most cases, that alloy is preferable to me. Why? Such an alloy can be heat treated to hardness test exactly like straight, air-cooled linotype, but will shoot better, kill better, and is far cheaper than quality lino alloy. It also casts better than pure lead and doesn't give up much to pure if you quench in a bucket of ashes or powdered lime or is annealed carefully in an oven to be as soft as possible. Drop it on a towel to air-quench and it makes fantastic pistol boolits, solid or hollow point. That's what I've settled on for most things, and my M.O. is take what scrap I can scrounge and buy what I need to make it like I want. If you like Lyman #2 (and for most purposes, why not?), then go with that. Personally, I do have a "why not" in that Lyman #2 doesn't make the best low-velocity hollow points and doesn't like really high velocities, so if I were to use it at my house it would cover less than half the needs adequately. The next guy can do all he ever needs or wants to with it because his needs are different. Just throwing that out there, have fun with your experimentation, keep an open mind, and above all, enjoy making the discoveries that will ultimately dictate what sorts and how many different stacks of ingots tend to keep finding homes under your casting bench.

Gear