elrotundamundo
11-28-2013, 03:24 PM
The other day I went looking for some pure lead to cast Maxi Balls and found a metal salvage place that sold me ingots that were purportedly pure lead. The guy told me that they sell various alloys for bullet casters. He handed me two ingots with the letter "S" stamped on them, knocked them together and said that it was pure lead and that he had been doing this for years and could tell by the sound. At home I knocked them together and the sound wasn't as dull as I thought it should be, but hoping the guy knew his business, I fired up the pot and casted 50 Maxis. They are 50 cal. and should have weighed 370 gr. But all of them weighed in at 360 gr. +- about a half grain, after I sorted out a few under-filled ones. I took them out to test them and found them difficult to load and I had to tap the ramrod a bit to seat them. TC factory Maxis always seat firmly but require nothing other than hand pressure. I am pretty sure there is some tin and/or antimony in the mix, so I will order some pure lead online and start over.
My question is, can the approximate hardness or alloy be guessed based on the weight difference? I would like to mix this stuff in with my wheel weights to cast bullets for my 45 Colt and wonder how much I can throw in a 10 pound pot without changing the hardness of the wheel weight alloy very much.
My question is, can the approximate hardness or alloy be guessed based on the weight difference? I would like to mix this stuff in with my wheel weights to cast bullets for my 45 Colt and wonder how much I can throw in a 10 pound pot without changing the hardness of the wheel weight alloy very much.