Soft lead purchase?

[barnabus]

I have a chance to purchase some soft lead,mainly flashing,sheet lead.I know its too soft to shoot as is in my 45ACP. What would i need to do to get the hardness up? What do i add to the mix and how much? The total weight of the clean lead is 500 lbs.Thanks

[Moonman]

barnabus,

First you should go read the STICKY "FROM INGOT TO TARGET."

Great Stuff there.

[cbrick]

This should help you out also.

Blending Cast Bullet Antimony Alloys - Alloying with Roto Metals Super Hard (http://www.lasc.us/SuperHard.htm)

I agree with the suggestion of reading From Ingot to Target.

Rick

[barnabus]

ive read from ingot to target but it doesnt seem to answer my question.I get the idea of adding tin but its not the best way of getting hardness up for pure lead.Fill out yes,hardness no.It talks about antimony which could be several different things.I assuming linotype could be used but I dont have a conversion to tell me how much i would need to get to make it roughly the same hardness of say wheel weights. i can get this soft lead for .30 cent a lb but i dont want to spend a fortune buying something that would make it harder to where I have over a $1.00 lb in it.i can buy clean wheel weight already in ingot form for that.

[cbrick]

Did you read the link in post #4?

Rick

[runfiverun]

3 parts lead to 1 part lino will make a pseudo ww alloy, only with a bit more tin.
I'd compare the cost of the lino with the cost of using the super-hard rick suggests and go from there.

[fastfire]

If you ES powder coat you can shoot them soft. Pure works good on HPs too.

[bangerjim]

If you ES powder coat you can shoot them soft. Pure works good on HPs too.

WEll.....................I would NOT even go there, but they are your guns and you have to mine the lead out of them!

I never shoot anything softer than 9 in pistols and 14 in rifles............PC all of them.

There is more to this than just a hard coating over some lead! You have to consider the "toughness" of the lead alloy and what it does when you send it down the barrel. Soft will deform under the PC, causing problems potentially.

Add Sb for hardness and a bit of Sn (1%) for fill-out to your soft Pb. Runfiverun gave you some good info.

There are tons of charts, articles, and threads on here to help you decide. ONLY YOU can decide what is right for you. We cannot just tell you. I figured all this out myself by reading (a lot!), mixing, measuring, casting, and shooting.

banger

[62chevy]

I have to pay $1.75 a pound for lead so if I had a chance to get lead for 30 cents a pound I'd jump on it. It cost me less than $4.50 a box of 50 to reload for that cost on lead for my 45 acp.

[NewbieDave007]

There are plenty of people here that would trade you for your pure lead and for $0.30/# you would be way ahead on the trade. If it were me I would buy all of the 500# for $0.30/# and deal with sleeping on the couch for a week or two.

[bangerjim]

ive read from ingot to target but it doesnt seem to answer my question.I get the idea of adding tin but its not the best way of getting hardness up for pure lead.Fill out yes,hardness no.It talks about antimony which could be several different things.I assuming linotype could be used but I dont have a conversion to tell me how much i would need to get to make it roughly the same hardness of say wheel weights. i can get this soft lead for .30 cent a lb but i dont want to spend a fortune buying something that would make it harder to where I have over a $1.00 lb in it.i can buy clean wheel weight already in ingot form for that.

Download the alloy calculator on here that is a FREE Excel spreadsheet. I will give you weights to arrive at a general hardness.

Use the search engine to locate it.

banger

[pal82]

Why not turn the pure lead into 1lb. ingots. Sell them on ebay. Use the profit to buy wheel weights.

[Ole]

Rotometals superhard. They are a sponsor. Best deal if you're looking to add antimony.