What's in my Lead?

[petroid]

I helped my local club clean out the pistol bulet trap and brought home some lead. I now have 200+ lbs of range scrap ingots. They look and sound just like COWW. I don't have a hardness tester or thermometer(on the list) and am wondering what your best guesses are as to the composition of the alloy. The only bullets I have cast so far are from a lyman 147gr 9mm mold. The mold should drop at 147gr with #2 alloy. With straight COWW it drops at 155. With my range scrap it drops at 158-9. I'm guessing its similar to 50-50 pure/coww. The range is an indoor pistol and rimfire only range. Lots of 22s and fmjs. And some cast bullets either commercial or homemade.

[kevmc]

google----- castpics specific gravity

[bangerjim]

SG test will be about your only SWAG. Short of a scrap yard x-ray gun analysis (the best).

That is where a hardness tester comes in very handy! I use my Cabine tester all the time. I would guess based upon what you say they shoot, 10 or so hardness......again a SWAG.

banger

[Defcon-One]

Honestly, nobody can answer this for you!

Guesses would be Lead, Antimony and Tin. Probably not much Tin. A bit more Antimony and the rest Lead.

You seem to have it figured out pretty well from what I read. Also, my experience with XRF machines says that they are not all that good at giving repeatable results. So two tests on the same sample may give you different result. These machines give a good indication of what is in you alloy, but they are not the last word since I have had results vary as much as 5-10% from one shot to the next. (ie. 3.4% Tin on one try, then 3.8% Tin on the next shot. Same machine, same sample!)

Keep on the path that you are taking and get a hardness tester. That is an easy test that tells you what you really need to know. Harndess will give you the approximate Antimony content, then add Tin only to get good fillout or to toughen up a brittle alloy.

DC-1

[leadman]

Shoot it and if it proves to be too soft either water quench it from the mold or heat treat it in an oven.

[petroid]

I guess I'll cast some more out of some different molds and see what weight they drop. A hardness tester would be helpful, have to look in to that too. Don't know how I can test SG with my scale unless I had a really good graduated cylinder to check water displacement as opposed to buoyancy. Thanks for the input

[dikman]

If it's any help, I recover range scrap from my local pistol range, it's all non-jacketed and mostly .38/9mm, some .22 (most of this falls through my sieve!). A member on here bought some of the ingots and tested it to 12-15 BHN - close to WW. This is all commercially made stuff, btw, I don't think anyone in the club is casting their own (besides me).

[jsizemore]

How does it cast? Since it has a higher Pb content, does it cast big enough to fit your gun?

[dikman]

Forgot to mention, if you have a lot of .22 then this will "dilute" the mix by adding lead, as most .22 isn't alloyed.

[btroj]

I find that range scrap is, generally, very similar to 50/50 WW/Pb. Mine tends to run 1.7% Sb and .25 % Sn.

Mine casts well as is and it heat treats nicely.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I'm guessing its similar to 50-50 pure/coww.
I think your guess is as close as it's gonna get and makes sense to me.
I've bought some range scrap that measure 8 BHN with my Lee tester...and with COWW typically around 11 BHN, I suspect my range scrap about the same as yours.

With that said, I think it's an excellent alloy for pistol loads that are less then 25K PSI. Lyman and some other good reloading manuals include load pressures.

[petroid]

Ok cast up some lee 356-120TC with my range scrap. With 50/50 pure/coww these boolits drop about 125gr. With my range scrap that were darn close to 124gr and filled out nicely. Sounds like my scrap has slightly more tin and/or antimony than 50/50. I guess I can thank all the people shooting commercial hard cast boolits into our backstop for that! It looks like this is going to make some great boolits!