Alloying Booobooo

[warf73]

Wanted to cut some old WW ingots down to something softer for handgun loads. So I broke out the smelter and did a 1:1 mix using the WW to pure BUT for every 20lbs of 1:1 mix I added 1 ingot of pewter (don't ask what I was thinking). After pouring just over 150 1lb ingots I'm all happy with myself thinking dang them ingots are nice and shiny.
Well I go off to work and that little voice in my head said " Hay Robert pull up the alloy calculator and see what bhn you came up with" thinking it should be close to 10bhn with about 1~1.5%tin for a good fill out. Haha that wasn't the case at all my bhn should be around 11.5 or so but the tin content is around 4.6%.

So now I'm on the hunt for more pure lead, about 200lbs should lower my tin to around 2% mixed in with the now rich tin alloy. If all goes well I'll have around 350lbs of alloy that is 10bhn and 2% tin.

I want to thank bumpo628 for posting the lead alloy calculator.


Warf

[Chill Wills]

Not sure what you will be using this for but instead of the pure lead, do you have a whole lot more COWW? That might be better and easier.

Also, you don't have to "fix" this all at once if you don't have ALL the metal on hand now. Save some (or a lot) for adding tin rich alloy to some future lead find you come upon.

[dverna]

Good advice Chill. Mark those ingots though!

Don Verna

[warf73]

The bad thing is I used up all my pure lead to make the alloy above, it's why it wasn't a larger batch. I'll head to the scrap yard Monday and see what he has on hand and what the current price is.

Only alloy left on hand is WW or chill shot ingots.

[Lloyd Smale]

why are you wanting bullets softer then ww. Is it to use up some pure you have? Or maybe for hps. Those are about the only two reasons I can see to dilute ww.

[warf73]

I don't need pure WW's for shooting paper targets at my local indoor range. My girlfriends 380acp, my 40S&W and 357mag have no need to waist pure WW's. I use the WW's for hunting in my handguns, getting WW's is hard but pure lead isn't hard at all never has been actually. I wanted to extend my WW's by cutting them,ran out last winter of my old alloy. It was 50/50 WW's/Pure and did have some issues with fill out so that was the reason for adding the pewter this time.

[runfiverun]

I think you over done the tin.
adding more pure will exacerbate the problem.

use more ww [or other antimony bearing] alloy to get things back in balance, then cut that mix with the soft lead.
or overload the whole thing until your antimony content is too low to matter [about .5%] then you'll have a lead-tin alloy with traces of antimony.

[mold maker]

Only fix what you need at a time. More lead in all forms will be in your future. Adding WWs and pure as you go isn't a problem. Learn from your supposed mistakes, and it'll all come out in the wash.

[warf73]

According the lead calculator with my boo boo alloy I'm at:
4.64%tin, 1.71%Antim, 0.12%Arsenic, 0.07%copper 93.5%lead, 12bhn.

Doing 20lbs smelts of my tin heavy alloy as the base.

Add 40lbs of WW's to 20lbs of tin heavy alloy it gets the tin to 1.88%, but antimony jumps to 2.57%, 11.5bhn.

Add 40lbs of pure lead the tin is 1.55% and antimony is 0.57% with a 9.6bhn.

Not arguing with anyone just showing you the numbers that I'm going off of. With the numbers shown above is why I was considering just adding pure lead into the heavy tin alloy.

I'll get an idea of what scrap lead is going for Monday, they might WW's but in the past they have only had lead sheeting and lead pipe.

Thanks Warf

[warf73]

Only fix what you need at a time. More lead in all forms will be in your future. Adding WWs and pure as you go isn't a problem. Learn from your supposed mistakes, and it'll all come out in the wash.

Very true mold maker it just reminds me when I think trouble isn't far behind.

[runfiverun]

yep your numbers look correct
[as in they come out pretty close to what I worked out in my head]
but it gives a direction for you to take depending on your desired outcome.
38 wadcutters, 45 acp type stuff and some cheap lead sheeting go to plan B.
find some ww alloy and want to make some 308 rifle boolits go with plan A.

[MaryB]

As is it would be an okay small game boolit.

[warf73]

Got to the scraper today to pick up some sheet lead. When we got out there he didn't relies it was sold earlier that day. But he did have a 1/2 55gal drum of lead (get back to this one in a min) a few pieces of pipe in a big box, some large counter weights in another. And yet another 55 gal drum full of lead that looked like sheeting but was shiny. Told me $1 per pound for everything but the shiny lead it was .50 a pound.
I grabbed the 2 pieces of pipe(just at 4lbs) and he asked if I wanted some of the lead out of the 1/2 barrel. I bent over to look at it and it was all linotype with all the pretty letters in each piece. So we added it to my 5gal bucket that added up with the pipe to 100lbs. Went out to the other barrel and filled the other buck with the sheeting looking lead. This lead bent over so far then broke off, not being sure of what it was I asked what the make up of the lead was. He said the gun read 80% tin and some other stuff he couldn't remember and lead. It is the over flow from a sand casting company here in town, he said they bring in a 55gal barrel every week of the stuff.

So my first bucket had about 96lbs of linotype 4lbs of lead pipe, the 2nd bucket had 55 pounds of tin rich lead all for $100 out the door. He said since he didn't have any sheet lead on hand he would throw in the tin rich sheeting.

Not a bad haul but still need pure lead LOL, high odds I'll be going back today or tomorrow to get more of the linotype.

[Lloyd Smale]

many here would swap you ww for your pure. think your off a bit on your hardness though. Most of the ww I get today tests out at 10-12 bhn. Cutting that with lead 5050 and your going to be running closer to 8bhn. I use that alloy for my 38special plinking bullets without adding tin and mine usually test about 8bhn on my cabintree tester. Some batches do 7bhn. never saw an advantage in casting quality by adding tin. Heck for that 8 bucks a lb tin is going for For every 100lb batch you do you could just take the 40 bucks and go and buy a pail of ww. By the way if 5050 pure ww doesn't cast well you need to fool around with your heat and casting speed as Ive never had a bit of problem with it even casting hps.
I don't need pure WW's for shooting paper targets at my local indoor range. My girlfriends 380acp, my 40S&W and 357mag have no need to waist pure WW's. I use the WW's for hunting in my handguns, getting WW's is hard but pure lead isn't hard at all never has been actually. I wanted to extend my WW's by cutting them,ran out last winter of my old alloy. It was 50/50 WW's/Pure and did have some issues with fill out so that was the reason for adding the pewter this time.

[Lloyd Smale]

any clue what kind of sheeting it was. Most of what ive found is xray wall lining. It is basically pure with about 1 percent antimony. Ive never ran into any sheeting that had tin in it. If your just going by shinny and not testing it for content or at least hardness testing it I will add that shinny lead most of the time is pure lead not alloyed lead. Cast some ingots out of pure and out of ww and see which are shinny.

[warf73]

I tested my booboo alloy it measures 0.072~0.073" so that's right at 11.5brn and the lead calculator says it should be 12bhn so its pretty close.

Tested all my ingots before melting it with the pure ( so I knew what was going into the smelter) and they all tested over 0.080" which is old WW alloy. These WW's where collected over 15 years.

As for the sheeting, , its alloy over flow from a sand casting pour. Been windy and had other things going on past couple days but when I smelt down the sheeting it will be by itself so it can be tested.

The scrap yard did have WW's but he said there in zinc and steel in the ben and would take hours to sort through. But that is always an option IF I wanted to spend hours sorting threw the ben.

[Lumpy grits]

You said you added pewter-I sure hope you didn't......
LG

[Oklahoma Rebel]

I would go with pure and just have a tin alloy with trace antimony. save the WW's for another batch. I have cime to prefer lead/ tin only, for my 45-70 I use 20:1 and I am sure that would be fine in my 38spl as well, just haven't tried yet. as for my mosin nagaat, I have about 100 lbs of lyman #2, I need to have it analyzed. I know its very close, but I doubt it is a perfect 5%sn,5%sb. good luck man. have a good day

[GrayTech]

I think you over done the tin.
adding more pure will exacerbate the problem.

use more ww [or other antimony bearing] alloy to get things back in balance, then cut that mix with the soft lead.
or overload the whole thing until your antimony content is too low to matter [about .5%] then you'll have a lead-tin alloy with traces of antimony.
This.