Newbie to casting - mystery alloy!

[Salukiwhippet]

Hello chaps and thanks for the membership.


I've just started playing with casting bullets for my .30-30. (Hopefully muskets, kentucky rifle, 8mm and .45-120 to follow!)

I bought a lot of reclaimed shot from an auction for very little money. I'm not convinced it's lead tho. It was coated in a layer of oxide and rubbish, but when I melted it and skimmed it and poured ingots, it set very hard (a piece 4" diameter by 1/4" thick isn't bendable by hand) The ingots 'ring' if you tap them with a hammer.

When it does bend, it seems to 'click' as tin does. It also melts with my lee pot set at minimum, which is meant to be about 450 degrees, the melting point of tin. I cast some bullets with it from a Lee 170 grain mould and they come out at 160 grains or so, so too dense to be tin. What on earth is it? Very hard lead shot?

Can I alloy it with straight lead? What sort of proportions would be a starting point?

Many thanks in advance, Jamie!

[MUSTANG]

Welcome Salukiwhippet,I see this is your first post.

Historically Lead Bird Shot has been used to harden lead as it is often high in Antimony content. I would recommend that you consider a "Pencil Test" to determine how hard your alloy is. See the following link on this site:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?75455-Testing-hardness-with-pencils

I would size and load 10 of your cast Lee 170's and see what type of group you are getting. If it's too hard, blending with some pure lead to reduce hardness might be appropriate. Remember, it's a journey not a destination when you begin casting. Lot's of knowledge in these threads. More Boolit knowledge has been collected in the last 10 years than the 200 years before. Reading, developing a plan, and testing against what you learn here will occupy many hours in the future.

Best wishes on your journey.

[Salukiwhippet]

Thankyou Mustang, for the welcome and the advice. With any luck, I'll get some made and get to the range on Sunday.
It does indeed seem like a journey, but there's so much conflicting information out there it makes my head spin!

Thanks again!

[daloper]

When I got started, I got a bunch of ingots from my uncle. I purchased the Lee hardness tester and it has been great to use. They are around $70.00 to purchase and you can get them from Titan Reloading who is up on the top banner. Welcome to the madness and have fun.

[Oklahoma Rebel]

a big WELCOME! from Oklahoma! yeah, it sounds pretty hard, you can try it as is but for 30-30 you can probably stretch it a bit with straight lead. depending on how much of this stuff you have, just do a small batch, and write down the % of lead you add to it, once you get that right, you could do a bigger batch that way you don't have problems with uniformity from a bunch of small batches mixed "almost" the same. good luck to you, read a bunch of the old posts here and have fun! Travis