Soft (pure?) lead

[jimlj]

When the kids asked me what I wanted for Christmas I told them lead. One of them took me serious and gave me 25 pounds of soft lead. I can dent it with my finger nail soft. I want to cast some 9MM boolits and was looking for advise as to what and how much I need to add to harden it up. My only casting experience so far is some .490 balls for my Hawkins rifle many years ago.

[454PB]

Add some linotype......I'd use 75/25 pure lead to linotype. It will produce an alloy close to wheel weights.

[boho]

My alloy for 9mm is 7# WW + 4# soft + a little tin. Works well for me.

[runfiverun]

that's a good start.
you can harden it up in several way's.
the one 454 suggests is probably the easiest and most repeatable with scrap lead findings.
as you go along you'll find several different types of lead out there and you'll kind of settle down towards mixing it as close to a favorite alloy as you can get.

I like the 1/3 mix also, since I can get close with soft lead, lino, and ww's.
this allows me to basically grab anything I can find then store it until I find something to mix it with.
once I get a bunch of this or that I mix it as close as I can towards that mix, then mix the smaller batches together to get a big batch of close nuff alloy.

[Springfield]

Soft is sorta relative. I can put a line on a bullet made from wheelweights with my fingernail, but that would still be too hard for my Blackpowder guns.

[reed1911]

Soft is sorta relative

That line deserves both an AMEN! as well as repeating all the time.

I think we all agree that soft is soft and hard is hard, but what about in between? It is hard to press the same amount every time with your nail to get repeatable results, but I too do it all the time. I can tell you right away which one is softer than the other so it makes and easy way to segregate two samples of wide difference, but that is pretty much where it ends. I have a hardness tester (fixture mount, not little ones for just lead) and I tend to use the pencil sets more for lead since it takes a little too long to set up the big machine to test lead, and it is really hard to actually get a good reading from them since they are designed for harder material like aluminum (and one for steels). The pencils are likely the best 12.00 testing method around. It is not precise but neither are the hand held testers and both will get you very close.

[mold maker]

Don't get hung up on hardness. It has much less to do with success than other factors such as fit.
"Soft" lead that is freshly poured has a much softer surface than lead that has been allowed to start to oxidize. Lead alloy that has aged is harder throughout than fresh poured so all terms of hardness are relative.
We read articles that lead us to think that we have to have a certain hardness for each use. It just ain't so. Casters have shot so called SOFT in BP guns and WWs for everything else for years and the targets didn't complain.
Now that WWs are getting hard to find and Lino is a thing of the past, we are faced with using what is available.
New casters are reading the old wisdom and getting confused by not finding constituents of the old tried and true formulas.
New found lead is likely reclaimed already, and only refined to fit the intended use. Much is reclaimed in China and may or may not be what we think of as truly (pure) lead.
I really feel for the new casters who must face this problem today. A lifetime (64years) collection of multi-tons has me in a position of never worrying about sources, although I still hunt and add to the reserves, for my offspring to enjoy without worry.

[Drm50]

I have literally tons of lead and alloys. I only shoot cast in MLs, WC loads in Handguns at LV, and
vintage cal rifles 25/20, 32/20, ect. I have been casting bullets for over 50 yrs. I have never got
technical on hardness, but use alloy that I can reproduce for uniformity. The problem with scap
lead, is a lot of the time it is a alloy already. I have found for pistol loads under 1000fps, I use the
klink test. Drop a ingot on concrete floor, pure lead or any to soft for use will thud and dent heavily. If it klinks and resists denting it's hard enough. After a while you develope a "feel" for it.
WCs for my bullseye revolvers I start with known metals, so I can reproduce later. I know this is
not very technical but I have never leaded a barrel yet. Most of the junk lead of unknown alloy
I use up in fishing lures & sinkers.

[Lakehouse2012]

This is an interesting thread, i thought i knew a bit but i dont... starting casting with lead i had been given a few weeks ago, made 500 rounds. Once i got mold warmed up and casting nice sharp corners, the bullets were coming out bright and shiny like silver. They really looked pretty.... then this week i went after WW's, collected 400 Lbs and melted them into 1.25 Lb ingots. Started casting those into bullets following same procedure. This time 400 bullets come out with a dull finish so i do a hammer test on them to see the crush and the newer bullets are a lot harder! The shiny ones compressed 1/4" under a 40 Lb blow with hammer, the new bullets almost entirely kept their shape. So they have to have a bunch of tin or lino in them already from when they were WW's. I guess that's what i learned anyways... thoughts?

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[Lakehouse2012]

BTW, these bullets are 240 grain 44 mag keith mold.

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[454PB]

From your description, your first batch of boolits were either pure lead, or pure lead with a small amount of tin. Alloys that contain antimony (like wheel weights) will solidify with that "galvanized" look once the alloy and mould get hot. That frosty look does no harm, and is actually a good indication that you are not casting at lower than required temperatures. I deliberately cast at a temperature that produces the frosting. What really tells the story is your smash test. Though clip-on wheel weights only contain 2% to 3% antimony, they are considerably harder (and tougher) that pure lead. Once the antimony percentage increases to 12% (as in linotype alloy), the boolits will actually shatter when given the crush test.

[Lakehouse2012]

Sounds like i have more testing to do here...

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