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dagger dog
06-30-2008, 04:39 PM
Hey guys,

Got my casting equpment last week, Im starting my casting with the Lyman 225415 bullet and plan on shooting it out of my Savage Model 40 .22 Hornet, it has 1-14 twist.

I bought the Lyman starter kit, 4500 lube sizer Mini Mag 10 lb dipper furnace,ingot mould dipper, bullet lube, also thermometer, .225 sizing die and the top punch for the 225415 bullet and 1k gas checks. My bullet mould and handles are to arrive this week.I do handload all my ammo,handguns and rifle but have not tried casting my own bullets, other than round balls for a muzzle loader I once owned.

I couldn't wait to get started so last Fri. after work I grabbed a 10 lb. bucket of scrap wheel weights and Sat morn, I got out the turkey fryer and an old cast iron skillet and fired that sucker up. I wound up with a little under 71/2 lbs. clean wheel weight alloy.

I'm so green at this casting thing, and a lot of the information in the stickies and out of the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook, is hard for me to grasp. So my thoughts turned to this web site where I know there is 100's if not 1000's of years of experiance.

One question is about the alloy that Lyman calls its' #2 alloy, the one used in their loading data, I halfed their recipe of( 9 lb wheel weights and 1 lb 50-50 solder), only I could not find a source for the 50-50 solder so I used 60- 40. I know this will be softer, but I plan to use the hardening process described in the manual (oven heat to 450 degrees and quench). Does anyone think this might cause a problem and how fast could you drive this alloy without leading?

The other confusing items ( thats to my pea sized brain) is the temperatures needed for good casting, I might have gotten the ingot material to hot, and skimmed of some off the tin when I fluxed and cleaned, I had this dark grey colored dross attached to my spoon and seive. Was this the tin seperating from the alloy? Also what is the best temp to keep this from happening.

Any help geatly appreciated !:mrgreen:

Echo
06-30-2008, 05:02 PM
Be advised that the 60-40 solder is 60% Tin (actually, it's 63-37), and so would be a little harder. I think you could actually go with a couple more pounds of WW's with that lb of 60-40. I believe that any more than 3% tin is fairly wasted, so a pound of 60-40 yields 10 ounces of tin, which would satisfactorily alloy about 20 lbs of WW's.

Firebird
06-30-2008, 06:00 PM
I agree with EasyEd, with the price of tin today (almost $10 a lb), Lyman's standard 90-5-5 (lead-antimony-tin) #2 alloy really contains more tin then desired. The equivalent hardness 92-6-2 alloy is a better target today as it has enough tin to cast well, without unnecessarily raising the price of the alloy. Heat-treatment depends on the antimony and any arsenic present, so you might get a little harder bullet when heat-treating with the 92-6-2 as it contains more antimony.