PDA

View Full Version : Plumbing solder boolits


Prknives
11-13-2017, 02:35 PM
Hey all, new to the forum, I know that many like to mix plumbing solder in with their lead to make alloy. I work in a plumbing shop and we go through solder like no tommarow, I’ve started to collect the scrap drippings, since lead is a bit hard to come by here in Cali sometimes. I’ve done some mixing with lead and it works fine but have since started to cast with straight solder ingots. This is 97/3 Tin/copper solder and it produces a shiny lightweight but very hard bullet.casting with a lee 124gr 356 produces an 88gr bullet and a 230gr .452 makes a 151gr bullet lubed with alox. I loaded a box of 9mm and 45 and cleaned my pistols then fired a full box into a steel sillouette at about 30yds, all seemed to fly straight and there didn’t seem to be much leading if any at all and fouling was acceptable, going to load more and post chrono results as well
rancher1913
11-13-2017, 03:23 PM
lead is easy to come by even in kali, just pm the captain or one of the other vendor sponsors here and it comes right to your door. the problem you are going to have is that you are changing the weight of the boolit and unless you can find a recipe for that weight you could be in for a surprise, better to stick with known until you get a little farther down the rabbit hole.
wmitty
11-13-2017, 03:43 PM
prknives welcome to the madness! Sounds like you might want to trade some of your tin rich alloy to someone with a higher lead content alloy. Please post your results when you do shoot the solder alloy boolits- I am sure a lot of folks are interested!
Prknives
11-13-2017, 03:54 PM
Will probably do some accuracy testing at 50yds with my 9mm pcc this Friday,this stuff is usually expensive but luckily all I have to do is leave a bucket with the solder guys for a while, so that’s why Ive been experimenting with it for a while because of its availability to me
Prknives
11-13-2017, 03:57 PM
Also I would like to send some to someone that has a hardness tester as these are very hard and am curious as to the Bhn
mto7464
11-13-2017, 04:41 PM
Sell or trade that for some WW lead. Tin is expesive, lead is cheap.