jacketed bullet core composition

[Krag1902]

I got about half jacketed bullets in yesterday's range haul. I have read various input on the composition of these cores and they range from pure lead to 1.6 per cent antimony. It would be nice to know what I've got before I smelt the whole mess. Would anyone recommend smelting the core separately from the other bullets, or just add them to the total? Has anyone a more definitive answer to the question of lead core composition?

[triggerhappy243]

i am in the same boat. i have buckets full of range scrap that are all jacketed bullets the only sure way to know is to have it xrf tested.... random sample some.

[MaryB]

Smelt it all together and send BNF(think that is his forum name) a 1 pound sample to be XRF tested. He keeps the pound of lead.

[fecmech]

I read in the Sierra load manual they use pure lead to 1.5%SB in their pistol bullets and up to 3%SB in their rifle bullets, no mention of SN at all.

[runfiverun]

Sn is hard on swaging equipment.
Sb makes the lead flow easier under pressure.

you can use Sn in a swaging alloy but you need the big equipment if your gonna exceed the 0. area and the only advantage to using it is penetration, the bullet makers do that with jacket thickness or design rather than use tin because it is more predictable.

anyway:
your gonna have some antimony in there, probably enough for what we normally do if you throw a little tin in your mix, or mix your jacketed alloy with some of your commercial cast alloy.

[Bigslug]

Such was my science on the problem: http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?269789-Careful-Analysis-of-Segregated-Range-Scrap-Smelt

I know it directly contradicts fecmec and run's posts, but my experience is that jacketed cores act like they have no antimony in them at all. The hardness was the same whether I air cooled test samples or water-dropped them, and got the same hardness result when I just tested one of those air cooled ingots two years later. I only used a hardness tester to figure this out, and haven't had any of it scanned, but it behaves like 30/1 lead/tin - at least with what tinkering I have done.

My own attitude has become to start separating my smelts into shotgun shot, shotgun slugs, jacketed, and cast/mystery metal. After my initial tests, I've got a fair notion of what the first three are, and the last I can just pour and test samples from each batch. The benefit to this is that you get reasonably consistent piles of "eggs, flour, milk, and butter" as time goes on, and you can use them to mix up "cookies, cakes, or bread" as the mood strikes you, rather than get stuck with multiple, inconsistent batches of "cookie dough".