lead formulas

[odette]

I have cast using only pure soft lead and some a few boolits from wheelweights. I have some old molds that I inherited and want to try a formula of 1 pound wheelweight and .08 oz 95/5 plumbers solder. Is this a good formula for 7 mm TCU, 357 Max mid range loads? It works out to be 10 lbs wheelweight and .5 lb 95/5 solder w/o flux core. Does anyone have other recommended formulas

[Powder River Drifter]

My go to blend of metals for most everything except muzzle loaders is:
95% road lead (picked-up wheel weights
2% reclaimed shot
2% set type or linotype
1% lead free solder

This is used in everything form 6.4x55 to .375 H&H (hurt & hurt). And recently in my .45-70 with smokeless powder (sr 4759).
Good luck and better shooting!!
Drifter
road lead (picked-up wheel weights)

[Charles Ellis]

You should be able to use as much as 20lbs of wheel weight metal mixed with 1/2 lb of tin with very good results. Especially so if you water quench your bullets.

[odette]

Thank you both for your info. I have 3 pails of ingots, 1 is from soft lead pipe, 1 is wheelweights, and 1 is linotype. Ingots are not marked and neither are the pails, so I have to figure out what is what. Is there a easy way to tell or do I need to take it to someone that has a brinell hardness tester like maybe a machine shop. I have wheelweights to melt down and 2 lbs of 95/5 wire no flux core and about 50lbs of soft lead pipe.
I am going to try powder coating 7mm, .358 and .458 and drop in cold water when they come out of the 400 degree oven, or is it better to do that coming out of the mold?
The molds I have are gas check molds, should I still gas check the bullets even if I powder coat, or is that a waste of gas checks? Any thoughts are welcome.
I also have 2 375 H&H's 1 is a pre 64 Win Model 70 which is no worse than a 30-06 as far as hurt and is very accurate ( dead Prairie Dogs at 300 yds with 300 gr Sierra boattails). The other is a Ruger #1 Safari and kicks like a mule and is about as accurate as being shot by the said mule. Only mold I have for is for a 38/55 255 gr flat point and I am not going to try them in a 375 H&H

[earlmck]

You can figure it out yourself. The straight lead you can dent with your fingernail. "Nail" that pail down and then it is between the ww's and the lino. If your ingots are pretty consistent in size you will be able to tell by the relative weights: the lino should weigh only about 94% as much as the ww per given size. If you don't have ingots consistent enough in size to feel good about your weighing exercise you may have to cast a good boolit out of each metal. The pure lead will be just slightly heavier (within a percent) of the wheelweights but the lino will be a very noticeable lighter weight (that 94% I mentioned).

Others will disagree but on my boolits the powder coat takes the place of normal lube: it sure doesn't take the place of a gas check to any great degree. If I want gas check velocities (with accuracy) I put on the gas check. If I just wanted to shoot 'em at gas check velocities with no leading and didn't give a rip about the accuracy then the pc without gas check would do the job. Yeah, put on the gas check.

And you are not going to get much hardening effect by a 400 degree/20 minute heat treatment. My pc'd boolits seem to shoot pretty decent even if they aren't as hard as my water-dropped/lubed boolits, so there may be a gain there from the powder coat.

[Oklahoma Rebel]

also the WW's will make a duller sound when dropped on concrete, the lino will make a bit higher pitched clang.. I guess that's the best word for the sound. the higher pitch, the harder it is.

[nh7792]

There is an awesome lead alloy calculator on here somewhere. You can adjust the amounts/percentages of the different alloys to get an almost dead on BHN.
The COWW I have ran across lately have different a different BHN than the older ones did, nowadays the average of COWW is a 10 BHN and the SOWW are about a 5.

[Grmps]

If you have drawing pencils, there is a thread on "testing hardness with pencils"