Question on alloys

[doghunter]

Just finished my first casting session. The 2 molds I have are a Lee 18 Cavity 00 buckshot mold, and a Lee 6 cavity .401 175 gr flat point mold. My plan was to put 10 pounds of clip on wheel weight ingots in the pot and add 2% tin. That was a lot less tin than I was thinking it would be. The smallest ingot I had was closer to 4%, so that's what I put in. I also water quenched them.

The bullets/pellets seem pretty hard, and I am shooting for a harder pellet than the Hornady pellets I've been loading, but they wound up coming out at .323-325 and weighing an average of 50.5 grains (as opposed to .33 cal 54ish grains of the Hornady pellets). The bullets also came out a little small @.4005.

I'm not sure either is really a problem I can't work around, but would a different alloy come out a little bigger? I only have clip on wheel weights, stick on wheel weights and tin that came from pewter I melted into ingots.

[cajun shooter]

You need to utilize the huge reference section that is available to all members of this forum. There is one that was made into a sticky and it contains a huge amount of information that took years to compile. It's a book that the authors could of easily had printed for sale and profit but instead gave it to the members of this forum. So many members neglect this source. A lot of members become burned out when they end up with the same questions year end and out. I'm by no means trying to be some smart butt but I'm hoping that I may open up this huge source of info that you may go to time after time. Go to the sticky section and look for Glenn Fryxell.
I started casting in the early 70's and still learn new things all the time, that's one of the things that is so great about our choosing the silver stream as a hobby. Take Care David

[RogerDat]

Lead is heavier than tin, your castings being 4% tin will be under weight. Different alloy components shrink more on cooling. You fill mold with hot metal, as it cools it is always going to shrink some, but each alloy combination will do that more or less depending on what it is made of. Some molds you order sized to use a specific alloy that is known and they cut to a size that will deliver the right size bullet from the alloy you specify. The general presumption I think for cutting a mold is COWW alloy which was about 1/2% tin will drop at the given size and weight. Muzzle loader molds might be calibrated to plain lead, and some cowboy molds may be calibrated to lead/tin alloy without antimony. But that is just a guess. My ML molds seem right on with plain lead.

Mark middle of 4% ingot of tin, take pliers and dip end of ingot into molten lead to that mark. Thus adding half of the 4% amount gives you 2%. Pot of molten lead will melt tin or solder ingot really quick. Lead melted will be a couple hundred degrees hotter than it takes to melt tin or high tin solder. Your dipped to the mark ingot won't last much longer than a wax candle. You can pretty much weigh any bar, wire or ingot and use total weight divided by total length to get weight per inch. Or weight per centimeter. You have a 1 pound ingot that is 4 inches long then 1 divided by 4 = 1/4 pound per inch.

There is a lot of information pointed to in that previous post, Glenn outlined and then detailed a lot of what making casting alloys is all about. What I posted above barely scratches the surface but does give you some idea of what you might want to be looking for in the more authoritative documentation

[Grmps]

+1 cajun

Everyone who casts should read this
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?36854-Glen-E-Fryxell-Fans