Minimum Brinell hardness for a properly sized/lubed 45acp?

[Butler Ford]

With casting supplies/wheel weights, lead, tin, antimony, etc. getting ridiculously high, I'm looking for corners to cut. What would be the softest alloy you'd recommend for a properly sized and lubricated 230gr bullet at a standard velocity at or about 850 fps?

BF

[Lloyd Smale]

pure lead will work at those velocitys IF you have a good gun and use a good lube and especially if you powder coat. Will you get the best accuracy with softer alloys? probably not. But if your just looking for plinking ammo you can cast with about anything.

[bbogue1]

When I scrounge used wheel weights I am finding the collection can be divided into 3 piles, almost of equal weight. Zinc, COWW and SOWW. The COWW with 3-4% antimony, .4-.5% tin, less than 2% arsenic and around 96% lead provides a basis for building higher speed bullets, so I keep that. The SOWW is nearly pure lead providing a basis for slower speed bullets, I used to sell or trade that for COWW, but after talking to a good friend who has shot and cast bullets at a level much more intense than most I am convinced not to get rid of the SOWW, but, to use it for under 1000 fps loads. Obviously the lube quantity and quality comes into play for these very soft bullets and since I am usually shooting under 20 yards I can then play with powder quantity and burn rate to reduce the amount of lead melt in the barrel. The idea seems like using pure lead from stick-ons without any thing added to the alloy would be a bit crazy, but, I have read where that seems somewhat common. If you can buy used wheel weights from a scrap yard all but the zinc and garbage is usable. As an aside: According to Elvis Ammo on Youtube even the zinc can be made into good bullets. The scrap yard will buy the zinc back, however at a much, much lower price (You are better off scrubbing them with a toothbrush and selling them on ebay for whatever you can get) or simply tossing them and let the garbage man deal with them. Quite often I find I can assemble a stock of lead for very little money, but, I have to have patience because finding lead usually comes in small quantities and requires a reward of donuts or something to the giver. It seems nothing is free, but sometimes the price can be reduced.

Off topic a little bit - If you do wish additional hardness for faster rounds try water quenching your freshly cast bullets. I have a friend who likes to shoot in the 1500 to 2000 fps range who uses COWW and adds enough tin to bring the total to 3% (Frexyll wrote in his book "Ingot to Target" that more than 3% tin serves no purpose) then he water quenches to bring the BHN from around 12 BHN to around 18. Seems to work.

Hope this helped.

[Edward]

I use whatever is handy but I am not in competition with hand guns , my rifles are a different story :bigsmyl2:

[Tatume]

Use what you have. It'll work fine.

[dubber123]

Bhn? well assuming pure to be about 5, I'll say 6 :) Only because I would add a little tin for fill out. I use 50/50 WW-Pb a lot, and I am sure you could go softer in the ACP, it's about as forgiving as you can get.

[Butler Ford]

Thanks ya'll, I had never thought of pure lead as a shootable pistol round.

[dubber123]

A decent lube helps a ton. Nothing fancy needed in the ACP, but somethin' :)

[fecmech]

Thanks ya'll, I had never thought of pure lead as a shootable pistol round.
Sometime back there was an outfit that made swagged lead 185 swc's for the bullseye crowd and they were known for their accuracy@ 50 yds.

[bangerjim]

Use powder coating and forget about hardness in the velocities you are in. No lube grease, no smoke, no leading, softer boolits, less alloy needed! Can't beat that!

I PC my ALL cast boolits (up to 300gn 45cal) in the 10Bhn range with perfect performance and NEVER any leading. Stretches your dwindling stash of Pb and alloy a lot farther.

Read up on it in the threads on here under Alternative Coatings. Better than any grease!

Water dropping only works if you have Sb in the mix and, it is not that reliable/repeatable.



bangerjim

[RU shooter]

Sometime back there was an outfit that made swagged lead 185 swc's for the bullseye crowd and they were known for their accuracy@ 50 yds.
back in the late 80's I bought some swagged swc from Dillion precision not sure if they were pure lead but man were they ever SOFT only bullet that my P90 wouldn't shoot well and caused leading in the barrel

[fecmech]

RU--I'm pretty sure they weren't from Dillon, my foggy memory keeps telling me Zero but I wouldn't bet on it.