30 to 1 alloy from 50/50

[Ohio Rusty]

So I have a bunch of .44 mag boolits I cast in 50/50 alloy, pure lead/WW's with a little tin added. I no longer have my .44 mag carbine. I was thinking of making a bit softer 180 grain boolits for my .357 handi rifle. So if I were to mix one pound of the 50/50 boolits with one pound of pure lead, is that too soft ?? Do I need to mix 2 pounds of 50/50 with one pound of pure lead to get close to that 30 to 1 softer alloy ?? I'm not worried about leading as the .357 doesn't travel as fast as a high velocity rifle boolit, but I do want good expansion. The boolit I will be casting with be the .360-180 WFN.
Ohio Rusty ><>

[MaLar]

1 Lb of your solder and 14.5 Lbs of lead will get you really close.

Mixed Alloy
Tin % Antimony % Lead % Weight Est. Hardness

3.23% 0.00% 96.8% 15.5 9.5


30-1 is of course
3.3% 0.0% 96.7% 0 9

Hope this keeps the formatting.

[oley55]

MaLar, his 50/50 isn't solder, it's half n half soft lead and clip-on wheel weights.

[Winger Ed.]

If it casts well as far as fill out, and your speed is in the lower-ish to mid 'teens', I'd think it would be fine.
Especially if it has a gas check, and/or powder coated.

The weight it says on the mold is usually listed as a boolit made with the harder Lyman #2.
Yours should also drop a little heavier than what the mold is marked.

[oley55]

fiddling around a bit with this calculator: http://www.weatherby.dk/bhn.htm (using stick-on for pure). 30:1 is 9.47 bhn. Your 50/50 is 10.09 bhn. your proposed 1:1- your 50/50 to soft/pure is 9.38 bhn. 9.47 vs 9.38 seems pretty close. we are of course ignoring you previous tin contribution.

who knows what WW are today or if this calculator is super accurate, but that's my best wag. An FYI you can punch in your own values regardless to what is selected. I did the calculation for your 50/50 and got 0.38 tin and 1.5 Antimony. I punched those values in on one panel and then selected stick-on for the other, if that makes sense...

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I use 50-50 for light loads in 357mag.
If I were loading hot loads in 357mag, I'd prefer to use straight ww alloy.

[lightman]

who knows what WW are today or if this calculator is super accurate, but that's my best wag.

I feel like wheelweights are still pretty consistent. My opinion is based on the test that BNE ran a few years ago and the site made into a sticky. Every year when I do my annual smelting I send him samples for test and they are still running the same.

[Land Owner]

I have been casting "my" alloy of 49/49/2 percent Pb/COWW/Sn (96.41% Pb, 2.12% Sn, 1.47% Sb, https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?105952-Lead-alloy-calculators ), air cooled, BHN 11 (Pencil Test), MiHec 360-156 mold, as 155 gr. SWC or 144 gr. SWC-HP (respectively) and shot through a 357 Mag. Handi-rifle and SP101 Ruger at speeds below 1500 fps without leading barrels.

[oley55]

I feel like wheelweights are still pretty consistent. My opinion is based on the test that BNE ran a few years ago and the site made into a sticky. Every year when I do my annual smelting I send him samples for test and they are still running the same.

thanks for that reminder. I knew that but allowed the noise of many posts over time to cloud my recollection of real data.