several new guy questions...

[lead-1]

I'm new so let us cut thru the chase.
What is the ideal bullet casting temperature or does it depend on the mix of lead?
I found a 900* thermometer at the hardware store is it high enough?

I have been melting my scuba weights into smaller one pound size ingots and tonight I had a couple of batches that took longer to melt, took longer to harden and have a yellow tint to them so I quit for the night.
Was I running out of heat or are they a harder compound, maybe more tin?

We used to make our own connectors to hook the terminals of batteries together, we put a connector over the top posts of the batteries and used a torch to connect them in a braizing type manner. These were new lead and were never inside the battery, I found some of these and three half round blocks of the following, "United American Metals Corpn. Stonewall Babbitt" and it has an Indian chief's head cast into it.
Is it any good for anything?

Thanks for you patients and I'm sure there will be more before it's all said and done.

[Bret4207]

I'm new so let us cut thru the chase.
What is the ideal bullet casting temperature or does it depend on the mix of lead?
Depends on alloy, ambient temp, what the moulds want and your casting tempo
I found a 900* thermometer at the hardware store is it high enough?Should be

I have been melting my scuba weights into smaller one pound size ingots and tonight I had a couple of batches that took longer to melt, took longer to harden and have a yellow tint to them so I quit for the night.
Was I running out of heat or are they a harder compound, maybe more tin? Pure lead melts at a higher temp than those heavily alloyed with tin. Zinc and copper and lots of other alloys melt at higher temps too. Scuba weights tend to be made of whatever is handy and cheap. Hard to say what you have.

We used to make our own connectors to hook the terminals of batteries together, we put a connector over the top posts of the batteries and used a torch to connect them in a braizing type manner. These were new lead and were never inside the battery, I found some of these and three half round blocks of the following, "United American Metals Corpn. Stonewall Babbitt" and it has an Indian chief's head cast into it.
Is it any good for anything?Probably. Any lead type alloy not contaminated with zinc or too much copper, aluminum, etc can be good. Obviously you want to stay away from battery internals.

Thanks for you patients and I'm sure there will be more before it's all said and done.

Welcome to the asylum!

[looseprojectile]

Welcome here. It would help to know what boolits you are going to make and
what guns you want to feed.
My experience has been, almost any plumbous material will make boolits. Your battery terminals will work, though will probably need some tin to cast well.
The reason tin and antimony are added to lead is to help with fillout and hardness. Black powder guns can use pure lead, cartridge guns need varying amounts of hardness.
The lead you have can be anything that some person such as yourself has poured into the moulds. Babbit is a good source of some of the metals you will need to enrich the pure lead. I always identify the ingots I pour as well as I can, such as wheel weights or pure, or the alloy I have mixed. It is important to know, within reason what you are putting in the pot to cast boolits.
The experienced people here can answer all your questions, though we need some more information.

Life is good

[lead-1]

The scuba weights that I am melting are (should be) made from wheel weights. I made them 20 years ago and they were about 90% new and 10% used weights.
I don't remember using anything else in them.

To start the learning curve on actual casting of bullets I am going to cast .490 balls and .44 bullets, both LEE molds.

I'm thinking that the propane bottle that I was using was getting pretty light so I may have been loosing heat from a smaller flame.

[azrednek]

The scuba weights that I am melting are (should be) made from wheel weights. I made them 20 years ago and they were about 90% new and 10% used weights.
I don't remember using anything else in them.
.

Hopefully there were no zinc weights in the batch. I'm currently working out of a bucket of wheel weights I accumulated in the 70's. So far I haven't pulled a zinc weight out of it. If you can't get a decent flow and fill out, out of your pot. It might be contaminated with zinc. Before you spend a great deal of time casting up a bunch. Check your castings to be certain they are dropping at the proper size.

I recently had a pot full I suspect was contaminated with zinc. I had trouble getting a decent flow and everything was dropping under sized. Fortunately I have a .454 mold for the older Colt 45's. Using the older mold, casting really hot I got a good portion of the air cooled castings to drop at .452. The water dropped castings were under sized.

[lead-1]

How long after pouring a one pound ingot should I wait until I check it for hardness and will the bullets that are cast from it be the same hardness?
How much harder will the lead get over the course of a month or two?

[Bret4207]

If the alloy is lead-tin they should reach full hardness pretty much right off. It's the antimony and trace elements like arsenic that give you the harder alloys. They take 2-3 weeks from what I've seen. They reach full hardness and then very slowly soften (so I'm told) over a period of years or decades. The WQ ones take a while too, a few days anyway, but it seems quicker than the AC to reach full hardness.

Mine start around 8 Bhn and end up over 13 depending on alloy for AC.

[lead-1]

Is there a way to tell if you have zinc in a batch of ingots without putting them in your melting pot?
What does the zinc do to the hardness if I were to check an ingot?
I am just trying to figure out why the first 30 lbs of lead I melted acted different than the last 20 lbs I melted, it took longer for the last to harden.
I dropped a couple of 1 lb ingots from each group on the floor a couple of times each and they all seemed to have the same thud sound, I did this
because I dropped an 8 lb ingot and it sort of had a ring to it but that could have been the size differance causing that.
Would the humidity cause the slow hardening?
And sorry to be a pain in the butt.

[sheepdog]

Is there a way to tell if you have zinc in a batch of ingots without putting them in your melting pot?
What does the zinc do to the hardness if I were to check an ingot?
I am just trying to figure out why the first 30 lbs of lead I melted acted different than the last 20 lbs I melted, it took longer for the last to harden.
I dropped a couple of 1 lb ingots from each group on the floor a couple of times each and they all seemed to have the same thud sound, I did this
because I dropped an 8 lb ingot and it sort of had a ring to it but that could have been the size differance causing that.
Would the humidity cause the slow hardening?
And sorry to be a pain in the butt.

No, but can suspect. Makes it harder and gummy. Maybe but not much.

[Echo]

No butt-pain here. To check WW's, use dikes or lineman's pliers and try to cut into the weight. Lead will dent, zinc will not. Put the zincies aside.
Then, during rendering, use a low heat - zinc melts at over 700*, so if the melt never achieves that temperature, the zincies that sneak through will just float on top of the melt, and can be easily taken out.
And others have given instructions on re-melting to render out any zinc that might be in the alloy - I have not had the problem, but the procedure reported is to re-melt, not allowing the temp to get above maybe 650*, and give it some time. The zinc will form 'oatmeal' on top of the melt and can be skimmed off. Or so they say...

[lead-1]

BINGO, Thank you Echo. You just said the magic word, I thought people would think I done lost my mind if I said the last couple of batches started out looking like silver cottage cheese or "oatmeal" if you will. I will remelt those ingots at a lower temp and skim off the oatmeal, maybe twice. I try to search thru the forums but most of the time I just can't quite find the right question for what I need an answer to.

[ghh3rd]

I would suggest keeping the ingots from this batch separate from your future ingots - in fact mark them with a batch number or some way to differentiate them from other ingots. That way, if they aren't working out for you, it will be easy to eliminate them, and perhaps use them for fishing sinkers or whatever.

I may be anal about things, but I mark all ingots from each batch with the date smelted, sort of like manufacturers do with food, so if something doesn't seem right, I can just switch to another batch. I believe that each batch that I smelt could have somewhat different characteristics, and would rather use an entire batch before starting to use another, in order to get more consistent results.

Enjoy your forthcoming addiction...

Randy

[lead-1]

The ones that started reacting funny to me were made into the 1 lb ingots but I marked them to know which one were questionable.

[lead-1]

I went back thru and remelted all the ones that were different to me and skimmed off the top, bumped the heat up and skimmed again and poured them back into 1 lb ingots. I ended up loosing like one ingot from what I started with but things went a lot smoother tonight so I'm thinking I may have had more than one problem last time. I also for schitts-n-googles heated my new .490 RB mold (Thanks bishopgrandpa) by dipping the end in the lead for a few seconds and poured me a couple balls, which was interesting pouring from a 4 1/4 inch pot to those little fill holes, Success, I couldn't ask for a better pair of balls. Can't wait to really get started now. I think my next two buys will be a hardness tester and a thermometer.

[DLCTEX]

WW metal may give some problems loading a muzzle loader with those round balls (due to hardness). Pure lead is generally preferred for those, but you should try them and see if they work for you. If they are bore size the patch may be all that is engaging the rifling. Zinc will alloy with lead to about 2% and will produce good boolits. The rest can be removed, but it's a pain. Best to keep it out to start with.

[woody1]

Info here stolen from a link which I will post also.

Made by the United American Metals Corporation, Stonewall Babbitt has been around for many years and is still being sold today through industrial supply houses such as McMaster-Carr. This is a Lead Based Babbitt is among the least expensive babbitt that you can buy. Composition is 80.25 percent Lead (Pb), 14.75 percent Antimony (Sb) and 5 percent Tin (Sn) making it a ASTM B23 Grade 7 Babbitt. While this material would work fine for light duty and low speed applications, for just a little more money, you can get a much better quality material. Probably best to shy away from for most machinery applications.

Pouring Temperature is 650 degrees F.

This looks like a good source of info for babbitt. Mebe it's been posted before, I dunno.
http://wiki.owwm.com/(S(nqzesyfsmvqe3s55fnjgup45))/Print.aspx?Page=BabbittIDGuide&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1#Stonewall_Babbitt_10

Oh, and welcome to the new guy.

Regards, Woody

[Wayne Smith]

Lot of antimony and tin in that Stonewall babbitt. I think I would add pure to it if I were to find any.

[azrednek]

Success, I couldn't ask for a better pair of balls. Can't wait to really get started now. I think my next two buys will be a hardness tester

Sure we are talking about bullet casting!! Now I know how the alphabet networks force some politicians to say "I was taken out of context".

[armyrat1970]

Welcome to the forum lead-1. Here is a couple of good links.
http://shootersforum.com/showthread.htm?t=54481
http://www.lasc.us/
There is a place somewhere I am sure to cure the addiction for casting and handloading. I just haven't had the time or desire to look for it.

[lead-1]

Thanks for the links and the play on words, my balls were cast for a trial. They didn't look like factory made, they were kind of a grey color almost as if they had been painted but the sidecuts notched them fairly easy so I think they will work just fine.

[Echo]

If I had that Stonewall babbit I would cut it 1 part babbitt/2 parts WW's and be in heaven.