alloying pure lead

[hedgehog]

Looking for a bit of help. i have smelted down some what should be close to 100% pure lead from range scrap and sheeting.

id like to cast mostly 9mm lyman 120g tc boolits with this lead. but will also do some .357 and .44mag with it some day.

Iv read sizing to the barrel is key. Assuming i slug the barrel and get the size right,
what would be a good cheap way of alloying the lead to make it suitable to shoot ? i dont have anyone around me that iv found willing to sell wheel weights.

i have cast the lead the way it is in a few different molds of mine and can get it to fill and look good but the boolits seem soft. i can scratch them with a finger nail.

thanks for the help

[randyrat]

I'll give you this to read. At the bottom of the page there are a bunch of recipes for different alloys.http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

Myself i would still try to find some WWs to mix in your soft and water drop to bring it up to desired herdness. Don't focus too much on hardness, as they say fit is #1....Adjust your load to your alloy. There could be enough hardness in your your alloy after aging takes place( 2 weeks) to shoot 9mm.

[iron mule]

hedgehog the best bet would be to get some tin and do a 20/1 mixture this should make them hard enough for what you will be using them for /// the tin is available from rotometals see top of cast boolits page for link to them tin is not cheap per pound but it goes a long way 1 pound of tin to 20 pounds of lead this is one of the standards to use
mule

[Piedmont]

hedgehog,

I've been playing around with various nines off and on for the past 3 years. This is one place where you really do want a hard bullet. The 20-1 mentioned will work but you will want to use really light loads. Even light loads in 9mm are much higher pressure than light loads in .38 spl for instance. They really do need harder bullets or your accuracy won't be very good and can be terrible.

You'll probably want to size somewhere around .358" if those will chamber.

I have more pure lead than wheel weights so have been mixing them 50/50 and water dropping for the needed hardness. This works well in 9mm.

Your range scrap probably has some antimony in it. Why don't you try water dropping what you have? It won't get as hard as what I use but will probably gain some hardness and might then work for you. Another thing I found in my 9mm loads was that tumble lubing didn't work for this, but with a groove full of regular bullet lube there was no leading.

[cbrick]

Iv read sizing to the barrel is key. Assuming i slug the barrel and get the size right, thanks for the help

Welcome to castboolits hedgehog . . . :grin:

Sizing to the barrel isn't correct, for the nine size them as large over slugged bore dia. as will freely chamber.

If your 357 and 44 loads are for a revolver there is only one reason to slug the bore and that is to be sure the bore diameter is not larger than the throat diameters. If the bore is larger it will lead up and be inaccurate. Size revolver boolits to a mild snug fit in the throats and if the bore is at or a tick under throat diameters you'll be a happy camper.

As for alloy, for all three cartridges, the nine, the 357 and 44 you'll be need something harder than dead soft. Tin adds only minimal hardness and lead/tin alloy cannot be heat treated, antimony is required for this to work.

Rick

[papa bear]

Roto Metals has lots of different alloys you can mix with. They sell a 30% antimony/lead bar for about $3.50 a pound. Order over $100 and shipping is free. They have good prices on tin.

[Echo]

And wheel weights are always available on eBay for about $1/lb, delivered, in 50-lb lots.

[stubshaft]

Why don't you just alloy with Lino?

[hedgehog]

well im Canadian so shipping costs normally are threw the roof with ebay items , and rotto metals.

Id alloy with lino type if i had some thats for sure. anyone got some to sell?

[Alchemist]

Hedgehog,

Check with print shops and newspapers...sometimes you can get them to sell you lino. Even if it is "depleted" i.e. the tin/antimony levels are down, it will still work for you to bring up the antimony in your alloy.

[leadman]

Check Selling and Swapping here, lino is frequently for sale.

[hedgehog]

im considering pure antimony shot from rotometals. from what iv read here it will melt in with regular pot temperature given some time.

anyone care to comment. the reasoning is the pure antimony will be much cheaper to ship.

[Frank]

With that combo you need tin also. Rotometals does have Lino. You can mix Lino and Pure 50/50 to get Hardball (BH16). For your 44mag, you can water drop that for even harder. Sixty pounds total needed, 20# per each caliber X 3 calibers /2 = 30# Linotype needed. 30# X $2.49 = $74.70.
So if you're shooting 240 grn boolits, that's enough to make 1,750 boolits. Withiout shipping that comes out to $.04 a boolit. So I'd buy the Lino.

[hedgehog]

tin i can find locally so lino doesn't seem to be the most cost effective allow metal to me . i have cast my range lead as is and have no problem with fill out. maybe a little more tin would be ok but i need to add the antimony and or arsenic for the hardness. (as i understand it anyhow)

[KYCaster]

Most of the lead sheet you find contains some Sb. All the range scrap I've dealt with had a BHN of 8 or 9, about half way between pure Pb and WW, which would indicate that it has some Sb...maybe as much as 2%.

I'd recommend heat treating the alloy you have and if that doesn't get you where you want to be then add about 1% Sn and try again. You should be able to get to 15-16 BHN which will work fine for the .357 and .44 and maybe OK in the 9mm.

The next best option would be to get some Sb from Rotometals. There is a learning curve involved, but it's pretty easy to alloy with your scrap. I would order the "chunk of antimony broken off a larger ingot" rather than the shot because that's the same thing as I've been using. The shot appears to have an oxide surface and I don't know if that would affect the results.

Slightly OT, just curious....has anyone used the Rotometals Sb shot? Does it disolve as easily as the "chunks"? Why is the shot 20% cheaper than the chunks?

Good luck.
Jerry

[hedgehog]

Thanks very Much Jerry , very clear answers. And that topic is not off topic at all. id like to try one of these rotometals sb. What was your procedure to ad the chunks to your lead mix?

[lwknight]

Hedge, I have recasted my high antimony ingots from roto metals into smaller 1/2 and 1 pound more/less ingots. I could not use my bottom pour pot because it was so slushy that the mix would actually separate. So I ladeled it out into the ingot mold. And when the pot was too low to ladel out I just pouted thewhole pot into the ingot molds.
I weigh my mix on a digital scale but you can just mix by ingot count if they are kinda uniform.
It seems easier to me to melt the lead first then add the antimony lead and lastly the tin.
Then drop in a small merbel sized chunk of candle wax to flux.
You will need about 2% minimun tin to get a nice fill out and anything over 3% tin is just waste.

[KYCaster]

Here's a link to the thread with a discription of the process I use. There's also a thread with my process and also the process that 44man uses, but my search didn't turn it up.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=37734&highlight=alloy+antimony

His is exactly as "The Antimony Man" recommends and mine is similar but with different flux. Ask him, I'm sure he will be willing to repeat the instructions.

Jerry

[lwknight]

I just re-read your post about buying antimony shot.
Be advised that it is not easy to alloy pure antimony.
I think it would be a mistake. I use the 30% superhard.

[rob45]

If you need tips on alloying pure antimony, check out the thread link he posted above. Another discussion is here:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=66147

I cannot stress enough the importance of an oxygen barrier.

Hedgehog, you definitely need to get this process down if you cannot find antimony-rich alloys locally. International flat-rate shipping from the US is limited to 20 pounds, so the best bang-for-the-buck method is going to be using pure antimony. All other options (typemetals, 30% superhard from Rotometals, etc.) appear more economical, but as already mentioned the shipping no longer makes them economical. This assumes you have already searched locally for those options and have no choice but to buy from somewhere in the USA.

If you MUST have a metal (any metal) shipped from the USA, purchase pure antimony and learn to work with it. It takes patience, and researching the subject well beforehand will minimize frustration. But it is no different than any other "learning curve". It's not impossible; there are simply too many others who have already successfully done it.

[randyralph]

Good day Hedgehog,
I live east of you, and have had the same problem here getting good alloys to mix with pure lead. I found a great place to get it, it is call #7 Babbit, and I found it @ Acklands Graingers. The make up of the babbit is Pb-75.5%, Sb-15%, Sn-9.5%.
This stuff is great because a little goes a long way. I use this with WW, and oven heat treat for all my boolits. Hope this helps.
Randy

[fredj338]

im considering pure antimony shot from rotometals. from what iv read here it will melt in with regular pot temperature given some time.

anyone care to comment. the reasoning is the pure antimony will be much cheaper to ship.
Don't go that route. Get a hard alloy instead. Melting pure antimony is tougher than an alloy & you do not need much antimony to harden pure lead.
For your revolvers, size to the cyl. mouth dia not the groove dia. Some rev. have smaller chamber mouths than groove dia & this will cause leading & a reduction in accuracy. I just opened up the mouths on one of my RBH from 0.450" to 0.4515". Accuracy was almsot twice as good & it looks like less accuracy too. My bullets are cast from 50/50 lead & clip on ww, about 10BHN. I also like 20-1 lead tin mix. You could mix pure lead 60/40 w/ lino for a good gen purpose alloy. Water drop the 9mm for a bit harder bullet.