Best alloy choice?

[ETG]

Gonna be casting pistol and rifle boolits. Is it better to use straight ww's or a lynotype mix - advertised at BHN 20.1? Thanks.

[mpmarty]

Typically I use WW / lead 50/50 for pistol.
I alloy for 93 lead 5 antimony 2 tin for rifle except for the 45/70 where I use WW + just a bit of tin to help fill out.

[Charlie Sometimes]

Same caliber?
What are you going to use them for or on?
Etc., etc.
Lots of variables.
General all around I use Lyman #2.
WW are a little harder, lino more so.
The faster the harder, or use better lube on the softer aloys.

[Buckshot]

...........For my general shooting I like an alloy (pistol & rifle) of somewhere around 11-14 bhn. Old time WW alloy would run in that area. Newer (since the '70's) seems to run 8-10 BHN. Normally I'll use 2 WW 'type' to 1 lino. The lino I have tests at about 20 bhn. With "WW type" lead 2-1 with that lino will yield a 12-13 bhn alloy. For 38 Special target loads, or ANY loads in my 38 S&W revolvers I use pure lead.

..............Buckshot

[ETG]

Casting for 357,44,45 pistol and 7.62x39 , 308, and 3006 rifle.

[Humbo]

For .357, .44, .45Colt+P, .454 and rifles I use 2 parts ww and one part lino, usually water quenched. For other pistol cartridges I mostly go with 50/50 ww and pure lead, or just air cooled ww.

[Bret4207]

I look at it from a different view point- here is the alloy I have on hand, how do I get best results with it? Those who wish to are free to spend their dollars of expensive additives and alloys. I prefer to work with whats available and haven't had too many problems working with that mindset.

The hardest alloy you can get will not eliminate leading or make up for poor fit or poor load choices.

[243winxb]

Lyman #2 or 6% antimony with 2% tin. You must have 2% tin in any air cooled bullets if loading for maximum fps. Click photo for larger view. http://i338.photobucket.com/albums/n420/joe1944usa/th_Alloy_20090610_1.jpg (http://i338.photobucket.com/albums/n420/joe1944usa/Alloy_20090610_1.jpg)

[Frank]

Revolver needs harder boolits, unless you just want it to go bang. And fit is always important.

[ETG]

Thanks. The price is about the same for ww or linotype mix. With the price of lead going up I thought I buy some. Spent most of today smelting wws - getting harder to find and a lot of work. Saw a post earlier where the price of lead was over a $1/lb. Got about 120lbs of lineotype and 60lbs of ww.

[mpmarty]

Where on earth are you seeing lead at $1.00 a pound?
Around here it goes for less than twenty cents for scrap and the scrap dealers are glad to sell it clean and ready to go for fifty cents.

[ETG]

It was on another post on this board where a guy was wanting to buy lead for under $1 a pound. I paid .40 lb a year ago here in NV. I tried looking up scrap prices on the net but they always wanted you to subscribe. Guess I should have waited and looked more:(

[angus6]

Yut was after 2/6/92 alloy , which is well over a $1 and the $1 a pound was for virgin lead foundry cast , which is apples and oranges to scrap prices

In the last year lead on the LME has gone from $900 a ton to todays price of $2300 a ton

[MikeSSS]

I talked to a schuetzen shooter the other day, he likes 25:1 lead:tin.

I just use range lead which is some hard cast pistol bullets and the lead from jacketed pistol bullets. Lately I just cast and air cool. Here's a link to the accuracy in a Savage .308 sporting weight rifle.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?p=702300#post702300

[Shiloh]

I just cast up almost 600 314299's with 50/50 water dropped.. That was last Saturday 10-24. I could get a mark with fingernail right after casting. I just checked and I cannot now.

For pistol it is 2 parts range lead to one part WW.
I don't usually go more than 1100 fps tops. Usually less than 1000.

Shiloh