Diluting WW alloy and hardening?

[Canuck Bob]

How much can ww alloy be diluted and still harden?

I am trying to understand the relationship between arsenic percentages and adding lead/tin to WW melts.

I see some people add considerable amounts of non arsenic lead to WWs. At what point does the hardening process get effected? It seems if someone added 50/50 WW and soft lead the arsenic content would drop to a point that it would no longer catalyize the hardening process.

[Suo Gan]

I run 50/50 + 2% tin and they water drop at around 17 BHN. Just a small percentage of arsenic is needed to harden alloy.

[fredj338]

50/50 lead/ww will work for most applications to 1200fps or so. I treat it like range lead. You can still water drop it for a bit more vel./pressure w/ good results.

[grumpy one]

I have not experimented below 0.7% tin, 2% antimony. A maximum heat treatment brought that alloy to 23.5 BHN. You can certainly get substantial hardening at 1% antimony; perhaps about 17 BHN with a maximum heat treatment (in an oven under controlled conditions, of course).

All clip-on WW contain some arsenic, AFAIK. Bear in mind that only one or two tenths of a percent of arsenic seems to be sufficient to achieve whatever can be achieved by use of arsenic in conjunction with antimony. Because the required amount is so small, and fairly substantially larger amounts do not seem to have any additional effect, it would be fairly difficult to run experiments on sensitivity. You would need arc/spark analysis: scanners (X ray fluorscence analyzers) are not suited to such low concentrations and in most cases are not well suited to arsenic analysis anyway.

[cbrick]

You have it wrong Bob, antimony is what enables a lead alloy to harden via HT, not arsenic. Arsenic acts like a catalyst in the presence of antimony.

You can still HT a 1% antimony alloy but what is effected is the time curve of the age hardening. A 2% alloy will take less time to reach it's ultimate HT hardness level than a 1% alloy and a 4% less time than a 2%. The percetage of tin will also effect the time curve.

The presence of arsenic will greatly increase the ultimate hardening when HT a lead/antimony alloy but the actual arsenic itself adds very little hardness.

Rick

[357maximum]

I run 50/50 + 2% tin and they water drop at around 17 BHN. Just a small percentage of arsenic is needed to harden alloy.

I run 50/50 Wd'ed as my primary alloy and I always get 20-22 BHN after 2 weeks.....hmmmmm ...and I have made many many large batches of it..... hmmm again. This is with 2 different testers..a lee and a very skillfully made/certified copy of the lyman type that used to exist (see page 115 of lyman casting book #3 FOR A PIC).


50/50 lead/ww will work for most applications to 1200fps or so. I treat it like range lead. You can still water drop it for a bit more vel./pressure w/ good results.


AC'ed 50/50 can be ran to 2K plus/minus very accurately in sensible older rounds like the 35 rem and the 30/30, etc.

Waterdropped 50/50 can be ran well into 2700 plus accurately in X57 and 06 sized cases when you have your ducks in a row.

Pure lead can be ran well into 1200 fps in most "sensible" rounds IF you have the stars aligned behind them ducks in a row. [smilie=l:

If you want to Paperpatch ........the gloves come off and the cartridge will be the limiting factor for tough/mallable alloys such as 50/50 wd'ed.


Ducks in a row = well fittting-properly sized boolit w/gascheck, sensible (slowish) powder choice, proper lube, proper loading procedures all with consistency as a strived for goal in all stages of loading and casting.


****The above is just my experience and opinion and is worth exacly what you paid for it. Alot of animals were killed and eaten in the filming of this opinion***