16 to 1 lead tin

[lead chucker]

When you blend 16/1 lead tin does the lead need to age at all . I tesed the bullets i just made after they cooled and there a 5 BHN I figured they would be a 11 BHN. Elmer Keith liked this mix so i wanted to ty it with my 255 gr 45 colt loads for my black hawk. Any info on this would be great. Speaking of Elmer Keith, my wife was just in Salmon Idaho Where Elmer lived and the guy who owns his house let her in his trophy room. Wish i could have been thereTo see it.

[missionary5155]

Good morning
Unless I had a refrigerator full of tin I would not be casting with 16-1. Elephant hunters of days ago figured 20-1 was plenty hard to smack those monsters.
Elmer Kieth knew about 6 guns.. but most of his ideas were not based upon what we have available today ( like a 454 BFR or a 45 Colt Blackhawk) ... or the prices of tin. Wheel 50-50 weight and lead +a dable of tin will do as well.
But I guess to answer your question... yes they will harden with age.

[Larry Gibson]

The Arsenals (Frankford Arsenal specifically) did considerable testing (far beyond what we might consider "testing" today) with different alloys for the 45-70 cartridge. They found a 1-16 alloy worked the best. Not a lot of difference between a 1-16 and 1-20 alloy but I have also found the 1-16 alloy to shoot better than the 1-20 alloy when velcoity of a 400/500 gr .45 bullet approch 1350 fps or hinger. Thus I use that alloy in my 45-70 trapdoor loads with sevice rifle loads and my heavy 500 gr match load (BP or smokeless) all of which run 1300+ fps. I also use the 1-16 alloy for the medium power lion and leopard loads in my 450-400-70 Siamese Mauser using the Lee C457-500-FN or Lymans 457483 Gc with a slight HP. The 1-16 alloy is also very good in my baboon and chizzle tooth loads using the RCBS 45-300-FN GC bullets at 1850 fps. In my TC Black Mtn Magnum .50 cal ML the TC 350 gr MaxiBall cast of 1-16 alloy at 1570 fps is also excellent. I most often use 1-16 alloyed GC revolver bullets in .357, .41, 44. and .45 Colt loads where the velocity is over 1400 fps in revolvers, Contenders or rifles. Accuracy with all loads is as good as it gets and expansion with negligeable weight loss is excellent.

I do recommend 1-16 alloy for the loads that push above 1300 fps to 1800 - 1900 fps, especially for hunting loads. It also might work well above that velocity but I've not tried it as I mostly use a 50/50 WW/lead alloy in that range.

Larry Gibson

[montana_charlie]

When you blend 16/1 lead tin does the lead need to age at all . I tesed the bullets i just made after they cooled and there a 5 BHN I figured they would be a 11 BHN.
The 'standard tables' that you see everywhere have 10 to 1 at 11 BHN. But, they also show 20 to 1 at 10 BHN, which is pretty far from the truth. Since 20 to 1 is actually 7.8 BHN, I would estimate that 16 to 1 would come in at about 8 to 8.5 BHN...but I have never made any to test.

That is still pretty far from your own '5 BHN', so I am curious about which tester you are using...

CM

[cajun shooter]

A 5 BHN is what pure lead reads at. AS MC posted, I also would like to know about your tester and your method of using it. When it comes to the making of a alloy of lead and tin it is not rocket science and will not matter on the downrange side if it hits the target. By that I mean that if you end up mixing a 18-1 or 14-1. As long as it is close it will work fine as long as the size is correct.

[fredj338]

Something is off w/ your testing or alloy. As noted, pure lead will go 5-6BHN. I use 20-1 & 25-1 alloys for LHP & they are going about 9-10BHN on my CT tester.

[montana_charlie]

Pure lead (certified pure) will return a hardness number of 4.5 BHN when tested with a tool that relies on the Brinell method for calculatiing hardness. Your CT (Cabine Tree) tester says 20-1 is 9 BHN because it's 'calibrated' using the old tables which say that is the correct figure...not because it can actually return a Brinell number.

Recent hardness testing (by an experimenter who leaves very little to chance) indicates those old tables are pretty far from the truth.
Here is a copy/paste of the most informative report to come out of that testing so far.
CM

Gents,

Here's a bit more detail about some alloys that have been tested for Brinell Hardness stability. The testing started just after returning from Raton 08. Each alloy tested was made from certified lead, tin and Lyman # 2 alloy. Considerable care was taken to make sure the testing was accurate and repeatable. Two other Brinell Hardness testers were used to calibrate the Lee tool that was used for the duration of the testing. All three tested the certified lead at BH 4.5, the tin at BH 5.0 and Lyman # 2 at 15.0. From these initial calibration tests I feel confident that the results I'm reporting are accurate and reflect the BH numbers properly. Some of the published BH numbers for lead-tin alloys is not accurate.

The testing, that lasted one year, was performed as follows:

First test was performed about 1 hour after casting the PP bullets for a given alloy.
For the first 24 hours the sample was tested every 6 hours.
For the next 6 days the alloy was tested every day at around noon.
For the next 51 weeks the alloy was tested every Monday at around noon.

Antimonial alloys tested:
Lyman # 2 (90/5.0/5.0) lead/tin/antimony
95.0 / 2.5 / 2.5
96.0 / 2.0 / 2.0
97.0 / 1.5 / 1.5
97.5 / 1.25 / 1.25
98.0 / 1.0 / 1.0

Lead-tin alloys tested:
20-1 & 16-1

One alloy was made with twice as much tin as antimony to determine what the stability characteristics are. That alloy was 97.0 % lead, 2.0 % tin and 1.0 % antimony. The alloy was very unstable. The takeaway from that alloy is don't mix an alloy with more tin than antimony.

The lead-tin alloys age-softened quickly. The 20-1 was completely age-softened 6 hours after casting and remained at that hardness, 7.8, for over a year. The 16-1 had a BH of 9.8 one hour after casting. At day 4 of the testing the BH was down to 8.2 and has remained at that hardness for over a year.

The 98.0 / 1.0 / 1.0 alloy and 20-1 have the same hardness. The 98.0 / 1.0 / 1.0 alloy took about 12 hours to completely age-harden to a BH of 7.8, the same as 20-1. The 97.5 / 1.25 / 1.25 alloy has the same BH as 16-1 and took 18 hours to completely age harden.

My favorite antimonial alloy is the 97.0 / 1.5 / 1.5, which has a BH of 9.8 and took 18 hours to completely age-harden. It has remained at that hardness for over one year. I have found that this alloy shoots very well in my 8-twist 8mm x 60mm Gredes, 10-twist 35-40 Maynard and in the various 10-twist 38-cals I have. This alloy also works very well for various PP loads.