Had another smelting day

[Markbo]

I got another day off work and nice weather sooo... only one thing to do that could get my mind off yard work. Finish smelting all my wheel weights!

I got another 80-90 lbs or so of ingots so I have a total of 200 lbs. I have a lot of scrounging to do to stock up on wheel weights again. :razz:

I must say I even enjoy the smelting process. Something to learn each time. Not always a plus. Like having a lot of dirt in your lead is a royal pain to skim off! Made for a lot more dross that was not recoverable

I tested my first batch made a few days ago and they came out to 8.8 - 9.0 bnh according to my Lee hardness tester. I also tested a couple of .475 bullets I happened to have laying around and they tested only around 19. I would have thought for sure they were WAY harder than that.

Doesn't matter really. They never shot worth a darn so I unloaded all of them I had and will throw them into the smelter when I melt down some pure lead. Now I have about 30 lbs of pure lead - in two sheets. What should I add to it during the meltdown to get it around 10-11 bnh? Tin solder I guess would be easy, but how much - 2%?

[Muddy Creek Sam]

10 BHN would be 20 to 1 lead to tin so 1.5# sounds right to me for 30 lbs..

Sam :D

[Ole]

I cut 10lbs of my WW's with 4lbs of soft lead and add 1% tin for a good all purpose alloy.

Stretches the WW lead you have by 40% and costs you a lot less tin (expensive).

[missionary5155]

Good morning
Over the years I have found I am very happy with a 50 / 50 mix for most my revolver shooting and hunting. I have dabbled some with 25% ww and am pleased with the results so far on critters that are not defensive after getting plugged.

[Markbo]

So mixing wheel weights and pure lead stretches out WW. Makes sense. And then adding tin to what approximate hardness? What is your source for tin? I need to get a postal scale or something to weight my ingots.

Also, is 9bnh too soft for non-max loads? How about for hotter loads? - In .45 caliber handgun loads. How much tin should I add to my WW to get to... whatever BH range?

[Doby45]

Don't use tin to harden. That wastes tin. Use tin for mold fill out and for malleability of a boolit. Tin will harden to a degree but anything more than 2% is pretty much a waste. If you have to harden your lead you come out much better buying linotype at $1 a pound instead of using $10 a pound tin.

[Markbo]

Hmmmm... so I have to try molding some of my ingots to see if the mold fills out properly... assuming I am getting the pre-heat right, which I have no idea how to tell.

Then I have to shoot some and be able to recover them to test malleability. Does the Bnh not tell me if my lead is sufficiently hard? So IF I have to harden my lead, use linotype. Where can I find linotype to buy? And why not buy Antimony since linotype is mostly lead anyway?

[Doby45]

You can normally find linotype in the for sale section here. My understanding is that straight antimony takes a higher temp to blend and is much easier to simply mix in an alloy that already has a higher antimony level. Yes, see how your alloy casts prior to deciding to sweeten it, unless you have a known alloy and you know it requires a specific amount of tin to pour well. The tin for malleability normally comes in to play on hunting and hollowpoint boolits. You can fire test rounds into media and get an idea if the boolit is holding together as well as you would like it to and if not you can add some tin or slow the round down.

[Markbo]

Ooooh... the more I learn, the more complicated it gets! :veryconfu