Alloying your lead

[Jech]

Continuing to learn and accumulate experience with boolit casting and I've come to a firm conclusion that some of my lead needs to be alloyed...primarily with tin to improve flow characteristics and mold fillout (edges are rounded and almost cartoon-like, not sharp and crisp).

Found some "Lead Free" brand pluming solder at the local hardware store that was $6.99 for 3oz of 95sn/5sb. This is outrageously expensive for my means.

What I want to know is what do you guys use to improve your tin content, where you get it and how much you fork out.

~ Jech

[Rangefinder]

;) Have a read through this thread--it out it give you some good ideas.

http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=93214

[sqlbullet]

I lucked out and traded about 250 lbs of my lead to 60 lbs of solder (63/37) and 40 lbs of pure tin.

If you have plenty of lead on hand, you may try to find someone to trade with.

[grumpy one]

You haven't said what your base alloy is. If it is wheelweights, it already contains close to the optimum amount of antimony, but is rather low on tin for bullet casting. It can be used as-is, but you need good casting practice including a hot mould. It also acquires better performance as a hunting bullet (improved toughness) if you add up to 3 percent tin. There are various sources of tin, but many of us find the cheapest one is old pewter, which you can garner from garage sales and thrift stores. Composition varies a bit - years ago it used to be up to 8 percent lead, remainder nearly all tin, but that is no longer the case, it is now 95 percent tin. For bullet casting purposes you can regard pewter, whether old or new, as nearly pure tin, and you can often buy it for $2 to $4 per pound (even less if you find damaged pewter objects of little use except as scrap).

[littlejack]

Jech:
Plus one on what "grumpy one" said. I tin my alloy with pewter from Good Will or St vincent De Paul. I have picked up about 60 or so pounds of it, and cast it into coins for alloying. You can also go to your local radiator shop and ask for there solder dropping in the tanks. That is usually 60/40 tin/lead, +/-. I love that little diagonal bar. Good casting to ya.
By the way, what part of Oregon are you in?
Jack

[Jech]

My melt is guaranteed 100% pure and unadulterated range lead :P

A large majority of what I recover from the berms is at least 2/3rds jacketed bullets, the rest being .22lr bullets and some 240gr+ "cowboy action" lookin' LSWCs and LDEWC bullets. Knowing a little about j-word bullets, they're usually fairly pure cores...2 weeks after smelting and pouring my 3lb bar ingots, they are fingernail scratchable but are silvery instead of bluish and also make a mid-range ringing when they hit the ground opposed to a dead-soft thunk of pure lead.

In the few Lee 2 and 6-cavity molds I've tried pouring it into, driving band/wax groove edges are rounded and poorly defined throughout the temp spectrum...wrinkly (3-5 on my Lee pot thermostat) to frosty (8+). Sprue solidification temperature/time indicators vary from 3 seconds for wrinkled bullets to 7 seconds.

The molds have been appropriately prepped...soaked in mineral spirits for days, brake-cleaned, scrubbed vigorously with a toothbrush/dawn, lubricated, then slowly dried and brought up to temp on a hotplate.

Lee Pro 4-20 bottom-pour style pot gets fluxed with a pinch of paraffin and fine sawdust with another 1/4" sawdust layer left on top of the melt post-dross-removal to prevent oxidation.

Sorry for the random jumble of facts/thoughts, just trying to present the info leading me to believe my alloy needs more tin :P

Edit for littlejack: along the river a ways upstream from where the wind blows hard ;)

[zxcvbob]

It sounds like you need to add tin. They good news is that it doesn't take much. 1/2% is enough to make a noticeable difference.

[littlejack]

Jech:
I believe I know where that is.

[kelbro]

Sounds like a thermometer might help too. The temperature in that Lee pot will swing quite a bit as the level goes down. Adding more metal to your melt also swings the temps.

Consistent temps help make purty bullets.

[Jech]

To use a crutch, I started up the pot yesterday with some linotype I have lurking in my stash. After bringing my mould up to temp, I found that running my pot at about 7 did the trick giving me textbook fillout. As pretty as mirror-bright silver bullets are, I just couldn't get them to fill out well until they were just a hair shy of being frosty. Continuing the "crutched" experiment, I was water dropping them so I could get them tumble-lubed in 45-45-10 and sized all in the same day and get a good look at the final result.

With a better idea of what good fillout looks like in regards to melt temp, I'm gonna try again in the next few days with my range lead and see if cranking it up a notch helps out. There's no way I'm putting water-dropped lino bullets through my 45auto :P

[lwknight]

Just mix about 1 lino to 3 range leads and forget the water dropping. You will be able to lower the temperature too.
Range lead is mostly pure lead that is swaged , not cast. Its not a crutch to use technology like adding some tin for casting, its part of the process.