Alloy oddity

[Love Life]

To all the veteran casters out there who are savvy with alloys I pose an interesting question to you.

about a month and a half ago my friend gave me 25 pounds of lead dive weights. Not having a hardness tester I used the very scientific "thud" test followed by the equally scientific "fingernail scratch" test. When dropped the dive weights made a very solid thunk and dented. When scratched they were easily scratched with a thumbnail. Being the newbie caster I am (only been casting for 5 months) I mixed these dive weights 1 to 1 with linotype, casted up a thousand 220 gr .45 acp boolits with them, fingernail scratch tested them(they were difficult to scratch, but they DID scratch), tumble lubed them and put them away in the garage.
Fast forward a month and a half and add in the purchase of a lube sizer. I wash the LLA off the boolits with mineral spirits and proceed to lube these boolits up. Just for giggles I did my scientific fingernail test. These boolits would NOT scratch. So being the mad scientist I am i do some more tests. I took an ingot of certified pure lead and one of these boolits and put them in the vise. Squished them together and the boolit just smushed its way into the pure and didn't even deform the boolit. O.K. I know they are harder than pure lead now. Next test I take a certified linotype ingot and one of these boolits and put them in the vise. Same test was conducted of smashing the boolit into the lino. When i checked the lino and the boolit the boolit nose was flattened, but the lino ingot was equally indented. As hard as lino? So my next and last test. I took an ingot of certified hardball and a new boolit and squished them in the vise. The boolit nose was just a little flattened, but left a deep indention into the hardball ingot which is supposed to be 18 bhn. Interesting.

These bullets were cast with a 1 to 1 mixture of dive weights(soft lead) and linotype
they were air cooled and sat in my garage for a month and a half with temps ranging in the mid 60's in october to 40 and below for november with several nights and days being below zero.
Now to the question: Why are these boolits so much harder?

[a.squibload]

Good job testing!

In the absence of an expert I offer my explanation.
From reading here I gather that some alloys have antimony in them but will not exhibit their true hardness until melted and cast.
Also antimonial alloys harden over time after casting, usually a week or two.
Linotype has a lot of antimony in it, relatively speaking.
You could have monotype which has even more antimony and is harder.
The dive weights could have antimony but were not cast, maybe stamped?

I'll be watching with you for a more knowledgable answer!

[lwknight]

I'm no expert either but , here goes nothing.
I have found that almost anything , even small amounts , added to pure lead will make it significantly harder than the pure lead.
Also the hardball boolits will not be very hard for some tme after casting. IME it takes about 6 weeks to get to where you can't tell that they get any harder.
Linotype is the same.

[onondaga]

Your question"Why are these boolits so much harder? "

You aren't sure they are. Get a hardness tester. The smush method is an old one and your test when both samples smushed confirms you didn't get a good answer other than those two alloys smush similarly.

I'd say try shooting the bullets. Shoot some un-sized if they chamber OK and shoot some sized. There is no likely reason from your tests that the metal is too hard to shoot. mixing an alloy with uncertified content metals is a guessing game. If you are in for the long haul, get a hardness tester. for verifying desired BHN or buy certified metals if you desire better than factory ammo accuracy consistently.

Slugging your bore and shooting boolits the right size is more important than alloy selection. You will realize this when you shoot undersize boolits and they tumble or when you shoot oversize bullets and they jam your pistol, bulge your brass and lead up your bore or when you are kinda close and can't seem to get accuracy better than factory ammo.

45 ACP low to medium loads with heavy boolits likes softer 10 - 12 BHN alloys .001 to .002 over groove to groove diameter. the hottest loads would be fine with 15 BHN alloy

[Love Life]

Thank you all for the answers and info. These boolits will be turned back into ingots and set aside for use in the 454 casull. Hardness tester is on the way and next time I will try a 3 to1 lino/pure mixture, and do some experimenting until I get the desired harness. I will give a couple a try to see how they shoot. They are sized for what my 1911 likes so it will be interesting to see how the perform in the barrel and on target.:-)

[lylejb]

Dive weights can be almost anything. Assuming they are pure may not be true.

From the results, I'd say they are not.

That's ok, the 45 acp is a forgiving caliber.

The weights likely are usefull, once you figure out what you have.

I would suggest, once you get your hardness tester, cast a few purely with the dive weights and test BHN. Then test again in a week. Then test again in a month. Post these results here.

With the members we have here, these results will soon return a good estimate of what your dive weights really are. You can use this to estimate your future alloys.


next time I will try a 3 to1 lino/pure mixture

Hope you mean 3 pure to 1 lino. That would be more like it.

[Love Life]

once i get the hardness tester in i will do as instructed with my testing of the dive weights. Also i meant 3 to 1 pure to lino. Good call on that one. If i was wondering about harness now you can imagine what my surprise would be when I tested those!:shock: