http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm [smilie=s:
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http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm [smilie=s:
great site!!!! thanks for the link.
LOL...
Thanks for the link, I found that site before i found this forum. Great data!
http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm
Stumbled onto this site a few years ago.
There is so much information there that it is almost intimidating. I go there frequently and often find new info in areas that have been already been visited.
Shiloh
I just stumbled across this sticky . . . Thanks Ken and the rest of you, words like that make a lot of time and work well worth while.
Rick
What is "plumbers lead" how can it be identified? I have 200# offered to me for free. can I add it to wheel weights?
thank's 45nut i was just looking for info for mixing when i came across your post! this is the holy grail of info. thank's again.
skimmerhead:D
Free is a DARN GOOD PRICE!!
Plumber's lead is what we used to seal BELL & SPIGOT cast iron pipe. Fit it, cut it, stick it togther...fit an asbestos rope around the bell, melt the lead..pour it in...seals up reall nice and even allow for a bit of pipeline movement. Used the cast pipe for old sewer lines and old fire water lines. When it breaks,, now adays, we use RUBBER gaskets and press them together...so good if you are there when the line breaks and you get the old lead....sooo now..
What happens when we SMELT this water and poop laden stuff...SAFETY FIRST....
put the old stuff in a COLD POT ..fill her up cold..add your flux...I use pine saw dust from the table saw...the GO SLOW...ramp up the burner slow and let the water slowly cook off...three or for ramp ups to melt temperture...then carefully mix...long stir laddler...glasses...sleeves...stay back cause if there is water in the POT...KA BLEWY!! you get a bomg and the lead pot blows our all over the place, the dog and YOU!! And DON" ADD COLD LEAD to a hot melt...No. DON"T DO IT... put the smelt, (minus dross) in your ingots and go again from the start. Go slow...flux...and don't add cold stuff to hot stuff...safety gear..you should be fine... FREEE IS GOOD....
Nose Dive
Oh,,,it is good to MIX...mix with wheel weights..whatever...as long as you do it when ALL THE SMELT MATERIAL is COLD in a COLD POT...don't put the plumbers stuff in hot wheel weights..or vise versa... FREE IS GOOD.
why can't i add cold to hot???been doing so,not knowing it was wrong.
thanks bob.thought maybe it was that fairy,but didn't know if maybe it wern't something else!while casting,i add as i go,when the melt gets down about half,i'll add sprue-cut or bad cast bullets or an ingot, so,everything should be pre-heated before it goe's in??? i usually just drop in the small stuff, and gently add the bigger stuff. rich.
freight, we're talking about the original smelting operation. If you are throwing in bad boolits, sprues, or other processed lead, you should be OK. When smelting down unknown scrap, pipe, roof flashing, dive weights, etc., then start from a COLD pot EACH AND EVERY TIME!! Do NOT add unknown lead to a pot of molten lead. Hope this clears it up, take care.
Copied this from the ROTOMETALS e-mail newsletter I just received
Talk Back
Lead Hardening
Recently I was asked the brinell hardness of pure lead and wheel weights. We did some research and found that the BHN of pure lead is approximately 5. The BHN for wheel weights was a little more difficult to find as wheel weights differ in their chemical composition. That said, many people use a range of 8-9; we list 8.6 as the baseline BHN for wheel weights. This got us thinking, why do we receive so many calls about hardening lead? This has to be the number one question we are asked by bullet casters. So we thought, let's try to answer this question without adding to the confusion of lead hardening.
There are two metals that can harden lead successfully, tin and antimony. For every 1% of tin added to your lead you will increase the brinell hardness by .3 and for every 1% antimony you add, you will increase the brinell hardness by .92. Using this simple equation Brinell = X + (0.3 * Tin) + (0.92 * Antimony) for "X" enter 5 for pure lead or 8.6 for wheel weights. Now you can figure out exactly how much antimony and/or tin you need to add to achieve a certain BHN.
Example: 14.7 = 8.6 + (0.3 * 5) + (0.92 * 5)
Here, we added 5% tin and 5% antimony to our wheel weights and achieved a 14.7 BHN.
For more information and to look up these products, visit us online at www.Rotometals.com.
An unasked question is an unanswered question. Send us your questions today. You never know, your question may be featured in a future newsletter.
Mark :coffeecom
I am completely new to casting and my first question is this..What is copperised lead ? an is it suitable for casting ? I have a heap of it I pulled off my roof and it was used for flashing.
hi spek, my first visit back for a while, see nobody has answered,so i'll try! don't know copperized, but most flashing's were(in times long past) copper,but the flashing boots,or collars (around soilstacks) were indeed lead,pert-neer pure! have quite a bit of it myself,along with cable sheath,old waterline collars, and wheel weight/range lead ingots, am here trying to learn myself. as i'm gonna mix it all, and hope it's good! this site is no-doubt your answer,hope that helps a little,good luck bud!
I've recently acquired about a hundred pounds of scrap roofing lead and cable sheathing lead. I've read that this may be pretty soft or nearly pure lead or perhaps 3% antimonial lead. I'm getting ready to smelt it, clean it up, and cast it into ingots; keeping it separated, of course. Using my Lee hardness tester, can I test the ingots, or do I need to cast it into bullets 1st, to determine the BHN of the alloy? Or, does it make any difference? I've looked for an answer to this on several sites, but no luck, so far.
Disregard the above. Found my answer at "http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=108711," courtesy of KYCASTER.
I've had pipe-solder lead RUIN a big pot of otherwise great alloy, got both frosting and wrinkling on the same bullet!
I really like that page, thank you for the link. Newb question here - what do most of you prefer casting with (ingots), Linotype, Monotype, etc. I notice you can pick up some Linotype lead from eBay for a fair price (often free shipping). From the link listed above, Linotype seems good-to-go as is. Thank you.
I have always used WW for pistol bullets wit very good results. I just started trying .30 rifle bullets and find it very hard to keep wrinkles out. A few weeks ago an older gentleman gave about 100 pieces of strips that are 1/2" wide and about 12" long. He said they would help the WW pour better. These strips have national lead co. written on them with the number 111 stamped on. Anyone know what this is?
If you bend them do they make a crinkling sound (crying)?
Rick
No they don't but they do feel light for pure lead.
A Google search on National Lead Co yielded the following, plus more not of a nature to help with clarification of what the gentleman gifted.
http://archive.org/stream/NationalLe...o.47j_djvu.txt
DUTCH BOY 111
This is the highest grade solder sold under the
Dutch Boy trademark. It is guaranteed to be made
of new lead and new tin, carefully mixed in equal
parts (50% tin and 50% lead). Its melting range is
361 °F 421°F.
Dutch Boy 1 1 1 is bright, strong and free from
impurities. It flows easily, covers more area and
has superior adhesion. It is widely used for new
roofing work and is popular among tinsmiths,
manufacturers and canners. Sold in bars weighing
approximately \ x /i lbs.
Some interesting history on the company itself.
http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman...l_lead_company
What should I use for a mixing rate with Wheel weights, one pound of the 111 to 10 pounds WW? I'm new to usin anything other than WW.
I would use Charlie's info of 50/50, use your calculator to figure out Sn in your WW alloy at 2% of the total weight. In round numbers (I didn't do the math) it should be about 1/2 pound of your solder to 10 pounds WW. It will do you no good to go higher than 2% Sn so you can make it go further. This is assuming you separated the clip-on weights from the stick-on weights and are using the clip-ons.
Rick
I'm not a metallurgist but I have been researching this a lot lately. I find that there is no 'alloy' of lead & antimony, just a mixture. Sb/Sn, Sb/Cu, Sn/Pb etc. No Pb/Sb. Sb will precipitate out of the mixture first, the pour cools from outside-in so the outside of the CB is high Sb/Pb, inside is lower Sb/Pb (read antimony wash in the bore). Secondly, Sb mobility in a solid is way low, so globs of Sb in the melt stay where they are in the solid. Sn, Cu & As move quite a bit in the solid, Sn tends to glob if allowed. Normal practice is to use Sn to lock up all the Sb for a harder, more homogeneous alloy (1/3 ratio). As is used to reduce the size of the Sb globs. As, S, Cu actually alloy (go into the Pb lattice) and strengthen the Pb. In the liquidus state, all the molecules are 'happy' they go where they want. As the melt cools, some become less happy. Rapid cooling make lots of really unhappy molecules, they're stuck. Given time, some will become more happy. Unhappy is what we want in our cast boolits. Makes for a stronger and homogeneous metal. Now when I start cooking the PC coated cast I find that 1/2 hr @ 400 then fast cooled gives me hard alloy. Unfortunately, 10 min @ 400F (H-T coating) then fast cooled gives me soft alloy. In fact heating to 200F gives a soft alloy. So I turned unhappy into happy very easily. I'm running more tests this week to see how I can easily make them unhappy. It isn't just the fast cooling or time at temp. Any ideas?
This thread is why I really like this forum. This information is invaluable in making "Boolits". Thanks fellas!
Pretty good article on Pb alloys. Discusses a lot of the additives we use. Interesting that zinc in a small amount is actually a grain refiner like arsenic.
http://www.artec-machine.com/wp-cont...nvironment.pdf
I've got a big hunk of pure lead, so if I want to shoot it, I need some hunks of pure antimony, and some hunks of pure tin or pewter, mix em all up and I'm good? I see antimony on ebay for $10/lb. Tin runs about $20/lb, pewter seems to be lucky finds in thrift stores and such. Am I on the right track? Been looking at this hunk of lead for years, ready to shoot it up. Also might start mining the berms at the range, would I be safe to assume it's also pure lead and mix the same hunks of metal into it to make it shootable? Thanks all.
doubleJ- That all depends on what is the intended use for your lead. Just plinking stuff, full out magnum, or rifle loads. Bumpo has a calculator spreadsheet found on this site for calculating alloys. As for mining the berms that depends on what was shot into them. Most jacketed lead core bullets will average about 3-5% Antimony, Cast would be a guess, Black powder shooters favor pure or near pure lead. Now the real question, do you know your stash is pure lead? Without that knowledge then everything else as far as alloying go's would be a WAG. If your looking to alloy, then I would recommend, lead free solder for tin and antimony addition, (95Sn/5Sb) instead of pure antimony or tin. Much easier to work with. If that will not get you to your desired percentages, then rotometals high Sb alloy (30% Sb) can be an option. Again you'll need bumpo's alloy calculator to figure out what percentage of Sb/Sn/Pb you're trying to achieve.bushman
All pistol, all plinking. My .454 loads may see 1600fps, but I'll probably hi-tek everything anyway. The lead sheet I have is from an Xray room's wall at an old hospital, and I can scratch it with my fingernail, bends like butter, so I figure it's all lead. Just mix in plumber's solder? Sounds easier than cutting up hunks of antimony. I've mined the cast/coated/lubed boolits from the berms in the past with luck, but there seems to be 20:1 more jacketed stuff in there, so I figured I'd dig up a bucket of that and give it a shot. The cowboy guys tend to favor one set of berms, while the tacticool guys use the other side, so I could probably come up with more cast by switching up where I mine as well.
Edit: I googled Rotometals, I think all my answers are there, pre alloyed everything.
Double Edit: Not all my answers, that spreadsheet by Bumpo is a work of genius. I owe him a beer.
Question about antimony. I've ordered almost pure lead and want (need?) to add some tin and antimony to it to harden it. I've used the Excel Calculator so I think I know about how much tin and antimony i need. Given that Antimony melts at such a high temperature, should I buy lead from Rotometals like "SuperHard" which is 30% antimony or should I just buy the antimony pellets and try to melt them in my pot with the pure lead and tin? Given the prices it would seem that buying the Antimony pellets would be a more effective solution but I don't think I've ever run my casting pot as hot as 1167 degrees.
So do I buy SuperHard and Pewter to do the job or buy Tin and Antimony and do the mixing myself?
Melting pure antimony takes more heat than most home operations can manage, And I've read of potential toxicity issues for the processor. It's true that lower temperatures can be used to dissolve antimony into lead (similar to dissolving table salt into warm water rather than trying to melt the solid crystals directly), and I've read of members here who have done it, but it still sounds take a technique that requires time and effort I'd rather not expend. Rotometals SuperHard is already mixed for casters as an easy way of increasing the antimony content of boolit casting alloys. Yes, it's not cheap, but it sure is easy to use.
Thanks Kevin,
I'll order some SuperHard and as I mentioned in the other thread do some thrifting for old pewter for the tin.
I'm new to bullet casting, and was very curious about how antimony can dissolve in lead and tin way below it's melting temperature. Guess what? It's really EASY. I get inch-size chunks bought from ebay. They dissolve without any problem - it just happens SLOWLY. If you keep the chunk submerged it goes faster. If it's hotter it's faster. And if you hold it with tongs and use it as a stirring stick - it's faster. Depending on these factors, it may take 10 to 40 minutes.
My general-purpose alloy for the last couple years has been COWWs + 2% pewter, as it gives me really good fill-out whether I'm casting solids, HPs or the thin-skirted HBWCs, but the expansion of the HPs is iffy and shatter-prone. I'm now running low on that alloy, and recently smelted some WWs, and in order to make the HPs and reversed HBs a bit more conducive to expansion, I'm trying to figure out the ratio of COWW to soft Pb to sufficient pewter to ensure a good fill-out, and I'm hoping to roughly equal the 20:1 hardness. I've started PCing most of my boolits and the ones with GC shanks will get GCs while post-PC sizing.
What I have on hand is one-lb and half-lb ingots of COWW, one-lb ingots of pure Pb, and two-ounce-ish ingots of pewter. Anyone got a quick & dirty version of that math handy? I'm thinking 50-50 WW/Pb but unsure how much pewter to add. I can either put X ingots of each into the 20-lb dripomatic, pour ingots and then recombine remelt & repeat to equalize the batch, or put everything into my big pipe cap over the fish-fry burner and do it all in one batch.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
Ed <><
It’s a great site. I’ve been going to it for several years now.