Jacketed bullet lead

[mag44uk]

Just whiling away time smelting some recovered back stop lead and began to wonder what type of lead is inside all the jackets I keep scooping out.
Any one got any theories on this?
Regards,
Tony in very cold and windy UK !

[dubber123]

I have always been under the impression it's pretty soft. Not pure lead, but soft. I am interested in what you get for answews, as I may start getting some of this as raw material. I have a BHN tester, but don't have enough of it for a test. Good question.

[mag44uk]

Thats pretty much what I thought as well. I guess it wont be pure as I think it would be too "bendy" certainly in the longer rifle bullets.
Also wouldnt be too hard in order that the swaging process is more easily accomplished.

[oneokie]

The majority of my recovered range scrap runs in the 14.5-15.5 BHN range. This is from jacketed bullets. Cast and 22 rf were sorted out prior to smelting. This is a lot of apx. 250 lbs of ingots.

[cbrick]

Glen contributed this to an article that I wrote, here's a cut & paste.

.22 lead is mostly lead, virtually no antimony, and usually about 1-2% tin. Jacketed bullet alloy composition ranges anywhere from pure lead to 5% Sb. As a very general statement, many handgun jacketed bullets have pure lead cores (almost all Noslers, almost all FMJs, and most std. velocity jacketed handgun bullets). Some have hardened cores (e.g. the Sierra 300 grain .44 Mag bullets is 5% Sb). If the range has centerfire rifle bullets, then they are commonly 3% or 5% Sb. So the bottom line is that jacketed bullets can contribute almost any hardness to bullet metal.

Rick

[Ricochet]

Here's a repeat of a post I put up a little over a year ago:

Looked up what George Frost said about it in Ammunition Making:

"Antimony content may run from 1% up to 4 or 5%. .22 rimfire bullets from various manufacturers run from 3/4% up to about 2% antimony. 1 3/4% is a reasonable choice. A common core alloy runs 1 1/2% antimony and works well in many bullets. Tin-lead alloy has also been used for .22 rimfire bullets, and does make a good bullet. The percentage of tin needed to equal antimony hardness is about 4-5% tin vs. 1-1 1/2% antimony. Because tin costs much more than antimony, and requires greater quantities of material to get the same result, it is not a good choice for hardening lead alloys."

He'd also addressed above that why pure lead is never used for commercial bullets, except in the dual core arrangement with a nose section of pure soft lead and harder lead in the base.

(George Frost worked for many years for Winchester-Western and later set up from scratch and managed an ammunition factory for Squires-Bingham in the Phillippines.)