Shiny Boolits?

[American]

I'm a novice and have cast about 200 boolits from wheelweights and these have turned out a silvery-gray.

Today I smelted my 7# of stick-on weights to make them into pure lead ingots and also to cast a few pure lead boolits in both calibers to slug my barrels and, I mean, those suckers look like they are chrome plated!

Does pure lead always make shiny boolits?

[DLCTEX]

Sounds about normal. The lead ones will oxidize and turn dark faster than ww., but both will darken fairly quickly. Dale

[dubber123]

The pure lead onew will be shiny for a while, and then will turn a dark gray as they oxidize. Pretty much every WW boolit I have ever cast is the silvery gray color you describe. Some guys go out of their way to make shiny WW boolits, I just worry more about getting the mould to fill out well.

Sometimes a little rubbing with a cloth on the loaded rounds shine them up nicely, if you really need the "look" of a shiny boolit.

[American]

Sometimes a little rubbing with a cloth on the loaded rounds shine them up nicely, if you really need the "look" of a shiny boolit.

I admit to having shined up a couple of the first batch I loaded, but they just got dull again.

So, now I guess I'd rather shoot'em than shine'em.

[AZ-Stew]

Without intending to be defensive about this issue, the point is not the "look" of shiny bullets. The point is that it's an indicator of correct casting temperature. I read this in every cast bullet reference manual I could get my hands on when I started casting 30 years ago, and you'll still see it in currently written references.

According to the "experts" who wrote the books, when the mould is filled out completely with square corners in the locations where they belong (driving band edges, bullet bases, etc.) and the bullets are shiny, then the casting temp is correct.

I don't care a hoot what they look like at the range. I'm not there to impress anyone with my chrome-like silver bullets. You should see my brass. It's clean, but far from brassy yellow. More like camo brown.

Frosty spots on bullets usually indicate low spot on the surface. When the bullet is frosty all over, it's a sign that the casting temp is getting too hot. The question is, how frosty is frosty?

My bullets don't have a chrome-like shine, but they don't have a crystiline apparance to them, either. This is typical of straight wheel weight alloy. Add tin in any form and the bullets will become shinier. Linotype makes particularly shiny bullets due to its higher tin content compared to straight wheel weights.

The lower the casting temp, assuming correct mould fill-out, the less brittle the bullets will be. Frosty, crystiline-surfaced bullets are more brittle than shiny bullets cast at lower temperatures.

Regards,

Stew

[Buckshot]

...............The dull siverygray is just a sign of an elevated mould temp. Not too high, and not 'Wrong'. If you're getting good boolits don't fret.



6.5mm Kurtz Group Buy. Cast with a very high alloy temp, but cool mould blocks..............



Lee 6 cavity 358-148WC cast as above.



A) Cast with very hot alloy and hot blocks, take a bit for the sprue to set up but a PERFECT, crisp, sharp detailed and full diameter boolit.

B) Cast with alloy as above but cooled blocks. A full diameter casting, however not quite as sharply defined, but close.

....................Buckshot

[dubber123]

"A" looks like ALL of mine. I find it easiest to get sharp corners this way. It may be technically wrong, but it works for me!

[DaveInFloweryBranchGA]

I'm just guessing at this, as I wasn't casting 30 years ago, but I suspect the casters and writers back then had access not only to wheel weights, but all kinds of linotype and probably were casting with much higher percentages of tin in their alloy that what's most casters today typically use.

For instance, I don't and never have had access to any linotype or radiator shop dropping and 50/50 bar solder is expensive and hard to find in this area, so I rarely use anything but wheel weight in the typical bullets I've cast. It's helped most of those have been pistol bullets, but recently, I've cast up some .30 caliber rifle bullets intended for use with gas checks. I used straight wheel weights cast at the same high temperatures and got the same results Buckshot and Dubber got. Hopefully, these will work for me, as linotype is out of the question.

[Salmon-boy]

Thanks Guys. There's some VERY good information here about alloy and mould temp.

I'm water dropping now, and ran through 25lbs of alloy yesterday with a Lee .452 TL six-banger and was dropping perfectly filled, but very frosty boolits.

The alloy was hot, the mould hot, but what does that actually do to the boolits? I'm assuming hardness will increase, and thanks to that they'll be more brittle.

[dubber123]

Thanks Guys. There's some VERY good information here about alloy and mould temp.

I'm water dropping now, and ran through 25lbs of alloy yesterday with a Lee .452 TL six-banger and was dropping perfectly filled, but very frosty boolits.

The alloy was hot, the mould hot, but what does that actually do to the boolits? I'm assuming hardness will increase, and thanks to that they'll be more brittle.

Unless the water drop is done for convenience, it's not necessary for a .45ACP. That said I have shot a ton, (quite possibly literally), of hardened .45's, and the only time I have seen one "break" from brittleness, was when they hit a steel target. I can't get enough velocity out of a .45 to make water dropped brittleness an issue.

If you are quick at water dropping them, you might be hitting 25BHN, which is hard, but not that hard. The core of the boolit is much likely a bit softer than that anyways.

[David2011]

My favorite additive to wheelweight alloy is monotype. Art Green still sells it at a reasonable price and a little goes a long way. I add 1/2 lb. of monotype to 20 pounds of WW. At that rate I should be able to cast about 208,000 boolits on the 130 or so pounds I started out with. The monotype gives great flow and really does make a difference even at that low concentration. The boolits pick up every machining mark in the molds. They're adequately hard for IPSC major with little or no leading at 965 fps. That's in a .40S&W STI Edge using a 180 gr. truncated cone. The boolits tend to retain their original color for years with the monotype added. If I don't get the mold too hot the boolits look like they were machined out of aluminum after sizing polishes the flats.

[DLCTEX]

I water dropped some ww 45's (230gr,RN) about two years ago, sized, lubed and loaded them. Last week we were wiring in a house with wood floors and needed to bring a wire up from underneath into an inner wall. The wall was open and my son asked how to find the wall from underneath to drill a hole. I checked to see if there were plumbing or wires below and then fired a round with my 1911 through the floor inside the wall. The boolit went through a 2X4, Oak flooring, and sub flooring. It was found in the dirt below with rifling marks but no other damage. It was as pristine as the ones retrived from our swimming pool after Dave fired them under water. That's hard! The only ones I find damaged when fired into a backstop of dirt, are the ones that hit a rock. Dale P.S. they were a cast hot and were frosty if air cooled, less so wc.

[Bob Jones]

Now that's carpentry!

I've done a fair bit with a chainsaw I must admit, but never with my 1911.