Cap N Ball Boolit Alloy

[rodwha]

Looking around on Rotometal’s site I saw where I found the statement of 1% tin adding 0.3 BHN. But then clicking on their 2.5% tin ingots it stated the BHN was between 7-8 so that’s a bit contradictory. Anyway, since they only sell in 5 lb ingots I was wondering how others might melt a bar of that with a bar of pure lead to reduce the hardness a little and from there make my Lee 1/2 and 1 lb ingots so I can use them in my 4 lb pot? How large of a cast iron pot would I need to handle 10 lbs of ingots with space for safety and whatnot?

[Buzzard II]

I would use straight lead for the ROA bullet size .457 dia. Using a harder alloy you might break the loading lever AFAIK replacements are almost non existant.

I agree. Use pure lead. If you must use some alloy in the lead, load the chamber off the gun in one of those fixtures with it's own handle. Don't force/break your gun for any reason. Better safe than sorry. Parts are costly if you can find them, and gunsmiths are not cheap. Good shooting.
Bob

[gunther]

Quite a few Eastern Ky deer (100-150lbs @ 25 yards or less) have been had with a pure lead 0.457 round ball and all the 3F powder you can get under it. In an Old Army that's 40-43 grains. A slug much bigger than a Lyman 45468 limits your powder capacity severely.

[GregLaROCHE]

Yeah, because turning it to its highest setting didn’t improve things I moved it back down from 10 to 8 where I usually kept it. I’ve not heard of being too hot a bad thing, that you just get frosting

If the alloy is too hot, most people say you will cook off the tin. Also, as the level of alloy goes down, you normally need to turn down the setting to keep the same temperature.

[rodwha]

Quite a few Eastern Ky deer (100-150lbs @ 25 yards or less) have been had with a pure lead 0.457 round ball and all the 3F powder you can get under it. In an Old Army that's 40-43 grains. A slug much bigger than a Lyman 45468 limits your powder capacity severely.

I don’t know that I’d use my Ruger as a primary. I’ve never worked with my revolvers from the bench. My primary use is for it/when I need to track something, and my concern is that one day it will eventually be a hog. No way I’m using a ball on injured and upset hogs. Even still a WFN will outperform a ball.

I have further testing to do as I now have a measure that can work in 2.5 grn increments, but with the old measure the Ruger’s most accurate hunting charge (started at 25 grns) was 35 which weighed 38 grns on the scale (3F Olde E). I’ve tried about 8 different projectiles and offhand at 15 yds they’re all producing 3-3.5” groups for me. What I’m doing is filling the excess chamber capacity with lead and is looking to be between 230-240 grns. My NMA’s more accurate charge is 30 grns that weighs 33.

Triple 7 tends to perform nearly as well as Olde Eynsford and Swiss in the various handgun data posted around. 30 grns of T7 in a 5.5” ROA spat out the Lee RN he states weigh 225 grns at 881 FPS for 389 ft/lbs so I’m estimating my NMA using 3 more grains and a slightly heavier bullet to breach 400 FPS with its 5.5” barrel. My 7.5” ROA with the same load pushed it to 968 FPS for 470 ft/lbs. I’ve run across crazy numbers from Ruger users but often figured they were hyped up a bit. Looking at those numbers and adding 8 grns of powder and a little more lead? Sure looks like 500 ft/lbs can be easily surpassed. Of course only a chronograph will tell. I just need to purchase or see about renting one.

[Wayne Smith]

If the alloy is too hot, most people say you will cook off the tin. Also, as the level of alloy goes down, you normally need to turn down the setting to keep the same temperature.

Heat certainly is an issue but oxygen exposure is the real culprit. Tin oxidizes quicker than lead, and the hotter anything is the faster chemical reactions work. But without oxygen no oxidization. Those of us who cast with a gas burner and pot and ladle run into this all the time because of all the oxygen exposure provided by dipping, pouring off the mold, and returning the sprue. I get tin oxidizing within a half hour of casting and if I don't reduce it back with wax it will sheet off the ladle. This is how tin separates from lead.

[yeahbub]

Looking around on Rotometal’s site I saw where I found the statement of 1% tin adding 0.3 BHN. But then clicking on their 2.5% tin ingots it stated the BHN was between 7-8 so that’s a bit contradictory. . .

Rodwha, the hardening effect of adding tin isn't a linear relationship. It's a wavy curve on a graph that I saw in, IIRC, the Lyman casting handbook some years ago defining its effect on the alloy from all lead/no tin to no lead/all tin. The improved fill-out effect is considerable even in small amounts but increases more and more slowly, achieving maximum effect at retarding dendrite formation at ~2%. (Dendrites: that very fine tree-looking texture of crystallization on sprues of pure lead you can see under a magnifying glass - looks like a forest of whippy saplings in winter.) As for hardness, the effect is moderate until you get to big percentages of tin no one would consider using as anything but babbit alloy, way expensive. I've had soft lead I fluxed repeatedly that just didn't want to cast but poured like water after adding a 6" wire from a roll of old 50/50 lead/tin plumbing solder to a 10 lb pot. With today's lead-free 95/5 tin/antimony solder, half as much will do the same and never mind that smidgeon of antimony - it'll never make a difference.

Heat certainly is an issue but oxygen exposure is the real culprit. . .

Wayne Smith is right on the money. Tin will turn into tin oxide very readily at casting temperatures when in contact with air. Tin oxide is insoluble in lead and ceases to have any beneficial effect. It's formation is visible as the alloy goes from chrome-looking to gold, blue, purple, slate and finally to some grey crusty stuff folks think they need to skim off. As this happens, the alloy is becoming increasingly tin-poor and folks turn up the heat to overcome the effect, which can help for a while, but this also increases how fast the remaining tin oxidizes. Don't skim it off, that's money there. Turn it back into its metallic state by fluxing to separate the oxygen from the tin and the metallic tin will go back into solution in the alloy. My favorite flux is stearic acid, a fatty acid in a waxy form that looks like pretzel salt available at soap and candle making sites. Look around, though, it gets way cheaper in quantity. I mix it half and half with paraffin to improve the dwell time, throw a gumball sized chunk in the pot, light it off and stir. There should only be dirt/dust left on the alloy afterwards which should again be chrome shiny. To protect it from further rapid oxidation, I throw a heaping tablespoon or two of wood ashes on top of the alloy which will protect it from air being in direct contact with it. It floats agreeably, the sprues will go right through it and it won't contaminate anything. I don't need to flux nearly as often as I used to with this method.

That 45-245C is an excellent design - I want one. There are a couple of dimensions I would change when using bare boolits, depending on the revolver I intended to use it in. The rebated heel I'd make .450 to center well, driving bands are good at .456 for the ROA's .453 chambers. Once BP fouling enters the picture, the .003 heel clearance will be welcome, but .445 is too small for the ROA. For the Pietta 1858 Remingtons with .447 chambers, .444-.445 on the heel is good, but the driving bands should be .450 to ease the load on the rammer parts. At .456 diameter, .009 of lead is a lot to carve off the outside getting it into those small chambers. Sounds like work.

That being said, for paper cartridges in the ROA, it's fine as is. The .003-.005 paper thickness added to the heel brings it to .448-.450, which will still slip in easily, and .456 driving bands will shear the paper cleanly, thus exposing the lube. Perfect. For the Pietta 1858 Remingtons, I'd change the diameters to a .440-.442 heel, .450-.451 bands for the same effect. The bestest papers I've ever used are "perm" papers or "end wraps" which are available at beauty supply places or online, 1000 slips to the box for $3-4 or so and each gets cut in half for two cartridges. They're .001 thick but tough and tear resistant, and they burn up when you pull the trigger just as they are - no fiddling with soaking them in potassium nitrate solution and all the rest of that. The bottom of the cartridge should be .40-.41 diameter and taper up to full diameter 1/8 - 1/4" short of chamber depth, so the cartridge isn't so long that it stops before you start the boolit. Some folks taper theirs to .3-something at the small end, but the closer it is to cylindrical, the shorter the cartridge will be for the amount of powder you're putting in it. Life is easier when using a BP substitute which is compressible, like 777, Pyrodex or (my favorite) American Pioneer Powder 3f. With true BP, if you have a bit much in the chamber, it's tough to get the boolit all the way in. Making them is a learning curve but the convenience of ready reloadability in the field is very much worth it, IMHO. Woods walks while popping off at dirt clods, cow pies, knot holes and other targets of opportunity becomes a whole 'nother experience with paper cartridges.

My 2 cents. . . .

[Gobeyond]

So I guess everybody is getting wrinkles with pure lead. Big and small fine ones. This has to be ok. After two hours my pot gets hot enough to cast fine wrinkles with 40-50:1. I’m only shooting paper but do they fly right? Not much accuracy I’m getting so far. I like to hear that lead is dead soft at 5 bhn like rotomeatals says. I have hope for enough obturating in my Mauser 1871. .006 doesn’t seem like too much then. Can’t find a .448 bullet anywhere.

[mnewcomb59]

How long are your sprues liquid? Do they go from liquid to solid in 1-2 seconds? With pure lead the mold needs to be hot enough that the sprues remain liquid on top of the mold for at least 4 seconds.

If your sprues are solidifying faster than 4 seconds, dip a corner of the mold into the lead for 15 seconds then try again.

If you have liquid sprues for 4 seconds and still have wrinkly bullets, I recommend looking to your air vents. The easiest way to vent more air is to lightly bevel the top of the mold where the two halves come together below the sprue plate. I use a sharpening stone and put a tiny bevel on each mold half and that helps a lot.

[Bent Ramrod]

When I bought my Navy Arms 1860 Army back in the 70s, I knew from nothing about lead hardness. Cast 0.452” round balls out of whatever Lino/wheelwright range scrap I could find. The wedge on the revolver had to be replaced after 1500 shots or so, not because of shooting but because of the stress put on it by levering those hard lead balls into the chambers. The extra leverage of the rack-and-pinion lever hid the extra effort it took to load.

From then on, it was pure lead only. With boolits, extra heat seems to be the charm. The lead and mould should be hot enough so the boolits turn dark gray as they air-cool. But I’ve found that with roundballs, a change in technique is a huge help. Instead of the Ideal recommended procedure, where you mate the ladle spout to the mould horizontally, turn assembly to vertical, hold mould while tipping ladle back to horizontal and removing, I use the Ideal ladle like I would a spoon or a Lee ladle. Hold mould and ladle horizontally, bring spout to side of sprue hole, tilt ladle and pour from the side till I get a good sprue puddle.

When I do this, the wrinkles in the round balls disappear. Maybe the spherical surface of the cavity traps air with the Ideal method, while it flows out with the side casting technique. That’s my best guess. But I cast round balls from .25 to .625 caliber and it works wrinkle-free (for whatever reason) on all of them.