OK. Now I get it. Why the hub-bub about alloys

[Charlie Horse]

I always wondered why you guys made such a fuss about alloy hardness. I have a stash of lino that I use for long-range rifle. But for everything else, mostly handgun, I just throw whatever into the pot and cast away.
My last lead score was a bunch of back stop lead. It was probably, mostly 22 rf lead.
Using this lead, I started getting FTF's in my 380. I could even feel a sensation as the boolits fed from magazine to chamber during the firing process.
Then I started looking at some of the failures. This was a boolit that crammed into the feed ramp and stuck there. You can see a divot on the nose. I even noticed a flat spot on some of the rounds that successfully fed into the chamber. I checked them during the firing cycle by ejecting them before pulling the trigger.
Looks like I'm going to have to add some tin to this alloy if it is going to be used for semi-auto rounds.

[THE_ANTIDOTE]

Tin or antimony

[Dusty Bannister]

Tin does very little to add to alloy hardness. Since you do have Linotype. consider adding some of that to your recovered range lead. You probably do not have a hardness tester so it is kind of hard to make a reliable suggestion. However, to preserve the Lino supply, try one pound of lino to five pounds of the range metal. If that is still causing feeding issues add another half pound to the original batch. You only need enough to have successful feeding, you are not looking for ultra hard bullets at this point. Good luck, and be sure to allow the cast bullets sufficient time to age harden. Maybe up to 2-3 weeks if you have a very small amount of antimony in the blend.

As an alternative, since you powder coat, dump the freshly baked bullets into cool water right out of the baking oven. that will precipitation harden the bullets as long as there is some antimony in the alloy. A little arsenic is helpful, but deal with one problem at a time.

[Charlie Horse]

I actually left these in the oven after powder coating, so they were annealed. All the boolits I checked had some deformity on the nose. Even the ones that fed well.

[Rickf1985]

Lead does not anneal. Plus, annealing metal is to soften it. Leaving the bullets in the oven does nothing unless you dump them directly from the oven into ice cold water, which will harden them. If there is antimony in the lead from the wheelweights that were used to make the range scrap then they will harden. If you add lino to them then you have added the antimony and that will harden them when quenched. Leaving them in a hot oven, That does nothing but gives you hot bullets for longer. That is how lead works.

[Dusty Bannister]

It is always preferred to be given the information relevant to the problem when the question is first asked. It just makes the suggested corrective action so much more beneficial.

[fredj338]

I actually left these in the oven after powder coating, so they were annealed. All the boolits I checked had some deformity on the nose. Even the ones that fed well.

This was part of your problem. I quench out of the PC oven, but my alloy always has a bit of antimony in it from clip ww or lino or whatever I add to the pure to harden it. I almost never intentionally add tin, waste of money if the bullets are casting.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I actually left these in the oven after powder coating, so they were annealed. All the boolits I checked had some deformity on the nose. Even the ones that fed well.

Add some lino, from your stash, to the Backstop Lead. I'd recommend about 1lb lino to 4 lbs of backstop lead, AKA: 20%.

[Land Owner]

Must have missed it...in which handgun are you chambering these?

Glen Fryxell's recommendation for handguns in, "Ingot to Target..." is alloy from constituents as 49-49-2 percent Pb-WW-Sn, not necessarily water dropped, or PC'd, which drop as 104 grains from a Ranch Dog TL358-100-RF and flawlessly shot from a pair of Walther PPK (black steel and stainless).

It is speculated that light weight (mostly plastic) handguns drive the round into the feed ramp rather than into the chamber during recoil. "Muzzle flip" could be a part of the problem, which solution might start with a harder alloy.

Range lead of 22rf is most likely Pb (~6 BHN) that could use some hardness from COWW's and a touch of tin (max 2% - for mold fill out) with a resulting 10 to 12 BHN. No annealing - that's for case life.

[Charlie Horse]

Must have missed it...in which handgun are you chambering these?

A Glock 42. I can actually feel the rounds stumble as they feed during firing. I'm talking about the ones that "make it" through the firing cycle.
I'm going to use the ones I have already cast/processed in my Rossi lever action. It likes boolits that are sized .356. Thankfully I only have a few hundred. Going to start adding lino to the range scrap from here on in.

[405grain]

If you want, you can do all of the above. The other posters have given you some good advise. You can harden your bullets by adding some linotype to your alloy. Powder coating isn't a cure all for every problem, but it does help by making a "jacket" on softer bullets. And, heating your bullets to near 400 degrees, then dumping them into cold water will make them much harder. Why not do all three? Add some lino to your alloy, powder coat the bullets, then take the hot bullets straight from the powder coating oven and quench them in water. You should end up with really good, really hard bullets.

[Kosh75287]

I only had one semester of inorganic chemistry (metals and other elements) and that was decades ago. What I picked up from people who casted bullets for a living was that adding tin helped to raise hardness a little, but that it mainly helped assure that the molds filled out completely when casting. Antimony was apparently the "hardening agent", though it was my impression that it also acted as "mix facilitator" to assure that tin and lead were homogenous in the alloy. Very minute amounts of arsenic (as little as 0.25% w/w) might also be helpful for facilitating heat treating after the bullets are cast.
Lastly, while lead does not "anneal" in the strictest definition of the word, I HAVE had lead alloy bullets soften from their original hardness, over time. I found this most pronounced if the projectiles were water quenched immediately after casting. This change over time can be significant, especially with bullets intended for use at velocities above 1100-1200 f/s. I first experienced it with water-quenched 158 gr. LSWCs that were later used in full-power .357 magnum loads. Lotsa bore-scrubbing THAT day...