Also considering casting but...

i pay about 35$ for a FULL 5gallon bucket, after getting out the iron and smelting, that usually yeilds me 60-70 pounds of lead, sometimes i get away with 25 a bucket

i usually offer 35$ just because it seems fair to me and then i can get them to hold the next buckket for me
 
Wheel weights make fantastic alloy for boolits. Ebay has vendors if you are in CA. For my last batch of .45 I used 1/3 wheel weight alloy to 2/3 scrap plumbing lead and water dropped them.

44 special tops out at about 15,000 psi which would require a lead hardness of about 11.8 according to my Lee data sheet that came with my harness tester. I would not personally use pure lead since it would be too soft for those pressures in theory. But real world experience trumps data here and there.

To answer your question about avoiding alloy data etc. You could easily cast wheel weights with nothing else for .44 special. If you "water drop" them you could even go to 44 mag. WW alloy is good stuff, the only bummer is there's not much tin, so it's a little finicky getting mold fillout. I just dump them on the towel until they start looking good, and then start water dropping them and feed all the ones on the towel back to the pot.

AWESOME linky: http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Contents.htm
 
You havent said what you are casting for . The alloy you need depends on the application you will be using it for . There many suitable alloys for eaxh and every one of them . Lyman #2 is great stuff for higher velocity needs in rifle applications and many magnum handguns as well . It is overkill and not well suited to milder loads such as .38 special and smaller standard velocity loads . One of the best and easiest to understand articles on this subject can be found on the Los Angeles Silohouette Club website under an article listed as "From ingot to target" . This will answer any questions you may have now and some later on down the road . I have it saved to my favorites list and review it often . Hope this helps .

10 Spot
 
You havent said what you are casting for . The alloy you need depends on the application you will be using it for
Click to expand...

Actually I did, "4- I plan on reloading 44 magnum, but with a 44 special load." :) Because of the magnum cases, I've upped the special load to 8 grains of HP-38, using 200 gr XTPs... and that is working fine. I'm going to order the Lee 2 cavity 200 gr RN-FP mold.
Yesterday I melted down 28 lbs of WWs, and came out with about 26 lbs of clean lead ingots. I originally considered a 1-1 mixture (1 part WWs to 1 part lead), but now I'm thinking about a 2-1 mixture (2 pts WWs to 1 pt lead). What do you guys think the approximate BHN would be for that mixture?
 
Last edited:
I use straight WW for making .45 ACP rounds. It's a relatively low velocity bullet. I have not had any problems with leading. I cast the Lee Tumble Lube Groove bullet lubed with Lee Alox.

I pay $20 per 5-gallon bucket. Like others, it's full of trash in addition to wheel weights. I get about 80% yield of useable weights.

Like others said, you want to skim your melt pot as it is melting to get the non-lead out of the melt before the temp gets high enough to melt the zinc wheel weights.

My bullets are all of "plinker" or "survivalist" grade, so I am not particularly concerned about the exact alloy. If you were trying to make match grade ammo you would want to use a consistent alloy.

Steve
 
If you water drop them it will come WAY up though. WW alloy is well suited to heat treatment- even redneck heat treatment.

I haven't used that mix, but I got 26 bhn from just water dropping WW lead, and 18-20 bhn water dropping 1 part WW to 2 parts plumbing lead, so if you water drop, I would guess that mix would get you at least over 20 which gets you into the 20K psi charge range. 44 special tops out in the 15,500 psi range and 44 mag in the 40,000 psi range. So there is a LOT of variation between these loads.

Bhn of 11 would be fine for 15,500psi in a 44sp, but per Lee, 44 mag should be more like the range of 31.4 bhn. HUGE difference.

If it were me, and I didn't want to shell out for a tester, I'd use a mix backed by data double verified off the net and go a little heavier on the WW's. I'd lean towards a water dropped process so that the alloying goes further, but that depends on your source of lead. I have a large source of plumbing lead, and have to pay for WW, so I water drop my own mix to get the hardness I need with more plumbing lead.

Keep in mind, too soft means the charge pressure overcomes the tensile strength of the boolit, and when it blows past it, it causes "gas cutting" which leads up the barrel. Too hard can do the same if the boolit doesn't take the shape of the bore and the lube blows out. The lube basically acts as a liquid piston ring to prevent gas blowby, and thus prevents gas cutting.

But the range of OK is pretty wide. Since you won't know your bhn, I'd water drop to get it higher than 11ish to keep you in the safe range for preventing leading. And oven heat treating and a bhn tester are in your future if you want to push 44mag pressures. :) But it CAN be done.

PS when I say oven heat treating, I mean a cheap toaster oven with a decent oven thermometer and a bucket of water :D Like think less than $50. And one last note: If the hardness is not adequate, leading likely will take place pretty quickly, so watch out.
 
Last edited:
I pay $20 per 5-gallon bucket. Like others, it's full of trash in addition to wheel weights. I get about 80% yield of useable weights
Click to expand...

That is indeed a good price Steve. My local tire shops wont even sell me any. They are going straight to the recycling center. So I talked to the guy at the recycling center, and he said whenever they get some in, he will call me. Not the best situation...but it will have to work.

If you water drop them it will come WAY up though. WW alloy is well suited to heat treatment- even redneck heat treatment.
Click to expand...

Tell me about this redneck heat treatment :)

I haven't used that mix, but I got 26 bhn from just water dropping WW lead, and 18-20 bhn water dropping 1 part WW to 2 parts plumbing lead, so if you water drop, I would guess that mix would get you at least over 20 which gets you into the 20K psi charge range. 44 special tops out in the 15,500 psi range and 44 mag in the 40,000 psi range
Click to expand...

I've seen videos showing this water dropping, and even saw one the dropped his bullets in ice water. Would ice water increase the BHN even more than water dropping? I like the 18-20 BHN with 1 part WW to 2 parts plumbing lead(I assume plumbing lead to be close to pure?) I think that's what I will go for with the 44 special in 44 mag cases when the time comes.
 
Water dropping is what I would call redneck heat treating. Dropping hot into the water quenches them and they continue to harden- I believe it's a logarithmic increasing hardness. This means it continues to harden, but over time hardens slower and slower. Concrete cures in a similar way with little to gain after a month. WW alloy is pretty much as hard as it's gonna get when you hit 48 hours, but supposedly eventually starts softening back up. But I've heard of people pulling well documented mothballed water dropped boolits off the shelf about a decade later with only a drop in hardness of about 2bnh, so sort of a non-issue on that count.

Less redneck ;) heat treatment is to heat the boolits on a tray in a toaster oven with a baking thermometer (ovens are notoriously inaccurate at the dial) and then quenching in water. I don't know about ice water. I have heard of folks doing it, but I haven't found the need yet. I would guess it speeds up the hardening process and increases hardness. Having hotter drops should also help in this regard. I drop pretty hot- shortly after the sprue hardens.

If you water drop the alloy I posted, I really doubt it will be out of the range for 44 special. Should work nicely. I was actually quite surprised that the hardness came up so close to 26 since I was only using 1/3 as much WW alloy. I *think* the plumbing lead is pretty close to pure. But even if it's got some tin, the heat treatment is all about the antimony and arsenic.

When I mixed up that batch, I was sort of crossing my fingers, but it came out more than adequate.

Definitely check out this linky: http://www.lasc.us/ They have a STUNNING amount of interesting and in some cases surprising information. Best resource for casting I have found to date.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top