Cast bullet in two steps

R

Randyralph

New member
Good day all,
Just to give you a little detail about myself, I've been reloading, and casting for about 20 year. On average I shoot about 10,000 cast rounds a year, so I guess that should mean that I have a basic knowledge of casting. What I was wondering is, has anyone ever tried casting using two different alloys, a hard one for the base of the bullet, and a softer one for the tip. My plan for this is to cast a 200 grain, .309" bullet using a mixture of WW and pure lead, then cut the bullet in half, put the nose part back in the mold and pour in my harder alloy. Remove bullet and size, and lube. Do you guys think this will work? I'm open to all suggestions.
Thanks all
 
It has been done.
At one time you could even buy a set of moulds, one for the soft nose, one for the whole bullet. The whole bullet mould has to be well preheated, the method I read was to cast several all-hard bullets before going to the composite. Even so, scrap rate was high due to poor fusion of base to nose. But how many cast softpoints do you need? A few to hunt with, practice and zero with the one piece bullets you cast to warm the mould.

Another approach was to use two lead pots. The one with the soft lead was equipped with a metering device on the spout so you could drop a consistent glob of soft lead into the mould and immediately follow it with enough hard alloy to finish out the bullet. That would improve fusion of the base and nose.
Unfortunately, the specialty lead pot is out of production. I guess you could melt a buckshot in a ladle and do them one at a time.

Lyman once sold a set of moulds meant for the nose and base to be epoxied together.
 
I've been experimenting a little with that. Here's how I've done it.

Make a dipper out of a brass case that till ladle the weight of pure lead for the nose portion. Heat the mold much hotter than you normally would so the pure lead will settle and level better before solidifying. Pour all your noses first. Then change alloys. Put the noses back into the mold, heating the mold almost hot enough to melt the lead, but not quite. Pour, wait, and drop. Being almost at melting temp seems to cause the joint line to melt just enough to get a smooth fuse when the molten WW is poured. It takes a while, but I'm getting less culls using this method. The down side is that it's really tough on my Lee molds keeping them hotter than normal, and there seems to be a fine line between not quite hot enough, just right, and too hot. Very temperamental process.
 
Good fusion of the two alloys, in my opinion would be extremely difficult, Would not a universal hollow pointer, be a better option, Mid-way sells them for around 15 dollars, Wheel Weights are not that hard of an alloy to begin with, I would think you could obtain close to the same results with a gas checked hollow pointed bullet,
 
I experimented to see how long it would take. It took me about 12 min/boolit.

1= I weighed out 80gr pure lead (nonmelted so I could weigh it) and put it in the mold.
2= Closed it (its best to secure the handles shut) and put the mold in the pot until the lead melted.
3= Took it off the heat and rested it flat on the bench until it solidified.
4= Then filled it up with the WW alloy.
5= When it solidified again, I put the mold back in the pot until the entire boolit was liquid again. Supposedly this fuses the two alloys together.
6= Set it back on the bench and let it cool down a bunch before I dropped the boolit out.



Like I said, I aint shot any yet, but taking that long to make dont appeal to me much. I'm about to mix some 50/50 WW and pure lead alloy and play around with that. Everybody says it makes very good hunting boolits without as much hassle. Plus you can heat treat it to make it harder, then anneal the nose and still have a soft nose boolit.:)
 
Success

Good day all, just wanted to let you know that I tried it out, and it worked great. The trick was to cut the top off, but to leave about a quarter of an inch in lenght, abour .120" diameter left on the nose of the bullet were I cut it off, then I made my alloy about 700*F. The two half fused together great. I will try them tomorrow to see how they work. thanks for all suggestions.
 
hornady said:
Good fusion of the two alloys, in my opinion would be extremely difficult
Click to expand...
I think that says it all; except, the fusion modifier "consistent" was omitted. I don't think Lyman would have offered the epoxy solution unless they'd rejected the two alloy pour method. Remember, the two alloys will have two different densities and maintaining a uniform bullet-to-bullet weight may prove to be very difficult.
 
I tried

A hot metered dipper with pure in a pot & my blended alloy in a bottom pour .

I made my small dipper by drillin a 3/8" hole in a peice of cold rolled rod then weldin a handle to it then fnially a wood handle on that.

Cover the sprue plate with no2 pencil lead so no pure will not stik & all of the metered lead will go into the mold .

ASAP after gettin the pure in the alloy was flowin from the bottom pour .
 
GP100man,
Wow! Sounds like you have it figured out. I'm old and slow, so I might not be able to get that bottom pour done on time.
How do they perform?
 
Why not cast or buy small round balls of pure lead. Drop one in each hot mold cavity before filling with really hot alloy. I'm thinking like a .25 or .30 ball in a .45 bullet.
 
Working up a load for the knew bullet

Good day all,
Just wanted to say that the two part bullet seems to be working great. I tried a load using IMR 4227, I was getting about 1900 fps, and was getting around a 2 inch group at 100 yards. After I get the max velocity, I will try and do a bullet expansion test to see how they work compare to using just ww. I will keep you all posted on this work up.
 
Zippy

I shot some in wet sand & ya could definetly see the different alloys !!!

Never shot any water jugs though !! HHHMMMMM!:cool:
 
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