maillemaker
New member
What if there is no way to verify the purity of what is in your melt, how does one remove these unwanted metals such as tin and antimony leaving only pure lead in the melt ?
There is no way to do this within the scope of your home bullet caster once these metals are in solution with one another.
If you are going to shoot bullets that require pure lead to insure deformation when firing to take up the rifling, like expanding (minie) ball, or compression bullets like Wilkinson-style bullts, your best bet is to purchase known pure lead from a reputable source. Rotometals.com sells it delivered to your door. I go down to Troy, Alabama to purchase chemically-assayed pure lead from Sanders Lead.
If I had a nickle for every time I heard someone at a competition say, "Well, I must have gotten a bad batch of lead" I'd be a rich man. If you're serious about accuracy in your deformable-bullet muzzle loader, then you should be buying known pure lead. It's one variable in your shooting that you can completely and easily eliminate.
Of course not all muzzle loaders or black powder arms use or require deformable bullets. I use random wheel weight lead in my Armisport M1842 smoothbore because the bullet does not need to deform. Likewise my 1859 Sharps, being a breechloader, forces the bullet into the rifling and performs better with a slightly harder alloy (I use 1:20 tin:lead).
Steve