What to do with stick-on ingots

A

awaveritt

New member
Getting my first mould in the mail tomorrow - Lee TL356-124-2R double cavity. Will be ladle-pouring until I get my Lee pot.

Tonight I plan to smelt the rest of my lead. I have 56.8 lbs of WW already cast into ingots. After tonight I'll have roughly 38 lbs. of stick-ons.

I'll be casting this bullet for light 9mm loads (I'm thinking 3.5 to 3.7 gr. of Bullseye)

Assuming the WW ingots are hard enough for this load, what would you guys do with the softer stick-on ingots? Trade it to BP shooters? Add some ratio of it into my WW ingots? Or just save it for adding tin later? Thanks for any advice.
 
I just melt the stick op type right with the clip on type.

I seem to get a veryow % of stick on's in a 5 gal bucket. So I don't worry about it.

My suggestion would be to save since they are seperated & then mix em in with your next bucket of ww. Then just melt em. Your overall hardness won't change this way enough to notice a differance on the range.
 
I melt the stick on lead seperately because of the paper and the glue backing. I make 1/2 and 1 lb ingots for later use. I don't want to mess up my production pot with the stick on lead ingots. I'm not real technical when casting lead bullets for my .38 spl and .357mag. The mixture of stick on lead ingots and wheel weights has not made a difference to me. I'm hitting target. Citywaterman
 
Since I do not yet own a BHN tester, anyone hazard a guess as to what my clip-ons combined with stick-ons would yield?

60% clip-ons
40% stick-ons

I read someone's post recently where they thought the stick-ons averaged around 7-10 bhn in their experience. Anyone done any hardness testing with their wheel weights?

I sense that this is not all that scientific, but what hardness would you think is ideal for a light 9mm load at 1000fps or less? Several posts have about convinced me to just combine my 60/40 ratio and not worry about it. Is this about the gist of it?

As soon as get all my stuff, i'll spend more time in the garage and less time on the computer (lol)
 
I would also recommend separate melting. Pure lead is useful sometimes, such as for making slugging bullets for determining bore diameters and cylinder throat diameters, and for checking progress with constrictions during firelapping. When you have more than you need, just mix 19 lbs of it with one pound of any lead-free solder that does not contain zinc. That will give you a perfectly serviceable alloy for most handgun loads. Elmer Keith used something very close to that for a lot of his early .44 magnum development work. I think he later went to a 16 lb to 1 lb ratio, but it is still not bad for most applications as it is.

The lead-free solders are usually about 95% tin. But do go to the trouble to look up the MSDS online for the solder brand you choose to be sure no zinc is present.
 
i just melt the sticky weights with the clip on weights, i also do mot melt the weights in my production pot,, i use a 6qt cast iron dutch oven style pot, (from harbor freight,$24.00) to melt all mt W.W.'s all together,then pour my ingots, so i have clean lead for my pro-pot, i can fit the whole 5gl. bucket of ww's in that 6qt. pot once all the lead is melted and clean, the softer peel n stick weights havent affected my cast boolits yet,,,
 
i 50/50 my stik on & WW & wind up with an alloy that runs 11-13 bhn & does fine for my needs , a little tin sure helps fill out though!!
 
I melt them down right with the clip on weights too. Did a bunch this morning....350 200grn .452's and 50 500grn .458's. Never had an issue with the stick on weights, just flux and skim off the junk....
 
stick on

stick on wieghts are softer.
I melt seperate and mark the ingots. I use them for muzzleloader bullets.
 
I've seen those stick on weights mixed in with my reg clip on weights I get. I never really paid it much attention, I just melt them all together. I get so few that it would take forever to have enough to make firing up my smelting rig worthwhile.
 
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