Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting 45 ACP

What percentages of pure lead and monotype would you mix for a good quick bullet in a 1911 and this 452374AV mold?

I used this bullet in previous 1911's decades ago but can't recall for sure the bullet metal I used. Definitely wasn't a mix of those two ingredients I have now.

I Bullet alloy depends on bullet lube. I shoot original Springfield TD carbine and a Sharp's conversion carbine. In both I use a 20-1 lead-tin alloy. Real soft, but using a good soft lube designed for sich, I get no leading.

I have plain old Lyman and RCBS stick lube. Not going any further down the rabbit hole with lube at this point. Thinking 3:1 lead:mono and adding a touch of tin. I was told that would get close to wheel weights.

Thoughts on that?

Theres enough tin in the mono; no need to add tin to that mix.

If I had a pile of mono I would mix half and half, but thats just me.

Typical 1911s, and Colts especially, 1917s and 1955s were designed around ball ammo with narrow, shallow lands.

Elmer often used linotype and 1-10 lead to "hold" the rifling, similar to ball ammo.

Thank you

Monotype has a BHN close to 30 & should be 9% tin, 19% antimony and 72% lead. If you mix 4 parts pure lead to 1 part monotype you should have 1.8% tin and 3.8% antimony. If you mix 5 parts pure to 1 part monotype you should have 1.5% tin and 3.2% antimony. Either would provide an alloy for the 45 ACP.

I use a 50-50 mix of COWW & lead with fine results. Though my mix is tin starved [less than .5%] the bullets cast fine using a 750 degree setting. Hope this helps.

In an effort to use up some of the unnecessarily large pile of monotype I have gathering dust, I recently mixed it with "pure" lead at 5:4 type:lead. The bullets made for some dandy H&G 68 200 SWC's, a lot harder than needed but shot well. That bullet, as well as the 230 RN RCBS, normally get made by me out of 1:10 tin:lead and work fine (but its been a long time since I made any 230 RN's - 185 & 200 SWC's get most of my .45 attention anymore).

I also cast a pile of NOE 309-169 Elco spitzers for use in '03 Springfields out of that batch of alloy. Again, a lot harder than I generally like but this particular bullet exhibits the usual slumping in the bore observed with lead spitzers, unless they're harder than woodpecker lips and kept down to around 1600fps then it sings on the target - I would blush to relate just how small the groups are with it and 18gr. 4759. That mold will probably end up processing the remainder of my monotype through my "aging out years".

Like Hawk said, it's totally unnecessary to add tin to any alloy involving type metal.

Side note: some of the worst leading I ever experienced with Colt .45 ACP's back in the day was with straight monotype 230 grain RN's. I remember those bullets being bright purple in color (large copper content) and hard enough to defy thumb nail indentation (pre-hardness tester days, back in the Stone Age). The bullets were sized to fit the bore perfectly and driven at normal hardball velocity. I've never quite figured that one out, but it set me on the path to exploring how soft I could go and get away with it. Probably not as perfectly sized to the bore as I thought they were.

Same here gnoahhh. I listened to Mr. Keith & ran hard bullets in shallow rifling but have since switched to soft stuff with good results. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Keith fan mostly but 50-50 COWW-pure works just fine for me.

I would point out Keith was an "exact groove diameter" advocate and that can often create leading issues with hard alloys, especially with a barrel with considerable variance.

Also, a lot of molds just won't drop a fat enough bullet, even with "fat" alloys, which also creates a head scratcher.
I loved some of my old NEI molds, but many cast way to small, even with lino.

1911s are fixed chambers and I generally run a 28 BHN .452-.453 in them. One requires deeper seating to fit the throat and the others don't mind. The nice thing about fixed chambers is that there's only one and the throat diameter are pretty similar to fit.

If obturation is required for the seal, the seal isn't there in size diameter, the mold, etc. and that obturation is needed.

No seal, no support equals leading.

Well said Hawk1. I've had the same issues with different moulds in the past, they simply drop a bullet which is too small in diameter. In the Springfield I use .453" & it does great.

Monotype will give you a much harder alloy using Less than say Linotype or COWW's. A 50/50 mix of Mono/Pure Lead gets you to around 18 BHN, 1 part Mono to 3 parts Lead is around 12 BHN.

Um, yeah. My mono tests at 28 BHN, so well aware of it's hardness.

This week I took delivery of a new MP 6-cavity gang mold, H&G 68 clone for 200gr. SWC's. I had a bunch of "unknown" alloy remnants (you know, the tailings out of pots poured into ingots and failed to note the composition, I bet I'm not the only lost soul in that regard) so I gathered them all up and melted into a mystery alloy. BHN came out at a heavy 15bhn so I added a skosh of soft lead and said "let's give the new mold a whirl." It casts beautifully, but not until I sussed out its quirks: pot temp hotter than blue blazes (875 degrees), fast cadence (the mold demands to be kept hotter than blue blazes too), and finally smoking of the cavities. Geez, the bullets just rain out of that mold once those conditions are met. Went through ten pounds of alloy in a matter of minutes, with the added benefit of my left arm having gotten a real workout.

Only complaint about the mold is the sprue cutoff lever arm. The thing required constant re-tightening of its pivot screw, and then the bloody wooden handle slipped off. I see a simpler solution to cutting 6 sprues simultaneously in my immediate future.

I have an mp mold that does a rounded flat nose close to 225g or with the penta hp pins in it does 212g hp. I powder coated them and sized them down to .452. They were a bit bigger than .452 after powder coating so I sized them all down.

I casted a bunch of the 212g hp's last summer and have been loafing them this spring. They seem to be shooting well over 8.5g of AA #5. They are doing 1000fps from my 5.25" xdm and 960fps from my 1911 commander.

I was wanting them to expand a bit but I don't have any pure lead. My softest is some scrap I buy from RMR that's got a little antimony but is supposed to be bhn around 10. I use 8 pounds of it with 1 pound of ww and 1 pound of monotype. It seems to work well so far. I need to shoot some through water jugs soon.

I always like to add at least 10% ww to any mix. It seems to help it fill out better as does the mono but the ww gives it a touch of arsenic and a few other things. I've heard the arsenic helps heat treating or quenching work so I use a little ww in case I decide to do either.

I'm pretty new to casting again so I'm just figuring it out. I did some flat nose stuff I wanted a bit harder last fall so I did a ratio of 1 rmr lead to 1 of WW to 1 of mono. My 1:1:1 mix casts well and seems fairly hard but doesn't fracture when it hits the dirt pile. I'm loading up some 270g hammer flat noses in 44 mag next and want to shoot them through some water jugs too. My kids are busily drinking milk to do their part.

Bb