Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Casting Question

A Brinell tester?

Yep, I have an LBT one.

Bart
If your going to be at the East Texas gathering at lunch on Sat I can hook you up with some more pure lead.

I'll be there and appreciate the hook up.
I'm thinking about bringing my C.Sharps 40-90 but I haven't got any loads worked up for it.

I have been gathering lead for awhile. Now I need to learn how to cast it.

One of the skills involved in bullet casting is blending various scrounged lead into a uniform, clean usable alloy. It's a little science and a little bit art, but you want to end up with a large amount of a uniform clean alloy in the end before you put it into your casting pot to try to make bullets out of it.

Older wheel weights were pre-alloyed to a very usable blend of lead, antimony and tin, and these are still available, but many newer ones are a mixed up mess of various metals. Some of them are steel, and those are not a problem, but the ones made out of zinc can pollute a pot of good alloy and make it unusable.

There is a technique to remove zinc from an alloy that has become contaminated, but it is a mess to try to do that, so it's better to CAREFULLY sort through your collection of wheel weights to remove any zinc before you melt it and before it gets into the melting pot.

So don't just blindly throw a few handfuls into a pot and fire it up.

It's best to examine and test each one before throwing it into the pot, by reading the alloy markings and/or testing the alloy with a pair of large wire cutters. If the wheel weight is not marked as "zinc" and is soft to indent with the cutters, then it is usually ok.

if you melt at 700� no zinc will melt in your alloy, just skim them off with the rest of the trash.

I've been thinking about this. I found a LBT tester online for $110.00(that includes shipping). Do you think it's a good investment at this time or should I wait until I have a better handle on what I'm doing?

A hardness tester really isn't needed unless you are heat treating and/or driving stuff at modern rifle pressures, IMO.

Don't get me wrong, its nice to have, but not necessary.

Its nice if you are using range scrap or have a piles of some type lead of unknown quantity. I like that tester, but it doesn't work with ingots, just finished bullets.

Now a thermometer will help keep the zinc out of the wheelweights....I flux and skim at 685; never, ever sorted a weight nor had a zinc mess.

Except when I just added weights and cranked up the pot to 800...

I'd rather put money into a pot I didn't have to jack with over a hardness tester any day.

Thanks abunch Hawk. I appreciate the advice.

What pot are you using?

I've had two LEEs, have a Lyman and an RCBS.

It's a Lyman Big Dipper. I sure works better than the old Lee that my Pop used. I was surprised how fast it gets up to temperature.

Yeah, I would quit casting if I all I had was a LEE bottom pour.

Check out the #1 of these; I use a bottom pour, but these are the schit: http://www.theantimonyman.com/ladles.htm

Check out his site. Bill knows his stuff.

That is professional stuff Hawk. I do like the ladles though. I'm using a RCBS ladle and an old ice cream scoop. A spoon takes care of the stuff that floats up top.
Making ingots and casting is the funnest pain in the ass I done for a long time.

You'll get the hang of it and learn the Numb Mind Zen. Next thing you know you got a couple hundred bullets on the table.

Bart, maybe said here already, I didn't read it all, but hardness is not so important. Fit is 90% of the battle. Wheel weights are nifty if you find a stash, but you can make the same alloy with Pb and linotype albeit w/o the arsenic trace. I've heard sailboat keels are mostly WW alloy, dunno that's true or not, but have a neighbor with about 1K # of that.

1:16 will work for what you're doing and 1:20-1:30 will work in your Sharps, assuming you're shooting BP. On that topic, be aware of the coefficient of shrinkage in different alloys. The point goes to dimensional fit. Pure lead shrinks the most, linotype mostly the least.

Spend a little time reading here: http://www.lasc.us/

The Lee hardness tester is cheap and is reasonably accurate. It takes a little getting used to and a good source of light helps a lot.

Thanks Dan. I'll check it out.

A note about boat keels. Having poured a couple (now there's a story rich in drama and danger!) I can assure you we used every kind of lead scrap we could find- from WW's to roof sheathing to lead pipe. (You haven't lived until you've scrounged through all the scrap yards in a hundred mile radius to gather up 3000 pounds of lead.)

I've done that Numb Mind Zen thing so much it stays on after I'm done casting. Just call me Maharishi.

I just scored about twenty pounds of wheel weights.
I'll be casting more ingots tonight gents.
Another dumb question... If I load for a Bud's 30-30,should I buy a mold with gas checks or should I buy a regular 150 grain,.30 caliber mold? I'm going to load it to close to minimum velocities. 2000fps is my target velocity.

Gas checks make the bullet easier to work up an accurate load and prevent leading and allow you to use a softer alloy. My personal approach is if I'm going to push a bullet over 1700 fps in a rifle, it gets a gas check. There will always be somebody who claims how they've been able to achieve over 2000 fps with steller accuracy and no gas check. But I prefer the maximum resutls with minimal effort and experimentation so say keep it simple and go with a gas check design.

Now since you've scored wheel weights, you can make your tin last longer than using it up with pure lead. I'd mix your 5# of pure lead with 5# of ww's and add 2% tin (700gr)

Thanks abunch. I'm gonna do some casting in a little bit.

When you say "minimum" loads in a .30/30 I think 1000fps or so, not 2000fps which are well nigh max. As .458 said, loads in the 2000fps neighborhood automatically get a gas check from me. Also, if a bullet design calls for a gas check it's best to put one on unless shooting it at really low velocity, and even then it'll be more accurate with a check more times than not.

I don't know how you plan to lube/size your bullets, but be advised that one area newbies get in trouble is if they are using crude equipment they may not be getting their checks seated onto the bullets squarely, with crummy accuracy resulting. Definitely pay attention that the checks are seated squarely, and uniformly tight up against the lead base. Remember- the bullet's base is the "steering wheel" of the bullet. Errors there show up in the bullet's flight characteristics. Pay attention too, to the condition of the naked base before seating the check. Mis-shapen partially filled base edges will wreck accuracy also even with a gas check covering them. It's all about consistency and balance.

Plain base bullets I like to keep down around 1400fps or less. Up to 16-1700fps depending on the alloy.