Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Casting Question

I've got 5lbs of pure lead and 1lb of tin pellets and I'm wanting to cast some 230grain bullets for my ,45Long Colt.
It probably doesn't matter but I'll be using Trail Boss at around 800fps from a Henry Lever gun and a couple of Vaqueros.
Any suggestions on how much tin I should melt with the 5lbs of lead? I'm going to make ingots first then cast the bullets a pound or two at a time.
Thanks in advance gang.
Bart

Bart,

A third pound of tin should do up that 5 pounds of pure (It would be Elmer's old 1-16 alloy).

A quarter pound of tin/ 5lbs lead would make 1-20 alloy and duplicate Winchesters old blackpowder alloy.

I'd run 1-20 with pressures under 15,000 psi/cup for best results..but they shave and dent easier in the seating step, so take er easy.

1-16 is what I was thinking about doing. Now I just need to figger out how to measure 1/3 of a pound of these tin pellets.
All I have is a powder scale.

You need 2,333 grains.....

Thank you Sir.
You are a Gentleman and a Scholar.

No prob.

You now need another ten pounds of pure lead....

I don't mix 2333 grains of tin in with the 5 pounds of lead to get 1-16 ?
I could hit a curve ball as good as anyone when I played baseball but in bullet casting...Not so much. Why ten pounds more?

Yes, you do. 2,333 grains is 1/3 of of 7,000 grains, or 1 pound (weight).

For two more 1-16 batches, you need ten pounds more pure lead for 1-16 alloy to use up that tin.

If you had 15 pounds of pure lead you'd have your one part tin (one pound) for basically 1-16 (or 1-15, rounded).

I redid the math and figured you were messing with me with math and using up the rest of the tin.
Thanks again Hawk. I'll post pics as I progress.

Tin is phuggin expensive; would never do that!


I make a schitty mathman, but I ain't gonna make a feller waste tin.

Keep us posted for sure!

That's why the new versions of the old alloy formulas use antimony in combination with the very minimum percentage of tin to achieve the same hardness.

They wouldn't use any tin at all except that a small amount is necessary to enable the antimony to mix. You can't really add straight antimony, but you can add some lead with antimony already in it to expand your supply. I recall some suppliers offering that.

Very true.

Straight WW metal is pretty darn close to 1-16 as far as hardness.

Dumb question....
When you use wheel weights,do you pull the clip off of it before you melt it? The clip is the harder metal that holds it to the rim(I think I worded that right)????

Nope; it will float to the top along with the dross, grit and crud.

Try to melt WW's until alloy is slumpy, not a full liquid, to skim the dross and clippings. Zinc coatings can contaminate the alloy or worse yet, your melting container. I do my ingots with a cast pot on a Coleman.

I also had someone tell me here to not melt your weights in the pot you are casting from; lots of trash and dirt can mess up a bottom pour pot spout. A ladle pour with a Rowell ladle, it doesn't matter.


No dumb questions, there are a lot of variables that need clarified. Once clear, its pretty straightforward.

I would point you towards Lymans Cast Bullet Handbook.

Thanks abunch Hawk.
My go-to book has been the Lyman 47th and I have other Lyman books on casting and BPCR. My Pop died and took an amazing amount of reloading,bullet casting,and BPCR knowledge with him. Unfortunately,I never paid much attention to him when it came to casting bullets. But luckily,I was involved in reloading since I was in kindergarten and wiped 45LC's and he let me prime them. I was in heaven.

Quick question....are the stick on wheel weights less desirable than clip ons? I have 3 5 gallon buckets of just pure stick ons and 1.5 buckets of the clip ons. I have heard that it's a softer lead but we will be shooting paper with them and they wouldn't be driven hard out of 44's and 45 Colts.

Well, there you go!

Casting isn't hard at all; you'll figure it out quick and probably remember some of the stuff your Dad did.

The stick on weights have less antimony for flexibility, more lead, so yes, they are somewhat softer but harder than 1-20 and certainly pure lead.

Good question,I'd like to know too.

Hawk, do you have the tool that gauges hardness of the lead alloy? I forget what the name of it is.

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.

You can make your own Brinell tester if you have a drill press, bathroom scale and calipers.

Get a steel ball bearing. I use one that is .250" epoxy it inside a washer that is smaller than it is.

Put your bathroom scale on your drill press table. With a bullet or ingot directly underneath the chuck.

With the drill press OFF run the chuck down to the bullet with the washer keeping the bearing from sliding up into the chuck.

Now pull down on the handle until the bathroom scale reaches your desired pressure (I use 60 lbs) and hold it for 30 seconds.

Release the pressure and your bullet should have a nice dimple in it. Using a magnifying glass and your calipers read the diameter of the dimple.

Plug the diameter of the dimple, pressure and diameter of the bearing into this formula

BHN = (2*P) / [ (pi*D)(D - sqrt(D2-d2)) ]

where

P = Load on indenting tool in kg
D = Diameter of steel ball in mm
d = measure diameter at rim in mm

and you will have your BHN pretty close.

Bart, Personally, I'd use gas checks for a good reason---just because---and that's the best I can do. I'd buy a 170 grain mould. I bought a 150 from Accurate Mould and have wished many a time I'd gotten a 170.

Yeah, what Mickey said. 170...an old Lyman 311041 will do nicely.

I've used that one with WW/Pb evenly mixed with about 6-8 oz tin in a 25# pot. They have shot well, up to around 1900 fps which is as far as I've gone with them. I prefer something around 1600-1700 fps however. LLA lube only, no leading whatsoever. I recently fired some of slightly harder alloy and they did about 3" at 50 yards offhand in a Savage 24. Same mix as above with about 20% of the lead/WW replaced with linotype.

311041 is the one on the right, sized but not lubed. The other is some 7mm trash.

Just caught this thread, and I'm too late.

Sorry Bart, you've cohorted with HawkI in open forum and you are apparently too far gone to save.

I did, and the the next thing I realize, I'm accepting wheel weights as payment for surveying services, and humming winnie-the-pooh songs to pass time while melting lead.

screwed, bro.

You're screwed.

Ha ha! How true!

Next thing you know, you'll be watching the ground for stray wheel weights and miss out on the pretty girl bending over to tie her shoe...

I ain't that far gone.

yes the original lyman 311041 or 31141 is a great wide metplate fn bullet really puts the wallop on whatever you are shooting noe bullet molds , make a nice one it is a little less wide than the lymans , but is more aerodymamic and wide enough for tubular magazines to not be a problem