Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting casters-45-70 and hardness

thinking of casting for the marlin 45-70 and have a lot of lead laying around.

20 lbs lead - probably pure
30 lbs cable sheath lead
20 lbs wheel weight melted down
20 lbs solder in one chunk
16 lbs of 'mistake' where solder was added to a lead pot by mistake.

once I caste a handful of .50 cal lee real bullets of the solder and they were so hard you could barely drive them down the barrel of the ML.

any guesses at to the hardness of each and usefulness. where would you start?

since it is cold firing up the lead pot would generate some warmth.

That's a lot of lead?? LOL! I'd be concerned if that was all the lead I had...

To your questions, the sheath lead I have smelted has seemed pure, or close enough to call pure. The wheel weights are likely something approximately made up of 96.5% lead, 3% antimony, and .5% tin, with a smidgeon of arsenic in there that helps them quench-harden better. The solder is likely 50/50 tin and lead, if it fills out moulds just fine when cast. I cut WW with lead 50/50 and water-drop for average Marlin loads that are middle-to-higher end powerwise. And I often throw in some tin, about 2%. Bullet design matters, but throat fit matters more. For whatever reason, I get away with far softer alloys in 45-70 than I do in, say, 30-30, when pushed to the same speed.

If I were starting out using your alloys, I'd mix 48% WW, 48% Pure lead, 4% solder, and water-drop half of them. This should get you a hardness for light (expanding) loads, and a hardness for heavier (expanding) loads.

You could also run straight WW with some added tin, get the same approximate hardness as the water-dropped 50/50 bullets, but they would more readily expand. Or you could quench the WW with tin and have pretty hard bullets for full power shooting.

Other guys could relay more about lead/tin alloys that don't include arsenic or antimony. I got my start with WW alloys, and have only played with lead/tin a little bit. Not enough to begin giving advice.

How hard are you planning to push them? If you're loading black powder equivalent loads I'd probably use mostly pure with some solder mixed in to add some tin. For Marlin only loads I'd use the wheel weights

even though I have an encore barrel for now it is just the marlin. and I don't run the jacked bullets over 1800 fps.

what will they stand without gas checks? .

I always wondered where the point was in hardness that you lost expansion. my first little casting project let me know I could make them mighty hard.

I was going to get a 300 to 350gr mold but Lyman recommends the 400 gr. does anybody else run lighter bullets in the marlin?

I've run PB Lee 340's at about 350 cast harder than quenched WW go over 2k with just a card backer. Recoil was....stout. I'd say loads were right there at the top, in the high 30's PSI.. Couldn't believe that PB would shoot so fast so accurately.

How well they shoot in hot weather will tell you what they will stand. When you get accumulated leading, cosistent accuracy goes.

Expansion depends on hardness, nose shape, bullet diameter, meplat and impact velocity.

A round nosed 20 BHN heat treated 22 will deform much less (not at all) at say 2,400 fpss impact than will a flat nosed 45 caliber fired into the same medium.

I run a 300 and a 350 in the Marlin 1895s.

My scrape clip on type WW's go 11.5 BRN. Pure lead is about 6 to 6.5 BRHN. In my 45-70 plain base bullets at 11.5 BRN ( straight WW ) shoots accurately at 1600FPS. Pure lead bullets OK up yo 600fps.. Scrape WW contain a trace of arsenic which allow them to be hardened. Drop the bullets hot right out of the bullet mold directly into a bucket of water to harden. Bullets so quenched hit a BRN of about 21 to 22 after 7 to 8 days. If a gas check is applied to these bullets they should be good for 2000 to 2200 fps depending on the rifling in the rifle. Marlin Ballard style deep cut rifling is great for these bullets or Winchesters with conventional rifling... If you are using a Marlin with Micro grove rifling shooting cast bullets accurately can be more challenging. Definitely want to use a gas check when going above 1500fps in Micro grove barrels.

Why?

When I run across scrap lead, the first thing I do is to melt it in a large pot outside, flux well and pour it into one pound ingots. I melt various lead alloys separately, and mark the ingots with a metal stamp so that I know what the alloy is as time goes by.

So I would start by doing that, and once they are in one pound ingots they can conveniently be mixed into a consistent casting alloy at the time you are casting.

So for your 45-70 you might use the wheel weights, add an additional 30% pure lead and a small amount of added tin from the mistake pile...not much, a total of 1% tin, and water drop.

Keep some pure lead for the black powder guns, and the solder and tin bearing alloys for boosting scrap lead you may run across in the future.