Lead mix

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  • Last Post 19 February 2022
2frogs posted this 16 February 2022

Need help with this please. Using 5 lb of lead to 1 lb of wheel weights. What do you think this bhn would be for hollow point 44 special bullets. Thank you. Johnny

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Tom Acheson posted this 16 February 2022

I don't have the resultant bhn value.

If you have a reliable hardness tester AND are not limited by the melting pot capacity....

Mix the the two components and then check the hardness. If it is softer or harder than you desire, add a small amount of one or the other ingredients, to get the bhn to where you want it to be.

Tom

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2frogs posted this 16 February 2022

Sounds reasonable. That's what I will do. I have the lee tester. I appreciate your reply. John

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pat i. posted this 16 February 2022

If I had to take a WAG I'd guess around 6 or slightly more bnh for 5 lbs of pure lead and 1 lb of wheel weights.

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Tom Acheson posted this 17 February 2022

This is an interesting coincidence. My pot holds 40-pounds of alloy. Over the fall I did some “casting bench down sizing”. Bullets for guns I no longer have or bullets that were made to test in one of the guns I do have and oddball unmarked ingots, all went into the pot. Just recently I received a new mold and made a “check slug” that I use to identify the current pot’s alloy hardness.

 

That example said 8 bhn and two days later 10 bhn. The pot was half full so I threw a few “muffin tin ingots” of wheel weight metal. The hardness of that turned out to be approx. 12 bhn and 15 bhn two days later.

 

The challenge we’ll always have is what is the actual make up of a wheel weight? They vary a lot. Same with the lead we have. Is it pure, is it slightly “non pure”? Assumptions can be made but we never know for sure until we actually melt some and test it.

 

For my BPC rifle, I have bounced around between 14:1 and 25:1. The metals used in that discipline are lead and tin. At one time I had about 21-pounds of 20:1 alloy in the pot. I wanted to add enough tin to the pot to harden the entire pot to 15:1. One of the shooters on the Shilo Rifle forum had developed an Excel program to tell you how many pounds of X to add to a known quantity of Y to get a resultant ratio of Z:1. But unfortunately that program does not allow the use of wheel weight metal. I have used the program several times and its predictability is quite accurate.

 

The chart in the Lyman CB handbook is needed to determine the bhn of an alloy when you know the lead/tin ratio. My hardness tester works in the world of bhn, so you need to use the chart to convert the bhn from the hardness tester to the lead/tin ratio that you want.

 

Tom

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2frogs posted this 17 February 2022

Interesting read. So if one desires a bhn of 10 and he two or three weeks it goes to 15 he has gained nothing unless he uses them within 2/3 days. Does this make sense,or am I thinking wrong? Johnny

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Lee Wiggins posted this 17 February 2022

2frogs,  Click on CBA Info at top of screen and click Downloads . Download Alloy Calculator.

It is a spreadsheet where you can enter different pounds of this and that and the bhn is calculated .

Hope this helps.   Lee Wiggins 

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Tom Acheson posted this 17 February 2022

Johnny,

Hardness growth or reduction over time is a factor that we need to consider.

I knew a guy who wanted really hard bullets. In addition to a hard alloy, he “heat treated” them in an oven and water quenched them. (Not all alloys respond well to heat treating.) Then to “encourage” the bullets to retain their hardness, he put them in the freezer. Supposedly this delays the alloy’s gradual return to its original hardness. He must have had an “understanding” wife as he used the oven and freezer for his cast bullets!

Have some fun. Make up a small batch of bullets and record the as-cast bhn. Put them aside. Then every month recheck the bhn. This will tell you the bhn trend that your alloy experiences over time. 

Tom

 

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Lee Wiggins posted this 17 February 2022

Using the alloy12 calculator downloaded above . Enter 5 in yellow column for Pure Lead and 1 for Clip on WW,

Bottom of yellow column shows 6 lb and to the right is estimated BHN of 9.1  .

               Lee Wiggins

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358156hp posted this 18 February 2022

I see where you're getting your number Lee, but I don't buy the calculators conclusion. One lb of WW, according to the calculator contains .5% of tin, 3% of antimony, .25% of arsenic, and 96.3% of pure lead. Blending one ingot of pure lead cuts those numbers in half- .25% of tin, 1.5% of antimony, .125% of arsenic. Adding two more ingots of pure lead cuts those in half again .125% of tin, .75% of antimony, and .0625% of arsenic. Two more ingots of pure lead roughly cuts that by about an additional 1/3 if I'm cyphering correctly .0375% of tin, .225% of antimony, and .01875% of arsenic. If correct, those are basically trace amounts. Perhaps one of the math wizards can check my figures.

In contrast, 1 lb of pure lead plus 1 lb comes out at 10.1 on the calculator. Adding four more lbs of pure lead is seriously close to Pats answer, which is the number I came up with on the fly while reading the original post.

My preference for cast HPs from most handguns is 30-1 of 20-1 lead/tin. Much of your success depends on many variables, including the actual intended target, the actual bullet design, and the impact velocity. I'd probably use 16-1 or 10-1 for medium sized game. My best advice is to make up a batch of bullets, and test them to determine what will work in a real world scenario. Crunching numbers tells us what should work, but not necessarily what will work. Only testing in the field can give you factual answers.

 

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Lee Guthrie posted this 18 February 2022

That wouldn't have been John by any chance???   Or was it you?

I am away from my copy of the Index to The Fouling Shot or I could look it up.  

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Lee Guthrie posted this 18 February 2022

 Nose design may be more reliable and effective than low velocity HPs in pistols for wound cavity and energy transfer.  UNLESS nearly pure lead is used.  Sometimes they expand.  Most of the time they do not.

Huntsman design is a good choice.

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Lee Wiggins posted this 18 February 2022

358156hp

   You may be correct , I  don't know. As to the spreadsheet , I did not write it.

I was simply pointing out that the CBA put it in their downloads. The BHN that it calculates may or may not be close to actual for different mixes.

Maybe a trial of 1oz. WW and 5 oz. lead. Wait a couple weeks for any age hardening to take place then test with a BHN Tester.

                     Lee Wiggins

                                                            

 

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358156hp posted this 19 February 2022

 Like I said Lee, my early copy of the spreadsheet gave me the exact same results yours did. I was trying to express concern about the calculators accuracy in this instance, and nothing I said was directed towards you, or your reply. If you took my post that way, then I apologize, because it certainly wasn't intentional. The only part that was directed towards anyone was the final paragraph or so, basically advising the OP to try it out and see what kind of results he gets first hand. There are many different ways to achieve his goals, and my suggestions were just some of the possibilities.

Bob

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Lee Wiggins posted this 19 February 2022

   No offence taken Bob,

I have reservations about the ss myself . For instance look at the stated BHN of Lino in the ss.

I thought it was 20 not 19. If you enter incorrect values in formulas you will get wrong answers. Still the ss may be of value. If I had a hardness tester I would try a few oz. test just out of curiosity.

         Lee

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