Are there many bullet casters here?

[Melnic]

so, I"m likely to run low on my harder lead in the coming weeks.
I had received in lead from various people which were scuba weights.
I had melted and cleaned them up about 2 years ago and put them into cupcake disks, then last year measured them with the Lee Hardness tester.
I had been using this lead for 9mm and the 30 cal bullets blending the disks to get in the neighborhood of 10 BHN for doing the casting.
All I have left is lead about 5BHN
What is the EASY neophyte way to harden the lead for 30 cal powder coated shooting like what I have above in post 177?

Anyone see any issues using the soft lead powder coated w/ 9mm? 95% of my shooting this PC casted 9mm will be 25 yards, handgun into big 12" torso steel plates. Not big demands on tight groups here.

 

[John from MD]

1. You can water quench a few and after a couple days, check the hardness.

2. I can shoot XLOX coated soft lead in .45 Colt but I run it around 800 FPS. I don't know how slow your pistol will allow you to go without ejection issues.

 

[Melnic]

I did water quench some today when I ran some at the end of my minie ball run.
They were still measuring sub 5BNH on the lee hardness tester.

 

[John from MD]

You can buy this and alloy it with the stuff you have.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/10-Lot-Lin...849482?hash=item5232ef1c8a:g:MlIAAOSweqpejm7E

 

[Melnic]

You can buy this and alloy it with the stuff you have.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/10-Lot-Lin...849482?hash=item5232ef1c8a:g:MlIAAOSweqpejm7E

What ratio of 5BHN lead to this stuff would I expect to blend to get out say 10BHN?

 

[C.Alls]

https://youtu.be/7Y0raK6_Vbk

 

[Melnic]

https://youtu.be/7Y0raK6_Vbk

ok, so its linear

 

[Melnic]

Hats off to this guy for not wasting a bunch of time and getting to the point in the video
What we need is someone to add in the variable of time into the test

 

[303_enfield]

Go to Castboolites.com an buy some harder lead, lino. solder or pewter. Since we won't see flea markets or yard sales for a bit. Your not gonna find .25 pewter plates to smelt.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/forumdisplay.php?18-Swappin-amp-Sellin

Good luck!

 

[John from MD]

I'd be very careful about buying "pewter" at yard sales. Zinc alloy has been passed off as pewter for years and zinc is something you never want to get in your pot.

 

[Pinecone]

https://www.rotometals.com/bullet-casting-alloys/

Basic Rules for Hardening Lead-
For every 1% additional tin, Brinell hardness increases 0.3.
For every 1% additional antimony, Brinell hardness increases 0.9.
For a simple equation,
Brinell = 8.60 (Antimonial Lead) + ( 0.29 * Tin ) + ( 0.92 * Antimony )

They have all sorts of casting alloys.

Plus some high antimony to mix with your lead. 30% antimony.

And an alloy that is 23% antimony and 12.4% tin.

 

[Melnic]

Sometimes it pays to do some home cleanup. Found soft bags of shot used for dive weights along with solid dive weights. I"ll keep the soft bags with my dive gear and will melt the 16lbs of 10.4 BHN weights I found

I did order some linotype.
Questions, Should I mix up the linotype (guy says its 20BNH on a Lee tester) and soft pure lead, then dump into pucks, store for few weeks, then use it that way or do you guys mix when your bullet casting?

 

[Pinecone]

It doesn't matter if you mix and cast, or mix, ingot, wait, and cast.

 

[John from MD]

What Pinecone said.

 

[303_enfield]

I'd be very careful about buying "pewter" at yard sales. Zinc alloy has been passed off as pewter for years and zinc is something you never want to get in your pot.

That's why you use low smelt temps. Zinc melts at 750 lead at 600ish.

 

[Melnic]

9mm:
So shot the 9mm Powder coated as well as Hi Tek coated bullets yesterday and today. I had lots of hopes for the HiTek cause they sure looked nice. But nope. I had nasty leading yesterday and took it back and ran some different loads and same thing. The coating seems to be ripping apart and in my longer G34 barrel, I'm getting nasty leading by the end of the first mag. I ran 100 rounds of PC bullets first and no leading. Not sure what the issue is cause I know lots of people use HiTek.

300BLK
I shot the Lee 160gr gas checked PC bullets today at the range. I had a few test loads of 4227 but mostly shot a batch of 16.5gr H110 w/ PC Lee 160gr Gas Checked Powder coated bullets (thx John for the guidance). They grouped at about 1.5" at 50 yards which is just fine for what I wanted to do with them which was to shoot offhand at big steel torso target at 100 yards which is what I did next. I had a few primers pop out on ejection and saved those to look at tonight or tomorrow. Alot of the cases I got from other people or range pick ups so don't know if they were mistreated or at the end of their useful lives (or maybe I"m doing something wrong?) I'm using mostly Winchester SRP or CCI SRP. I saved at least one of the primers so I can tell which type they are.
I also shot the non gas checked Subsonic 230gr . I did not load that many but one of the loads is worthy of running some steps around it to see if I can tighten it up some more. I shot it with the Carbine gas barrel and I really need to shoot it with the SBR that has the pistol Gas cause with the longer gas, it was not cycling. But at least I can load some more up to try again.

 

[John from MD]

I popped a few primers early on too. I changed the buffer to an H3 and changed to all milspec brass and have not had any problems since. I don't know which fixed the problem.

 

[PowPow]

9mm: Not sure what the issue is cause I know lots of people use HiTek.

When you did the setup to load them, did you pull one to see if the boolit was swaged and/or coating removed?

 

[Melnic]

I pulled 6 loaded cases last night with HiTek coating and 5 had scraped coatings from the crimp. I adjusted the crimp then loaded up cases then pulled them (inertia pulled)

I also noticed the barrel I was testing with is probably the worse I have . It is a G34 after market barrel and has visible tool marks in the grooves.

I don't think this Hitek is as tough as Powder coat. I have a friend that is going to give me some Bayou Bullets HiTek coated bullets to look at the coatings so I can compare toughness.
I have read online reports of people having problems with both their own coatings as well as factory HiTek coated and usually they blame the reloader or say the coating was not done right.
That's fine, and I want to get to the bottom of this but sure don't want a coating that is hard to use nor do I want one sensitive to sizing or how I load them. I do have years worth of Powder Coating powder already so fixing this is purely academic for me.

Inertial Pulled bullets After crimp adjustment

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[Melnic]

The rounds with the adjusted crimp still leaded the G64 after market barrel but not the factory G17
Accuracy was not good though. PC rounds were just fine.

Yes I have been told that the mesh marks on the bullet are ok but in an effort to make MO PURDY 9mm I got a non stick grill Matt for $10/4 sheets and.cooked up a test and they look great

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