im especting my 416 mould to arrive next week which veral smith made. Im going to make a few diffrent mixes to see what my 416 likes, with one mix im going to add some chilled shot for its arsnic content which gives one bullets which are harder ....can any one enlighten me how much chilled shot i should add to a 10lb
pot
thanks

you need very little arsenic in an alloy. One quarter of one percent is enough. If you want a harder alloy, antimony is what you need to add. There is antimony in the alloy used to make wheel weights (along with a bit of tin and a tiny bit of arsenic) and, wheel weight alloy, if heat treated can provide a BHN of up to 30. Hope that helps! If you have lots of spare time, come on over to the "Cast Boolit" website and start reading the forum "stickies" and you will find answers to most, if not all, your questions on bullet casting. Have a great day!!

RD
thanks, im aware of what your saying, and its correct, but from what PACO KELLY wrote on www.sixguns, he used shot in his mix, from my understanding , by useing shot, with arsenic , one could get a greater hardness than with just staright ww/tin/linotype alloy mix
i guess i will find out in the next week or so. as im going to pick up my 416 mould veral made me this comming week, and start casting
Daniel

Chilled shot? Freezer or just a day or so in the fridge?

I wonder what you want the hardness for. I run my 404 Jeffery 350gn GC lino boolit at 2365fps and a HT ww at nearly 2500fps so the normal alloys are suficient for these speeds.

In my 7x57 I run a lino shank with soft nose of 50/50 ww/pb at 2415fps and get 100% weight retention and great expansion


If I was to take the 404 after larger soft skined animals I might soft nose it but would expect the same accuracy as this 5 shot group at 55yds with aperture sight, where 87gn 2209 (this is the Australian ADI powder that sells as H4350) gives me 2416fps.


Von Gruff.

Cant complain about that sort of accuracey
Daniel

M98. Get a set of measuring cups,keep the 1/3 cup size and give the rest to your wife of girl friend. My alloy is a bit complicated with 10 pounds of wheel weights, one pound of linotype, 1/3 cup of chilled or magnum shot (same thing) and a 3 foot piece of 95/5 percent lead free solder. Bullets will run about 12 BHN air cooled and can age harden to about 14 after a couple of weeks. Personally, I won't water drop them from the mold for the simple reason that bullets do not all drop right out when opening. So do and some decide to stick in the mold for a while. It is my belief that hitting the water at different temperatures does not bode well for consistant BHN readings. I use a toaster oven that I bought at Walmart, tested it to whee the bullets slumped and then turned the dial back just enough that the bullets stayed in solid form. I mafe a basket out of screem material with a wire handle and I place one layer of bullets in the screen, place them in the preheated toaster over and bake them at rought 425 degrees for a minimum of one hour. Then, I quickly pull the basket out and drop it into a bucket of cold water, basket and all.
Bullet when removed from the water are running about 20 to 22 BHN can/will harden to 30 to 32 BHN based mostly on what was in the wheel weights at the time the allow was made up. I still have some wheel weight that I bought way back in 1973 that will make bullets much harder than current weights. Current weight can be as soft as 8 BHN and maybe as hard at 10 to 12 BHN but the 1973 batch will cast bullet in the 14 BHN range. My thought is they have a lot more antimony than current versions, but I really don't know.
Paul B.

in the 50's ww's had about 9% antimony.
in the early 70's they went to 7%.
long about 81 or so they went to 4%
and recently 2001 or thereabouts 3% seems more practical.
i think in about 2009 they started mixing in whatever the shops returned stick ons and all.
as the bhn seems to be hit or miss at times.

GUYS
thanks, will be casting some proj next week or so, i will attempt to update every one with what i actually come out with
My initial mix will be WW 150 oz/9.37 LBS, lead from 22 RIMFIRE bullets 150oz/9.37 lbs
4 oz of tin (1.25%), and 1 LB (5%)of linotype
making a total of 20 lbs

My ww ingots which i have melted down appear very hard, so it will be intresting to see what i end up with

By the way, i bought one of VERAL SMITHS bullet hardness testers and give it full marks, and can recommend it 100% to any one who is looking for one