I am fairly new to casting, but I have a nearly limitless supply of wheel weights. I have been melting them down (outside) on a turkey fryer, then casting with a lee lead pot. Here's the question, these have been just fine for my .38 special, and .45acp. But I'd like to load some hotter .357 mag stuff. Without getting into a lot of alloy, is there any cheap way to cast these a little harder?

Thanks!

Straight WW should be fine for 357 shooting,But if you must,you can water drop them.
Take 5 gal bucket of water,as you are casting drop the bullets (straight from the mould) into the water ,they should sizzle a little when they hit the water,this will come close to doubling the bullet hardness.
Remember though that you need to size them within 6 hours or so because once they get hard (12 hours)it is a LOT harder to size them.

Sean

475/480, I am using Lee dies, and so far, I haven't hade to size them, I have been using the Lee alox lube.

ACSTEELE-

How doyou feel about sharing some of your unlimited supply of wheelweights?

I am headed to OKC in August via car, and could easily swing by and take some off your hands. A small fee is reasonable of course...

Let me know!

quote:

Take 5 gal bucket of water,as you are casting drop the bullets (straight from the mould) into the water

Keep the water away from your lead pot.
You don't even want to see what one small drop causes.

acsteele, A few comments re: WW hardness: (1) Do you need a harder alloy? I.e., I've been using WW + 1% Sn for years (with gas checked CB's) in my .357mag. with almost no leading. (2) Harder CB's may not expand (obturate) as well as softer ones and thus, may not be as accurate as the softer ones. (3) Water quenching is a fast way of hardening CB's but as soon as you size them, you reduce that hardness appreciably according to metallurgist Dennis Marshall. (Do a Google search for his articles.) If you heat-treat AFTER sizing you will get very hard CB's. Marshall describes this in various articles/publications. Hope this helps!

I've found that straight air cooled plain base wheel weight bullets seem to work fine at upwards of 1200-1300 fps out of magnum revolvers, and with a gas check, no reason not to drive them 1500 fps. So unless you're trying to push the lighest bullets super fast, you should have no problems with air cooled wheelweights.

question .......

Wheelweights work well in some guns and not others. Generally they seem ok in low powered pistols like the 38 Special but accuracy clearly declines in guns like the 44 Magnum. The decline in accuracy is hard to spot unless you do a lot of shooting with a 44 using the same bullet cast from each of the two alloys and them compare results. I'd stay away from wheelweights for anything but low powered loads.

Also, within my experience, wheelweigts don't work very well in rifles. I've shot a lot of 45 Colt ammunition in Uberti rifles. Cast the bullets from linotype and they work well. Cast them from wheelweights and you can completely miss the target's backstop.

quote:

Wheelweights work well in some guns and not others. Generally they seem ok in low powered pistols like the 38 Special but accuracy clearly declines in guns like the 44 Magnum. The decline in accuracy is hard to spot unless you do a lot of shooting with a 44 using the same bullet cast from each of the two alloys and them compare results. I'd stay away from wheelweights for anything but low powered loads.

Also, within my experience, wheelweigts don't work very well in rifles. I've shot a lot of 45 Colt ammunition in Uberti rifles. Cast the bullets from linotype and they work well. Cast them from wheelweights and you can completely miss the target's backstop.

HUH? I have been casting and shooting tire weights for over 20 years, and I have never experienced anything even remotely close to what you are talking about... I suspect your ww casts aren't filling out the moulds, and you are getting a significant weight variation. There are just WAY too many WW shooters out there doing just fine for this to be anything but a singular occurrence.
Nothing personal, but I just think maybe your ww alloy has had all the "goodie" burned out of it, and now it doesn't flow like it should.

klw, With all due respect, my rifles shoot exceptionally well with wheelweights + 1% Sn without heat-treating of any kind. Inaccuracy, if and when it occurs, is more likely attributable to operator error, bbl. condition, cast bullet design (E.g., Lyman #311644 is particularly accurate in .308Win. and .30-06's with standard ball seats.), cast bullet fit, etc. rather than that particular alloy

Amen, Paul.

The folks who were learned from the Lyman manual (tin is the solution to all your problems) have a hard time getting used to wheelweight.

WW metal is all I have ever used. My 44 mag is probably the most accurate.

300gr. LBT LFN cast bullets, heat treated and pushed out of my 15" TC barrel at 1875fps. Usually, large one hole groups at 50yds and about 1-1/2 inch groups at 100 yds, which is about as far as I would try to take a deer with it.

quote:

Originally posted by klw:
Also, within my experience, wheelweigts don't work very well in rifles.

That's very odd since any CBA benchrest match results will show a substantial number of competitors using WW alloy.

quote:

Originally posted by klw:
Wheelweights work well in some guns and not others. Generally they seem ok in low powered pistols like the 38 Special but accuracy clearly declines in guns like the 44 Magnum. The decline in accuracy is hard to spot unless you do a lot of shooting with a 44 using the same bullet cast from each of the two alloys and them compare results. I'd stay away from wheelweights for anything but low powered loads.

Also, within my experience, wheelweigts don't work very well in rifles. I've shot a lot of 45 Colt ammunition in Uberti rifles. Cast the bullets from linotype and they work well. Cast them from wheelweights and you can completely miss the target's backstop.

With all due repsect, me thinks you have limited experience using wheelweights in revolvers or rifles.

I've cast at least 1000#'s of ww's in the last few years, and I only shoot ww bullets, nothing added other then good lube and gas checks of so designed. I've driven them 1300 fps from 44's and 480's, friends have driven them 1700 fps from 454's, and I've hit 1900 fps from a 10" 357 maximum contender.

Accuracy is in the 1" range, some guns shoot that at 25 yds, others at 50. I've driven them 2000 fps from contender pistols and rifles and grouped 1" at 100 yds, though plinker loads seem to hover around 1" at 50 yds.

The only thing that matters is a gun that is has decent dimensions to shoot cast bullets, but that holds for any alloy chosen.

This BS about "one drop of water" is a MYTH!!!

IF water gets INTO the melted lead, that is, below the surface of the melt, then there will most definitely be a violent eruption of alloy caused by the instant steam created. SO, keep water out of any material going into the pot.

A drop of water ON THE SURFACE of the molten alloy just sizzles and bounces around until it evaporates. For instance, the occasional drop from a quenching bucket falling onto the molten alloy does no harm. If that drop gets into the sprues before they are added back into the mix, then the outcome will not be so benign.

I did a controlled test on this subject a couple years back, allowing scores of water droplets to fall one-at-a-time directly on the surface of the 870-degree alloy in my RCBS furnace. There was NO problem of any sort.

Safety is an essential factor and deserves our attention. Perpetuating myths does nothing to advance safety.

BTW, I too use wheelweight alloy with great success in both rifles and handguns, at speeds from .38-wadcutter target velocities to well over 2200 fps in calibers from 6.5mm to .416 Rigby and .45-70. I'd hate to be without it.

If you really want excitement, get a microdrop of water in your mold, and ignore it's hissing sound as you fill the mold. Makes a neat little pop, and the most amazing void defect you've ever seen. I do believe I still have that bullet somewhere

I've cast 1000's of water drop bullets with narry a problem, and completely echo Bruce's comments regarding safety. Just keep the wet scaps away from the casting furnace until you start your next session with a cold pot, and the water will boil off well before the lead melts.

quote:

Originally posted by klw:
Wheelweights work well in some guns and not others. Generally they seem ok in low powered pistols like the 38 Special but accuracy clearly declines in guns like the 44 Magnum. The decline in accuracy is hard to spot unless you do a lot of shooting with a 44 using the same bullet cast from each of the two alloys and them compare results. I'd stay away from wheelweights for anything but low powered loads.

Also, within my experience, wheelweigts don't work very well in rifles. I've shot a lot of 45 Colt ammunition in Uberti rifles. Cast the bullets from linotype and they work well. Cast them from wheelweights and you can completely miss the target's backstop.

Well, you've answered part of your problem. Linotype being not only harder but casting slightly larger ptrobably explains why the lino works so well in your rifle.
Like most of the respondents so far, I too have had exceleent results using wheel weight, not only in light .38 Spl. target loads but full power loads in the .357 mag. and .44 mag. I load both rounds to their original factory specs, which means I'm pushing the bullets out in the 1500 FPS range. I shoot 30-30 with WW at full 2200 FPS power, and my .45 Colt Winchester 94 to 1550 FPS. My Marlin 45-70 run 1650 FPS with a 330 gr. cast hollow point. No appreciable leading in any of the above. Usually just a very slight wash is all that brushes out easily.
This kinf of leads me to believe that either you'r doing something wrong, or your WW metal is missing some important components. (Too little tin and antimony.) You don't need all that much tin, and antimony is easily found by getting a bag of bird shot, preferably the magnum or chilled variety as it has a 6 percent antimony content. If you have a skeet and trap range nearby that sells reclaimed shot, you could save a few bucks that way. Twenty-five pounds of reclaimed shot here in Tucson is $9.00. With new shot, if my WW seems to be a bit too soft, I add one third cup of the shot. With the reclaimed shot, I double the amount.
There could be a whole bunch of other reasons why WW isn't working that well for you, but it would take a face to face conversation to into all of it.
Paul B.

I shot my K31 today. Last I recall, they were chrony tested at 2450. Water quenched WW's. They do shoot into an inch and a quarter at a hundred yards. Guess I better melt them down, and start in again.
I'm with the guys on the water thing. You can pee in the pot all day, as long as it doesn't get below the surface, and you can stand the smell.

Back in 1967 when I was getting ready to start reloading,I bought A Lyman manual. I read the Cast Bullet section and it made sense to me to start casting. One thing I had a hard time buying was carefully blending all the alloies with wheel weights(unknown)and coming up with an exact. So I used straight wheel weights for a bunch of years. Then I started casting for .22 cals and everyone said add tin for better fillout. So a couple years ago,for the first time ever I bought an alloy. All these years I have gotten wheel weights free. I bought some solder for the tin content. I mixed it with some wheel weights---could tell no difference. So here is my formula if you feel you must blend things. Mix equal parts(carefully weighed)of free wheel weights with wheel weights you didnt pay for and you have it. I have shot this at 2900 fps in .243 with good accuracy and no leading. Tried it on a deer with dismal---as in never again-results. BTW a good lube is part of the mix and I use Felix World Famous Bullet Lube(FWFBL)---that's a homemade lube and the recipe can be found http://www.castpics.net Felix posts here some.

I cast thousands of bullets from ww alloy for my .44 mags. I used to get a problem with lead fouling in the first inch or so of barrel, then i read an article by Dave Scovill about matching hardness to pressure and the fact that lead fouling at the chamber end of a barrel is due to the bullet being too hard and not sealing in the rifling. So I cut the alloy with 50% pure lead,didn't water quench and the leading went away and accuracy improved slightly; Load was a near top load of 2400, bullet was the RCBS 245gr. Keith.

Found the same with .45 ACP; went to pure lead and never looked back!

So now, for pistols, I cast soft rather than hard