I seem to have a never ending supply of wheel weights. I also have a casting furnace and molds. I can make nice looking bullets but I know there is suposed to be a mixture of other materal. What is the corect mixture of metals and were do you get it. Also who makes the best brinell testing tool.

Iknowmyspellingsucks!

Steve, You're very fortunate to have a boundless supply of WW's. You don't even want to know what the going price is for them here! As for casting recipes, many use the WW's as is, ie., after smelting, removing the clips (They are recyclable.) and fluxing. I generally add no more than 1% tin to improve casting, but nothing else. Either one can be heat-treated, if necessary, to increase bullet hardness (BHN) and the pressure/velocity the resulting cast bullet will withstand.

I am one of those that likes a "pretty" bullet, and I use either one bar of 50:50 plumbing solder to a 20# pot of WW, or I use 75% WW and 25% linotype. Either recipe will cast a gorgeous bullet, but like Paul said, straight WW does a creditable job, so long as the metal hasn't been used to the point the tin is burned out. You will tell quickly, as the bullets won't fill out completely and the edges of the cast will be rounded.

LBT's brinnell hardness tester is the best one out there.

Rich
DRSS

Try 19 pounds of Wheel Weights and 1 pound of lead free solder. The solder is reputed to be nearly pure tin and the mix makes a very pretty bullet with a BNH of 10 to 12.

SS

Try 19 pounds of free wheelweights and one pound of wheel weights you didn't have to pay for and you have it made. Heard everyone saying add tin for fill out on the small .22 I cast and the only fill out was the guys wallet that sold the tin.

quote:

Originally posted by carpetman:
Try 19 pounds of free wheelweights and one pound of wheel weights you didn't have to pay for and you have it made. Heard everyone saying add tin for fill out on the small .22 I cast and the only fill out was the guys wallet that sold the tin.

I don't necessarily agree with that. First, it doesn't take a large amount of tin added to the wheel weights to get a great mold fill out.
While my normal alloy for rifle bullets is a bit complicated, my alloy for handgun ammo is a lot simpler. Just straight wheel weights with a three foot piece of 95/5 percent lead free solder added to the WW. The tin level in late model WWs has been drastically reduced and the short piece of the solder is usually just enough to make up the difference.It doesn't say just how many feet of solder there is in a one pound roll, and I've never completely unrolled one to find out, but I've gotten at least ten full 20 pound pots of freshly cleaned weights to one roll. IIRC, a roll was about $11 or $12 when I bought them.
Throwing a whole roll of that solder into 19 pounds of WWs is a great waste of that solder. It only takes a very little to do the job.
After casting a pot full and returning the sprues back to the pot, I add enough cleaned WWs to fill the pot back up and see how they cast. If all is well, I use it as is. If fill out is not quite all that good, I add an 18" piece of the solder. Usually, I don't have to do that until the third filling of the 20 pound pot. The difference is due to the tin content from that particular batch of WWs.
I still have about 100 pounds of some WWs I bought back in 1973 that cast a 14 BHN bullet. They're saved for special usage.
Paul B.

I shoot straight wheelweights and simply cast hot enough to fill out the mold. I don't use a hardness tester, it's an added step and expense that would add steps and expenses such as mixing alloys, marking lot numbers on ingots, individually weighing bullets, and a whole slippery slope that I don't want to go down.

I've cast over 1000 pounds of wheelweights, and have always been happy with the results.

It has been a few years, but I got a batch of ww once that simply would not cast a sharp bullet. I ended up using one bar of 50/50 solder to a potful (Pro Melt) of WW to get them to fill out.

Thankfully, all that metal is gone, and what I have now casts just fine as it is. It came out of a mechanic's shop that was closing down after the owner retired, and I suspect these weights have been around a while...

I have cast mostly WW since I started. They have worked just fine for me as well.

I've been casting straight wheel weights for rifle and pistol bulets (.30-06, .44 mag, .357) for over 35 years. I have also used straight ww's to make 8 1/2 shot for the past 20+ years. When I was competing in trap and skeet, I made 600-700 lbs of shot per year. It worked great in everything from .410 skeet to 27 yd trap.

quote:

Originally posted by Paul H:
I shoot straight wheelweights and simply cast hot enough to fill out the mold. I don't use a hardness tester, it's an added step and expense that would add steps and expenses such as mixing alloys, marking lot numbers on ingots, individually weighing bullets, and a whole slippery slope that I don't want to go down.

I've cast over 1000 pounds of wheelweights, and have always been happy with the results.

Exactly the same results. Just over 1000 pounds of straight wheelweights. Personally I think that straight wheelweights work best at slightly lower pressures compared to linotype but. Any there are people who heat treat wheelweights. But for me straight wheelweights work just fine.

The formula for Lyman no. 2 alloy is 90 parts lead,5 parts tin, 5 parts antimony. When i use pure wheel weights, sometimes the bullet diameter is undersized. To correct this i add linotype. All alloys must have some tin in it to preform correctly.If there is no tin in your mix, you can lead your bore. Over the years wheel weights have changed, the current ones have little, to no tin in them.

quote:

Originally posted by steve box:
I seem to have a never ending supply of wheel weights. I also have a casting furnace and molds. I can make nice looking bullets but I know there is suposed to be a mixture of other materal. What is the corect mixture of metals and were do you get it. Also who makes the best brinell testing tool.

Iknowmyspellingsucks!

Yep, here's another vote for the klw/PaulH method of K-I-S-S.

I'm a LONG ways past the 1000-pound mark in wheelweight alloy. I crank up my RCBS pot as high as it'll go (870 degrees or so) and my WW bullets are just fine, thanks.

I generally water-drop rifle bullets because it's an easy way of doing things, but I do NOT get wrapped around the axle about hardness from batch-to-batch, or even testing hardness at all. My handgun bullets are air-cooled WW.

The only (weak) attempt I make at keeping batches of ingots segregated is to store them in .50-caliber cans, about 100 pounds per can. If a 'bad' run of ingots should show up, it's easy to start over with a fresh canful.

Hey, whatya say Bruce, long time.

Joe