Been reloading for about 25yrs and decided to start casting,mainly .45acp,Colt,45/70,.357..I recently was given 200lbs of nice pure lead.How do I make a harder bullet with tin and antimony mixture.I'm not looking to drive any of the bullets over 13-1400fps(45/70).Any help would be appreciated.

I can't quote the percentages off the top of my head, but the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook offers different recipes for coming up with a workable alloy. If memory serves, you can even use chilled hard shot to get the hardness up to where it needs to be, but again, I don't remember how much to use.

Let me see if I can find something that will work. As a first attempt, I would try something around 20 # of your pure lead with a one-lb bar of 50/50 solder. There is a minor amount of hardening that tin offers, and it will make casting a lot easier, because it helps the mould fill out.

To me this is an area many try to make rocket science--when it aint. When I was going to take up reloading over 43 years ago, I bought a Lyman Manual to read. Lyman being a big supplier of casting equipment, had lots of cast info in the book--which also sparked my interest. One thing that didnt make sense was their blending to make certain type LYMAN alloies. The majority of the blend was wheel weights (an unknown)and you mix EXACT amounts of this and that and the other and you have an EXACT. I still don't buy that. I decided way back when, if it melts I'll make it into bullets. Wheel weights were always my main ingredient. Several years ago I started shooting a bunch of .22 cast bullets. Seemed like everyone on the internet told me I needed to add tin to get better fill out. So I bought some tin. Couldn't tell one bit of difference--except I had less money. That was the FIRST and ONLY alloy I have ever bought for casting bullets. I still can get free wheel weights but I read all time about people buying them. So here is my secret formula---don't tell anybody. Mix 50% free wheel weights with 50% wheel weights you didnt pay for and you are good to go.

Carpetman is spot on... Lyman will tell you that you should use their mix, which is 90-5-5, the last two ingredients being antimony and tin. Tin is almost prohibitively expensive nowadays, and anything over ~2% is wasted, as it doesn't help mould fill any better.

Now, having said that, I offer this: my suggestion of adding 1# of 50/50 solder to 20# of lead gives you somewhere around 40:1 lead:tin alloy, and my math says you are at about 2.5% tin. Methinks that is close enough for the average caster...

Appreciate the input and help.I was scraping some steel today and they had linotype sheets-wanted.70lb for them-expensive??

You do need the antimony/tin to help the bullet fill out the mould properly. Pure lead just won't do this as well as lead with antimony/tin in it. It can be as little as 3% but it does make a difference.

More importantly it also fixes the weight of the bullet. This is critical in say near maximum loads in a 38 S & W where if a bullet is very much overweight it isn't a safe load! You will think that your 146 grain mould is making a 146 grain bullet but actually it is making a bullet much heavier.

I had Hensley & Gibbs make me a #52. In linotype = 160 grains. In pure lead 180 = 180 grains! A big difference!

Price? I used to pay UK £600 per metric tonne for linotype here in UK when I bought it buy the tonne.

Now that was twenty four years ago. One metric tonne = 1000 kilos = 2500 lbs. UK £ 600 = US $ 900.

So I was paying .36c (US) per one pound then. Seems a reasonable price today if it is good linotype without the antimony/tin all used up out of it.

As sometimes the reason that true linotype (that is where a line of a book is cast as a whole and not individual printers' letter type letters) gets scrapped is because it is deficient in antimony/tin.

So it no longer fully fills out the letter shapes. So you've not 87% lead plus 13% of antimony/tin but more like 95% lead 5% antimony/tin...but still good for bullets but maybe not worth .70c more like .50c?

The bottom line? I'd agree totally with Carpetman. 100% wheelweights is a good mix to use for bullets in any cartridge using what we would call a "pistol" based case. My brother only ever used that in 9mm, in .38 Special, in .44 Magnum with never any problems at velocities up to 1300 to 1400 fps without gas check.

It worked extremely well for him. He woould fill the pot until it was brim full then melt it and add more wheelweights until te molten lead was brim full. Then he'd flux and cast using just one bullet design until the pot was empty. That way all those bullets were the same weight and he'd adjust his powder charge down if need be if they were a little over heavy or soft from reference bullet weight and hardness of his known safe load with that cartridge.

Then he would either stop totally or cast another but different bullet design using the brim full method as described. Wheelweights are pretty consistent and the brim full method meant that he only ever had to worry about one twenty pound batch of bullets of one bullet design at a time.

With your linotype? About four pounds of your pure lead with one pound linotype (or maybe one and a quarter pounds linotype) will see you OK.

Then? Weigh the first bullets twenty you cast and if they are hard enough just next time again weigh the first twenty out of the pot. If they are too light add more pure lead. If too heavy add more linotype. That way you can always, pretty much, get consistency from batch to batch to batch.

But the brim full method makes that redundant! You just use up one batch then cast another.

In the end I used just pure linotype as simply I didn't have to bother with "pig pens" and all that formula nonsense. Because I was casting for profit not pleasure. Time is money and it was quicker to have a certainty than mess about with mixing and making ingots. I knew that with pure good quality linotype the first bullet from a days cast of five thousand would be exactly the same weight and hardness and diameter as the last bullet from that days cast!

The using all the lead in the pot on one mould sounds good to me...I'll get 10 or 20 lbs of linotype and mix it...These are very thin sheets.Thanks for the info.

3 parts of your pure to 1 part of that lino should make my favorite boolit alloy of all time.
1% tin and 3% abtimony.
bout 10-11 bhn.
for the cals you listed about 3/4 max speed will be your happy spot
i see a can of unique in your future.

I cast a lot of bullets and use alloy
2% tin
6% antimony
92% lead

The bullets it yields for pistol and rifle are Brinell hardness at 18.
Good to shoot at iron targets and paper. Against iron they fragment with no ricochet safety hazard.

I blend my own as I have had a lot of inconsistency with wheel weights.

quote:

Originally posted by 7.62Rebel:
How do I make a harder bullet with tin and antimony mixture.

You can make them harder by water quenching directly from the mold. I'm getting 17BHN from quenched wheelweights with a little tin added. They work great at 1600+fps in my 7.62x25, CZ-52.

If I had 200 lbs of pure lead, I would look to trade it to a muzzleloading caster who could take advantage of it for some wheelweights or other more suitable, harder alloy for use in those calibers you have listed...especially the 357.

glen e fryxellhas wrote a lot about casting he hasinfo at the los anglessilhoutte club.(Lasc)'
look under cast bullets notes.
he has good stuff

quote:

Originally posted by 7.62Rebel:
Appreciate the input and help.I was scraping some steel today and they had linotype sheets-wanted.70lb for them-expensive??

That is a very good price for Lino these days & useful in making your pure lead shootable. The 3-1 ratio Lmar offerd will work fine for speeds upto 1500-1600fps properly sized & w/ a good lube. You can water drop them to get them a bit harder if you want to go beyond that.

The .70 / lb sounds like a good price. I found a place selling new alloys really good prices for new http://www.rotometals.com/Bull...sting-Alloys-s/5.htm