A nice day for a pour

Auggie Doggie

Auggie Doggie

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I have had a half bucket of range scrap and some.other odds and ends sitting in my basement for a couple of years now. I finally decided to do something about it. Ended up with 103lb of alloy from 118lb of "stuff".

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Here are some ingots from a "collectable" Lyman mold; the one with the backwards "N".

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Auggie D.
 
Just light copper jackets and plating and a few wheel weight clips from a handful of wheel weights I had. Everything else was good alloy. It's a little on the soft side, but since I powder coat, it will be fine.

Auggie D.
 
Auggie Doggie said:
It's a little on the soft side, but since I powder coat, it will be fine.
Click to expand...

So, is PCing going to come to the rescue for the pile of soft lead I have accumulated? Been scratching my head over this stuff. Only need so much for BP purposes.

I cast for HG and BP only. 44spl/38spl/45ACP/9mm, nothing in the magnum velocity category.

M
 
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gnmontey said:
So, is PCing going to come to the rescue for the pile of soft lead I have accumulated? Been scratching my head over this stuff. Only need so much for BP purposes.

I cast for HG and BP only. 44spl/38spl/45ACP/9mm, nothing in the magnum velocity category.

M
Click to expand...

If you have a good stock of dead soft lead there's usually someone who is interested in trading so that they can make a known alloy.
I generally only have a hundred pounds of soft at a time and keep an eye out for any that comes cheaper than the scrap dealers.

I'm also like you, curious about how far PC can go when it comes to pushing soft lead to higher velocities. Could be a good answer for hunting bullets for some people.
 
All my cast bullets leave the barrels at under 1000fps, so PC works just fine for this (so far). The range scrap was a mix of cast lead with hardness all over the map, jacketed with soft lead cores and plated with I suspect fairly soft cores as well. there was a handful of wheel weights tossed in and I added some SN100C solder (almost pure tin). the resulting alloy is harder than straight lead, but softer than Lyman#2.

Auggie D.
 
Auggie Doggie said:
All my cast bullets leave the barrels at under 1000fps, so PC works just fine for this (so far). The range scrap was a mix of cast lead with hardness all over the map, jacketed with soft lead cores and plated with I suspect fairly soft cores as well. there was a handful of wheel weights tossed in and I added some SN100C solder (almost pure tin). the resulting alloy is harder than straight lead, but softer than Lyman#2.

Auggie D.
Click to expand...

How long is it going to take you to process that into the desired size pills?
You have access to a magical machine for that right?
 
Can't you buy some antimony & tin to put into pure lead to harden it up a bit? 5% each and 90% lead is what I'd read

Though I've only read it... I don't cast... interested in it, so been reading allot
 
JoKa said:
How long is it going to take you to process that into the desired size pills?
You have access to a magical machine for that right?
Click to expand...

I can do about 450/ hr on the Master Caster, so 130gr .38's would be about 5,500 bullets so 12 hours give or take.

Can't you buy some antimony & tin to put into pure lead to harden it up a bit? 5% each and 90% lead is what I'd read

Though I've only read it... I don't cast... interested in it, so been reading allot
Click to expand...

Tin doesn't really make the alloy harder, it just gives better fill out to the mold. Any more than 2% is a waste. Antimony is available, but requires special fluxes to get it to mix in properly. It's better to find some linotype or mono type that already has the antimony blended in if you need to harden up your mix. Water quench will surface harden them as well.

Auggie D.
 
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