Alloying pure lead for bhn 10/11 ???

[j-houser]

I need to cast some round balls for shooting but I am out of the batch of lead that I worked up the load with. I have pure lead, tin and antimony. After 1 1/2 hour of looking I cant find the alloying formula or timprature for casting it. Any help would be very much appreciated. Trying for a 10 to 11 bhn after aging a few weeks. Any help would be appreciated.
JH

[Hanshi]

Ballistically and accuracy wise it probably won't make any noticeable difference if you use soft lead or a lead alloy, much less some "exact" formula.  Just mix a bit of tin and/or antimony hardened lead (not unalloyed antimony since it's melting point is waay above the melting temp of lead and they are difficult to alloy for the home caster.

[j-houser]

Thanks for the advice and you are probably right ( do you need any antimony for free).  But I am quire due to have spent at least 70 hours trying to get a finicky  1850 yaeger to live up to what it was made to do. I think I am about 90 percent there and am leery about changing what got me this far. This is where the hardness of the lead comes in.

 My limited thought process and wonting to stay around bhn 11 is based on the following. I am using a very tight pillow ticking patch that makes me uneasy about deforming a pure lead ball upon loading. They didnt group as tight.

At bhn 12,  the patch is printing on the ball when pulled it at the end of hunting season. My thought is that if I go to a much harder ball, it will be harder to load and may be imposable to reload  hunting conditions where I can not punch out the bbl. Last hunting season it took all my strength to slowly reload with a buck looking at me. ( got the deer) Dont know if I could have done it at a bhn or 18.

Any help due to my very limited knowledge and your experience and knowledge is much appreciated.

[Hanshi]

PM sent.

[j-houser]

I have 100 grams of antimony coming in from ebay. After learning about  the complexity of using it to alloy the pure lead I have, I dont need it. I need your address to send you the antimony.
Uncle Russ is the one that told me to use a bhn of 10, 11 or 12 for accuracy last year. Due to my time restraints, I do not wish to experiment and cast up balls that age harden past the bhn 12 by next hunting season. I have a passion for hunting with this rifle and am concerned about a higher bhn and the extra force that it would be need for the pillow ticking to engrave into the ball upon loading. I am thinking of using the pure lead and alloy it with wheel weights to come up close to the bhn 11 but I do not know the percentage of wheel weights to use.  Any help would be appreciated.

[forest]

WW runs at about 10/11 so just use it straight.

[Uncle Russ]

Hi j-houser  

Still yet, you are dead right in looking for that "just right" hardness, a simple thing that is all to often overlooked for real precision shooting of PRB.

Insofar as how many wheel weights to use in order to increase the hardness of pure lead, in any measurable, or incremental way is, IMHO, a hit and miss game as all modern day wheel weights have ungodly amounts of "who-knows-what" in them....although a lot, perhaps even most of that can be cleaned off in the dross, the hardness factor will actually vary from pot to pot.

There's not any easy answers in our search for the Holy Grail of absolutes in this sport we have chosen, and perhaps it's the journey to get as close as possible that makes the whole trip worthwhile.

Uncle Russ...

[R.M.]

Have you considered something like 20-1 or 25-1 lead-tin.

[Stormrider51]

I REALLY don't want to step on anyone's toes here!  Everyone had their own ideas and experiences.  I'm just going to tell you mine.  So please bear with me as I toss out a few thoughts in no particular order.

WW metal - Forget it.  Wheel weights aren't what they used to be.  Some don't contain any lead and I suspect this will be the trend in the future now that the EPA has closed down the last lead smelting plant in the U.S.  Bullets cast from wheel weights will vary in weight and hardness.  Balls of different weights will affect the flight of a ball more than hardness.  An interesting side note is that the stick-on wheel weights used on mag wheels appear to be pure lead at least for now.

The formula for Lymans #2 Alloy is 90% lead, 5% tin, 5% antimony.  I think that is your original question but hear me out.

I've always gotten best results from pure lead when using a PRB in a rifle.  Play with the other variables like patch thickness, lube, powder.  Using pure lead takes out most of one variable, the bullet weight/hardness.  I also weigh the lead balls on a grain scale.  Anything that varies beyond about 0.3 grain goes back in the pot.  An air void or bit of dross off to one side of center in a ball will cause it to fly erratically because it's out of balance not to mention that a lighter ball will fly faster.

When it comes to lubes, check out Dutch Schoultz's "dry patch" formula.  It really makes a difference by taking out another variable, the amount and slickness of the patch lube.

When it comes to how tight a patch/ball should be there are some who claim "the tighter the better" and others who claim superb accuracy from a combo they can run down the bore with two fingers on the ramrod.  Given the differences in bores they may both be correct although I tend to doubt the two-fingers crowd.  Their idea of "superb" may be different than mine.  My experience has been somewhere in the middle.  I seem to get best accuracy from a patch/ball that requires firm pressure to force it down the barrel but never having to "pile drive" it down the bore with repeated thumps.  Grasp the rod about 6" above the muzzle and push firmly.  I've never broken a rod while loading and that 6" Rule is why.  Also avoid bouncing the rod off the ball once seated.  This will tend to crush the powder under the ball and result in differing burn rates.  The finer the powder granules, the faster they burn.

Here's another controversy.  Wiping the bore between shots.  Benchrest shooters do.  Some folks don't.  Who do you think gets the best accuracy?  I wet a patch, squeeze most of the liquid out, and make one pass down and back out.  The idea here is to have as close to the same amount of fouling in the bore as possible for each shot.

I've gone pretty far afield from the hardness of lead but let me prattle on just a bit more.  Do all of your load development from a solid rest on a bench.  The idea is to see what the rifle is capable of, not how good an offhand shooter you are.  Accurate shooting is all about consistency.  You will always be the least consistent factor in the mix.

Storm

[LeeRoy]

I might be stepping on toes. There is a place, Rotometals, they sell a number of different alloys.
They are on the pricey side. I have not ordered any thing from them, as of yet. I have a supply, at
this time.

LeeRoy

[j-houser]

Thanks Leeroy. Was about to post this and I seen your post. Will look up Rotometals. Might take care of a lot of the guess work  
Thanks for all the help. All the information and experience from TMA members and hours at the range is what has got the rifle to what I think could be at 90% of its potential. Thanks for all the perspectives variables listed above. This helps me out a lot in problem solving.

The pure lead I used earlier on gave me a known hardness but did not shoot as tight, I may go back and see if I can get it to work. I have considered using the 5 percent tin alloy to pure, for what I think is a bhn of 10. I am not sure how much it softens over time and I wish to cast enough PRB  so that I have some left over for hunting season. These knowns would also help eliminate the previous problem of inconstancy in wheel weights and much more so with range lead that .

I have worked up a number of accuracy loads on modern rifles and only two muzzle loaders. I know that some modern cartridge rifles will shoot about anything with fair accuracy and some are finicky as heck and only allow very little room for variation to achieve a good accurate load. This 60 cal, 1 in 42 with .012 round bottom deep rifling and .590 mold is also finicky as heck. This is why I am leery of variation from the load I have now. If I miss or wound a deer at my current max shooting range of a known distance of 125 yards, I wont to know that it was my fault, not the gun. If I can get the PRB cast to my current accuracy load of around 11 to 12 bhn, I am looking forward to going to the range and experimenting with other variables without wondering if  a variation in the  BHN had any influence.

Any perspective or thought on what I perceive might work would be very much appreciated.  
I think the lyman #2 at 5% tin and 5% antimony  and pure lead gives me two known that I should be able to work with hopefully for years to come.   If I alloy equal amounts pure lead and #2 , I think it would be 2.5 tin and 2.5 antimony that would age out to between 16 bhn and 5 bhn. I speculate that it may be somewhere around  a bhn of 10.5. Does anyone know of a chart that list BHN of different lead alloys??   Do I need  to add some tin to the mix to bring the alloy  up to the original  5% tin?

[R.M.]

As far as I know, lead/tin alloys do not age harden/soften. Quenching does nothing to it.

[Hanshi]

Fortunately, all my WW are the old kind that I acquired in the 1970s when I use to cast a lot of pistol bullets.  They were harder than lead but still soft enough to expand impressively in HP versions.  I rarely cast bullets anymore but maintain a couple hundred pounds  of WW in my basement.  I prefer WW cast ball for my smoothbore over lead.  For rifles I still much prefer soft lead.

[j-houser]

You have WW lead that a man could trust trust. However, now and probably sometime before we stopped manufacture our own lead, I don't trust it. I have heard that in extreme cases, some current WW do not even have lead in it.
Thanks all the help

[RobD]

i agree with stormrider51 - it's all in the shooting process.  i use prb's, dutch dry lube, and a moist moose milk patch up/down the tube between shots.