alloy advice needed

[adirondacker]

i just purchased 200  lbs of new lead flashing.this appears to be pure lead,seems quite soft.i also have 40 + ingots approx 12"x3"x1" that seem to be linotype,quite hard almost rings when struck together.
  ok question is how much hard stuff do i mix with the soft stuff.this is the first time i have had this quantity of premium lead,usually i just mix up a pot of whatever.i will be casting plain base handgun and 1200 to 1400 fps rifle bullets.any help would be appreciated,thansk adker

[Lloyd Smale]

My advise is to use it half and half for anyting up to about 1100 fps with a plain base and anything over that use the hard stuff as is. Its real hard to say though unless a guy really knows what you have but its a rare gun that needs you to error on the soft side. What you really should do is go to a local gun club and find a black powder shooter that will swap you that pure for some wheel weighs.

[HEAD0001]

You may not like my advice, but here goes.  If as you say you have high grade pure lead, then it is very valuable.  Straight WW would be an excellent choice for the loads you are speaking of.  You could easily trade or sell the good lead for a premium.  How much did you pay for it?

200 pounds is not alot.  You may be able to trade for a lot more WW.  I do not know where you are located, but I would gladly trade 400# of clean WW for 200# of pure lead.

You do not need to mix alot if you keep your velocities at 1200 fps.  At that velocity I do not believe you would have any trouble if you cast the pure lead without adding any of your harder lead.  I would just mix in 5% tin to give a good mold fill, and not even use the other lead you have(since you are not really sure about what it is).  If it is ringing when you drop it, it could easily be WW.  Tom. 

[adirondacker]

well i tried a fifty/fifty mix  with the lead and my ? hard stuff.bullets came out ugly as could be.filled out nice but all frosted,didn't matter what temperature my mold was.i think i may need some tin.where do i get tin from?
  as for the lead i purchased i gave a local bargain outlet $20 for it.i already gave 50 lbs to a friend but i have about 147#s left.
 i have cast quite a few bullets but never had this type of material to work with.usually cast soft slow bullets from an assortment of lead sources,wheel weights to sinkers.the  bullet i am working on now is a 40 caliber bullet nose for a 40/70 ballard  in a remington hepburn falling block.i plan on hunting with this rifle and want to try to get the optimum performance with the least problems.i hope to use trail boss powder instead of blackpowder.thanks,adker

[Lead pot]

adker.

Your sheet lead is good lead for making bullets for your .40-70.
But you must use a little caution when you melt it down. Sheet lead is treated with Arsenic to slow down the oxidation and it adds just a little hardness to it to help hold it so when the joints are soldered.
When I retired from Plumbing I had a scrap lead pile 4' high and spread over seven foot and most was sheet lead and lead boots, pipe and lead joints.
Take 20 lbs of that stuff and add one lb of tin and you have a good bullet alloy.
If you dont have tin get a roll of 95-5 solder and use it. If you cant find 95-5 use a one lb roll of no lead solder it is 95 to 98 % tin with just a little silver and antimony.
I mix mine one roll to 30 lbs and that works good in my .40-70SS and I push it at 1300 fps+.
Or you can take 25 lbs of that lead and add two ingots of WW from a Lyman or similar ingot mould and your all set.

Kurt

[Lloyd Smale]

Im going to throw a monkey wrench in the pot here and say that if you mixed it 5050 and had excessive frosting of your bullets what could be going on is the lead your calling hard could in fact be tin babbit material and you could actually be putting to much tin in your alloy. If i were you id cast some of that flashing some of that other hard lead you have some wws and some known linotype into a set size where it be an ingot or a bigger bullet and then weight and compare them.  ANother way to test it would be to melt some of each and using a thermometer see at what temp it starts to harden. If your running a mixture of tin and lead at 5050 the melting temp will be real low and it will be about impossible to get nice shinny bullets unless your casting down around 500 degrees or possibly less. Now if you can find someone to do a metal analisis on those ingots that would be the ticket. Any place with a lab can usualy run one. The local paper mill hear has a lab and ive bribed them to test my alloys before. If you have tin babbit use it sparingly. 2-5 percent added to your base metal is plenty and more is not allways good. It is also valuable trading stock and can easily fetch 5 bucks a lb. Most all of the lynotype ive ever ran accross was either in the letter form or in ingots that were sort of a flat topped triangle and marked  NOT FOR RESALE. Babbit usually comes new in about one inch thick flat ingots. The problem with babbit is that there is just so many variations unless you get a lab printout and know exactly what you have it is tough to sell or even use as casting material. There are tin based babbits that are up to 95 percent tin with small ammounts of antimony and copper. and there are lead based babbits with very little tin or antimony and there are lead based babbits that are loaded with antimony and very little tin (which is another posssiblity that your dealing with). All can be usefull but you about have to know what they are to use them. Im sure a guy could go online and find a place that would test metal for a reasonable charge if you sent them a sample.

[adirondacker]

thanks guy's.the little woman ordered me a new larger pot for father's day,course they screwed up the order and sent me a $20 cast iron put instead of the $90 lee 20 lb electric one i was supposed to get.anyway,once that comes i am going to try some solder with the flashing,i think i better put those ingots aside until i can figure out what they are.thanks again,adker