Smelting Magnum Shot

[Hammerspur]

I posted this a few days back in the cast bullet discussion, but got no response. I didn't even realize that you had a page here until now! I hope you can take a moment to give me some advice.

I'd like to melt a 25 lb. bag of magnum shot into ingots for use as bullet casting alloy later. I heard it would be a good choice due to the antimony content for hardness and arsenic for good alloying. I was also planning to add about 1/4-1/2 lb. tin (1-2%) as I've been told it aids in casting fillout, and lends some ductility to hard alloy.

My initial question involves the graphite coating on the shot pellets...will this result in a messy, difficult to remove/skim off melt?

I'm planning to use the resulting alloy to cast bullets for high velocity muzzleloading, perhaps smokeless loadings as well as BP replica loads generally up to 150 gr. These would be sabot loads of course. I'm hoping to get an alloy that is harder than pure lead for good penetration at such speeds but ductile enough to offer some expansion and not shatter.

Any guidance much appreciated.

[Veral]

Shot has a fairly high arsenic content, enough to to be quite toxic if you breathe the fumes from you melt.  Of coarse the fumes from any melted lead are toxic and shouldn't be breathed, so always have good veltilation.

  The graphite coating will come to the top when the lead melts and be picked up by fluxing.  The best flux I've used is hog lard from the grocery store.  Be liberal with it.  A level tablespoon isn't too much, as all grease type fluxes are only effective while the molten surface is wet, and they smoke off rapidly.  Lighting the smoke will produce cleaner vapors than if the smoke goes off naturally, but makes no difference regarding fluxing power.

  To add extra tin, I reccomend silver bearing plumbers solder, available from MOST hardwares that offers plumbing supplies, as the small amount of silver makes bullets shine a bit and aids castibility.

  But consider using junk wheel weights, with a trace of the above solder added.  It's the cheapest lead you can buy and works with nothing added.  Drop your bullets into cool water, (water quench) to get the hardness up to equal linotype, with far greater ductility than lino, or shot.  If you have a source of used shot you have another matter, but the high arsenic content can cause surface cracks in the bullets, which may cause fragmentation on impact with stout loads.  That is only a presumption. I've never had good reason to proove it as lead shot hasn't been available cheaply enough to suit me.  So if you use shot, either test your bullets for breakup by shooting into water filled containers backed with a bunch of rags to stop the bullet.  A 300 gr hard cast muzzleloader bullet of my LFN profile, when driven at full throttle, or about 1400 fps,  will require probably 5 or 6 one gallon jugs of water to slow it down enough so a 6 inch wad of rags will stop it.  (I use old blue jeans folded.  Don't use any usable garments unless you want them for high ventilation warm weather use only!)

[Hammerspur]

Thanks for your advice, sir.
I've done a fair amount of bullet casting in the past, but this was exclusively of virgin lead for use as round ball, heavy bore size conicals, and relatively heavy sabot conicals for only moderately fast velocities, that is 1900 fps and under.

I am now experimenting with hi-end BP replica powder loads and smokeless muzzleloading, for use in hunting combinations. As such harder bullet alloy will be required, but not so hard as to shatter upon impact with hard surfaces such as heavy bone, or doing complete pass-thru with little obturation and shock value in soft tissue.

This is why I am starting with fairly strong shot alloy, which hopefully, will be somewhat 'annealed' by the addition of tin adding greater elasticity and cohesiveness to the alloy, yielding a cast bullet with jacketed bullet like performance at velocities above 2200 fps. That's the plan anyway.

I'm not in the least impressed with pictures of non-lead hunting bullets appearing in ad's and articles showing the noses 'expanded' by multiple petals of hard copper, etc. folded out and back like a flower blossom. It seems to me that a nice, even mushroom of nose metal approaching or equal to twice original bullet diameter would be far more effective in tranfering shock to the intended target.

Jagged saw blade like recovered slugs may be psychologically impressive to a reader, but psychological shock value to the prospective hunter does not equal bullet shock value on game.

I'm also considering experiments with soft-nose cast bullets arrived at by two-part pour tecniques as described by Ross Seyfried in Handloader no. 222, April 2003.

[Veral]

You are hooked on false concept in believing shock or energy trasfer is the killing component of a bullet.  We need a good sized wound to make blood flow, but too much wound size (shock) is often worse than not enough.  For example, it isn't uncommon for deer, lung shot with a 300 Weatherby and expanding bullets which produce a 3 to 4 inch exit wound, to run full out for 100 yards, a distence which can cause lost game under many hunting conditions, especially if the hunter is inexperianced in tracking.  Yet, with what I believe to be the perfect wound size, for the fastest and most consistent kills,  which is about a 1 1/4 inch diameter wound straight through, rarely will an animal move out of it's tracks after the hit.  This size wound is delivered with my LFN in 44 and 45 caliber from muzzle loaders using sabots, with velocities of 1450+ fps.
  To understand more about what makes bullets kill, and softnoses as Ross wrote about, a concept which I developed, get my book, Jacketed Performance with Cast bullets.  Not one person has refuted what I wrote back in 1989, but thousands have given me kill reports to substantitate exactly what I wrote.  No expansion is needed or wanted with the larger caliber cast bullets.  If you peruse this forum throughly you will find quite a bit of information which I've written. and a fair number of customer kill reports with nonexpanding bullets of LBT design.
  The point I'm trying to make is, start with proven technology, then, after using it in the field, if you believe there is room for improvement in performance, do some experimenting.  In my book I'm giving 20 years of very extensive experimentation of a type which very few people can even do.  I was able because I have a complete complete machine shop at my disposal, the ability to make molds of any design, and that shop in the country, where I could step out the door and do the shooting experiments.  Furthermore, I had thousands of questions roll in during the first years of business, and I answered them all, experimenting scientifically as needed if I didn't have the answer.