Alloy Oddity

[CastFANatic]

To all the veteran casters out there who are savvy with alloys I pose an interesting question to you.

about a month and a half ago my friend gave me 25 pounds of lead dive weights. Not having a hardness tester I used the very scientific "thud" test followed by the equally scientific "fingernail scratch" test. When dropped the dive weights made a very solid thunk and dented. When scratched they were easily scratched with a thumbnail. Being the newbie caster I am (only been casting for 5 months) I mixed these dive weights 1 to 1 with linotype, casted up a thousand 220 gr .45 acp boolits with them, fingernail scratch tested them(they were difficult to scratch, but they DID scratch), tumble lubed them and put them away in the garage.
Fast forward a month and a half and add in the purchase of a lube sizer. I wash the LLA off the boolits with mineral spirits and proceed to lube these boolits up. Just for giggles I did my scientific fingernail test. These boolits would NOT scratch. So being the mad scientist I am i do some more tests. I took an ingot of certified pure lead and one of these boolits and put them in the vise. Squished them together and the boolit just smushed its way into the pure and didn't even deform the boolit. O.K. I know they are harder than pure lead now. Next test I take a certified linotype ingot and one of these boolits and put them in the vise. Same test was conducted of smashing the boolit into the lino. When i checked the lino and the boolit the boolit nose was flattened, but the lino ingot was equally indented. As hard as lino? So my next and last test. I took an ingot of certified hardball and a new boolit and squished them in the vise. The boolit nose was just a little flattened, but left a deep indention into the hardball ingot which is supposed to be 18 bhn. Interesting.

These bullets were cast with a 1 to 1 mixture of dive weights(soft lead) and linotype
they were air cooled and sat in my garage for a month and a half with temps ranging in the mid 60's in october to 40 and below for november with several nights and days being below zero.
Now to the question: Why are these boolits so much harder now?

[gray-wolf]

Your mix hardened over time--this will happen with an antimony / Arsenic alloy.
For 45 ACP your dive weight would have worked fine with 1 or 2 % Tin.
 IMHO what you have now is way to hard for a 45 ACP with normal Vel.--775 to 875 with a 200 or 230 grain bullet.
Also it will most likely shatter on impact. I would have mixed 10% Lino for the 45.
  Hard bullets for a 45 ACP IMO are a myth and not needed.  Match your alloy to your pressure.
BNH of 9--10--or 12 is all you need for that bullet with a decent lube.
  I would reconfigure that mix; what you have with about 70% soft PB. >>>  30% your mix and 70% soft.
What you have now may give you some terrible leading if shot to fast or if it is a little under sized.

Lino = Antimony = hard and brittle.
Tin = a little hardness but maintains ductility.

[BCB]

Wow, I would never waste linotype mixed with "pure" lead or use in a 45acp!!!...

I would shoot boolits made of wheel weight and save the linotype for boolits that really matter!...

Just my opinion...

Good-luck...BCB

[stimpylu32]

Yep , way too hard for what you have in mind , I relize you have 1000 of them 

However you would be better off to re-melt them with more of the softer lead to drop the hardness to around 12 or so . Also , dive weights were most times made with whatever scrap lead was around , so odds are that no 2 will be the same mix , even from one end of the weight to the other .

stimpy

[CastFANatic]

@Gray Wolf- Talk about a big DUH! moment for me. These will be remelted and put aside for the .454 casull. I have a good bit of tin and pure and will be experimenting with that today. Thank you for answering my question, and I will take age hardening into account from now on.

@BCB-I know they are too hard now, but did not know that at the time I alloyed and casted them. I now prize my stash of lino and seriously think about it before I add it to anything, and I had a lot to play with at the time as well.

@stimpy-Yep they will be remelted and used for the hand cannon.