Casting alloy...reading the tea leaves

The closer to pure lead, the heavier the bullet will drop. The more Antimony (Sb) and/or tin (Sn) the lighter the bullet. Don't worry too much about a few grains difference.

I use clip on wheel weights (CWW or COWW) cut 50/50 with softer lead; roofing lead or stickon wheel weights (SWW). With this alloy I shoot any handgun at any velocity, up to and including 357 Mag at 1300 fps and 44 Mag at 1250+.

When shooting rifle bullets, one can try some of the more expensive alloys (Lyman#2), or perhaps water drop to get a harder bullet. I have not found it necessary.

Have you tried loading up some dummy rounds and manually cycling to check for issues?

bersaguy said:

I'll preface this by saying I do know of the castboolits forum, I've been there. I have a helluva time trying to find the information I'm looking for. Partly due to the site being, well let's say organized differently than I'm used to, and the fact that I'm still pretty much a noob to casting and may not be searching the right terms to find the info I need.
That being said, I've been casting for 38/357 and have recently started for 9mm. Using Lee 6 cavity .356 125g rn mold. The alloy I'm using is straight clip on wheel weights that I processed from the tire shop a few years back. I do not have a hardness tester, but I'm finding the bullets produced are heavier than expected, my 125gn molds for 9 and 38 drop 130ish grain projectiles, and my 158 mold drops about 163 grainers. I would have expected them to be lighter, as I am not adding any pure lead. Also, they seem pretty soft. Air cooled, I can easily put a dent in them with a thumbnail. Now, the 38s all shoot fine, im powder coating so leading is not an issue, all are sized with lee push thru dies. But as I start casting for the autoloaders, I'm concerned about deforming the nose of the bullets when loading from the magazine, and would like to get the weight down a touch.
So any experience here would be helpful, do I need to add some super hard to the mix, water quench? And why do I see so many references to 50/50 ww to Pb for casting alloy? Seems like that would produce even heavier, softer projectiles than I'm getting now. Or does adding pure lead allow the projectiles to shrink a bit more actually bringing the weight down. I have noticed the bullets i casted and coated back in March are considerably harder now than they were then, do I just need to not worry about it so much.... As far as casting goes, I feel I'm at that point were I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous

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With in may lay some of your answers;
http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Chapter_3_alloySelectionMetallurgy.htm

What you are explaining is the norm for wheel weights as they contain more pure lead. Use of pure lead will make them even heavier. Also the amount of tin and antimony in the mix will effect the final bullet diameter as the shrink rates will change when they cool.

Don't be afraid to ask questions over at Cast Boolits as they are all friendly people just like here! Besides many here go there too.

Don't get caught up in the "harder is better" manta. Super hard bullets have caused me more leading grief than any other feature. The bullet has to obturate to get a good deal in the bore.

I've shot thousands of bullets cast from clip-on weights through my 9mm, 40 S&W's and 45's with no problems. They should work fine for you.

When you are melting your wheelweights do you separate the stick-on weights from the clip-on weights?

9mm is a high pressure round and 38 low pressure. I'm still playing in the low pressure area trying to get my casting technique and alloy mixing more consistent. Every one of my bullets are heavier than listed by the mould makers, and I dont ever plan to cast superhard bullets. My goal is to cast a batch within one grain. We will just say I'm not there.

With that bullet, highly unlikely you're going to have a feed problem in any ordinary autoloader.
As others have recommended, try it before changing any alloy.

PapaG said:

Don't get caught up in the "harder is better" manta.

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^^^^ +1 ^^^^

A good place to start using pencils to test lead is by testing known alloys, see the results and then test your own alloys. They did a huge tread over on the cast bullets website that lasted years and they compiled this "excellent" list that does extremely well for the cost (+/-$10 for a pencil set).


You see so much referencing to the "50/50" mix/alloy because ww's are drying up and casters are making their stash of them go further. But there is also something to be learned from this. Namely the alloys most casters were using was harder then they needed. It was nothing to get free ww's, turned them into ingots and then strait to the pots to cast bullets.

Most casters over think things when they 1st start out. Alloy is the last thing you should be worrying about. The most common things that most new casters do is buy the wrong molds & don't have reloading dies that are setup for lead bullets.

I use a 8/9bhn alloy for 90%+ of my shooting needs. Anything from 38spl target loads to 1700fps rifle loads.

My favorite 9mm cast bullet cast with that 8/9bhn alloy, it has an extremely thin wall on the penta point hp/s. If you look closely you can see a crack in 1 of the penta point's nose. That's from opening the mold too fast, not letting the alloy get hard enough. 2 o-clock bullet


I pc those 8/9bhn bullets and use them for blammo ammo/plinking ammo in a 1911 chambered in 9mm.


A 10-shot group with the blammo ammo/1911 chambered in 9mm combo pictured above @ 50ft using a 25,000psi load doing 1100fps+


Same alloy used to cast these hb fn for the same 1911 chambered in 9mm. Put an #8 spring in and tested at the 50yd line (10-shot group)


More blammo ammo loads using the 8/9bhn alloy to cast more thin walled hp's for the 38spl's/357's. 6-shot groups @ 50ft using 38spl's in a 357.


You really should worry more about how to use what your makes. Rather than how to make what your using.

I bought a set of the Staedtler pencils this in late spring of this year. Just got around to using the pencil test last week. They are easier to use that I expected.

Blamo ammo- I like that, bettern' plinking loads

Antimony makes bullets lighter, harder & larger in diameter, as they drop from the mold. Add linotype.

You can get some certified lead or just melt down known “good” bullets and recast them for a “standard”.

I use a particular 230 grain mold as my standard. Pure lead bullets will drop at 240 gn, silver solder at 210 gn. Wheel weights drop at 232 or I can cut in some lynotype, a little at a time until the alloy drops 230’s.

From my experience, it's really not that important. I've used straight clip on wheel weights and what I call a Duke's mixture. My 233 grain mold drops bullets at around 236 grains and my 9mm 147 grain mold drops them around 150 or so grains. None of my alloy is ever the same. I have some recycled range lead, clip on weights, a handful of linotype, a bar of 50/50 solder, some scraps from RMR. I have a hardness tester and they are from 12-14 BHN. I coat everything with Hi-Tek and have had no problems whatsoever with my strange mix. All my loads are shot from Glocks and the barrels are shiny after cleaning. So don't overthink and try to be too precise unless you're going for pinpoint accuracy. I learned early on that exact mixtures are not that critical.

Do you know what your 9mm barrel groove diameter is? Through my boyhood I cast some 9mm bullets for my Walther P38, but always got lots of Leading. It was many years later that I slugged the barrel and found that it had a groove diameter of about .3575". I now use .358" bullets in my Walther and Beretta barrels, and no more Leading, even with softer bullets.

I water-drop bullets from the mold more for ease of material handling than for any other purpose. If I have lots of hot bullets bouncing around, they will either find some way to burn me, or they will dent each other. The hardening effect is just a bonus, and the harder bullets are more resistant to being swaged down by cases tight enough to resist set-back of the bullet on feeding.

Deformation of the nose is not going to cause significant changes in point of impact. Any kind of defect in the bullet base will cause significant changes in point of impact. There are lots of old NRA Rifleman articles about this.

Lead metallurgy is in some ways really odd, because room temperature is an elevated temperature for it. You may see an increase in hardness over time, which is not odd, probably though Precipitation of inclusions, which makes deformation more difficult. If you work the Lead through sizing, you will probably see an actual decrease in surface hardness because of Recrystallization.