.22 rimfire lead for casting muzzleloader bullets

[Khornet]

anybody know the alloy or hardness of these? I save the ones I clean out from my bullet trap, but some batches seem to make bullets too hard to load. Others are fine.

 

[HSMITH]

They are supposed to be about 1-1.5% antimony, Brinell 10 or so. I am sure it varies a little between brands. Half pure lead and half 22 bullets would soften it where you should be able to load them easily.

 

[RON in PA]

If you are talking about casting round balls, you want lead that is as soft and as pure as possible. Twenty-two bullets are alloyed.

 

[Poodleshooter]

Since you're going to the effort to get lead out of bullet traps, I'll assume that you're willing to take time to clean it out a bit.
Run your melt up fairly hotter than normal, don't "flux", then skim off the residue and the golden "skin" that accumulates on the surface. That's your antimony (among other things). I do that to my lead sources,and they seem to make decent maxiballs that engrave in the rifling (they have rifling engraved after I pull them
BTW, for round ball, it really doesn't matter. If your roundball is touhing rifling, something is wrong with your patch!

 

[winwun]

KH, you are going to a lot of trouble for a small reward in gathering up the .22's. It would figure out to about 5 .22's for each .490 round ball, maybe more.

If you want lead, go to your local FOP range after a heavy rain and take a 5 gallon bucket and a shovel and get behind the target line where the bullets are washed down.

You'll have trouble carrying the buicket with about 4 shovels full in it, and after it is melted down and pigged, you will have about 40 pounds of good lead.