Mold fills

Which is best to get the fullest fill from your aluminum molds? Tin or antimony?

rcscott30 said:

Which is best to get the fullest fill from your aluminum molds? Tin or antimony?

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Neither

Tin is too light, highly expensive, and the molds if they are for muzzleloading bullets are meant for pure lead so the diameter of the finished projectile may be different than pure lead... sure it would work as a projectile, and would avoid anti-lead-bullet laws, but better to use an alloy of bismuth and tin for that if that's an issue.

Antimony is very very hard, and you likely will not be able to open the mold using antimony alone, and will likely damage an aluminum mold getting it open when using just antimony..., you'd have to melt it out to avoid damage. Antimony is added to lead to make it much harder for use in modern firearms.

LD

I've been casting from pure lead from Lee molds and the bullets are coming out small. Wanted to know what to add to help fill them, not a pure cast. I should of said that in the first place...my bad.

Of the two, tin would be acceptable but I'm not sure what ratios would get where you want to be. Tin doesn't harden lead as much as antimony but how much size and how much harder, I dunno.

You Can use clip on wheel weights in various ratios with your pure lead to increase size but once again I don't know how much. 100% WW will drop at about 8 BHN but over several weeks at room temperature it will harden to about 12 BHN.

You will get a gamut of advise on using WW for balls ranging from "No No No" to "I do it and it works". For solid comprehensive knowledge on it there's only one source and that's to try it for yourself.

Well, I live near a small town with only two tire shops and they hoard their WW so Rotometals by internet is my only real good source.

rcscott30 said:

I've been casting from pure lead from Lee molds and the bullets are coming out small. Wanted to know what to add to help fill them, not a pure cast. I should of said that in the first place...my bad.

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Oh sorry, well then tin. You might try very small batches and use solder, before dropping coin on a full pound of tin. The ratio of lead to tin is on the label of the solder, and saves a lot of guesswork.

LD

Loyalist Dave said:

Oh sorry, well then tin. You might try very small batches and use solder, before dropping coin on a full pound of tin. The ratio of lead to tin is on the label of the solder, and saves a lot of guesswork.

LD

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Do they sell small rolls of soldering
Tin at Wally world?

Yes, if there are shooters employed there, they will be the beneficiaries.

I have several hundred pounds of WW that were given to me by a friend. It's only use for CF stuff.

In your other topic powder coating is mentioned and that will add size. This is something that I have tried and it worked very well although I didn't need larger. I was doing it to eliminate leading. In fact they had to be sized to load.

I use a Lyman casting Ladle and pour steadily till there is a puddle about the size of a dime on top of the mold. This seems to work well to fill molds. I have a Lyman electric pot but it also works when melting lead in a pot on my Coleman stove.

rcscott30 said:

bullets are coming out small

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Either the lead or mold or both are not hot enough.

As above, make sure the mold is up to temp. I generally return the first 8 - 10 balls to the pot.

And DON'T use your finger to test the temp of the mold! For the pot, use a proper temp gauge.

I realize that this topic has been worked pretty hard, but I got interested in wheel weights round balls as I have pretty good access to w-w and the hardness doesn't bother me as I shoot mainly paper. I had made some up in a .049 diameter ball where I had discovered that the pipe led I was using work better at .495 diameter balls using the .010 patch. Well, I made a bunch of them I won't be able to shoot till weather gets better, I hope they work as good in the Flint as they do in percussion. The biggest thing I notice was that I had full filled out balls with very minor sprue and the ones that were a tiny bit heavy like one gr, was easy to fix with a file on the sprue end. I melted the ingots that I had with a propane torch and an electric hot plate, very little clean up and when I put them in my Lee lead pot there was hardly anything floating on top and nothing stuck to the sides. Why they stay so much cleaner than pure lead I have no idea, but it made casting much easier. Has anybody else experimented with wheel weight lead much? Running low on what I had already melted, I got some more from my tire shop and it wasn't hard to pick out the zinc ones as they were a little different and I noticed that most of the clips for rims were riveted on and not melted in. Has anyone else noticed this difference? Anyway none of those that I played with seem to be zinc so I've got quite a bit saved up again for the next pour. The reason I I have w-w lead, is because I make lead hammers for people for gifts. I have a mold that I made out of 11/4 pipe welded to an old set of vice grips and I'm able to use 3/8 schedule 40 pipe for the handle with the piece of 5/8 heater hose slip on it and it really makes a dandy hammer that doesn't leave marks on things that you don't want to mark. They have rather a short life if abused, but the darn things are really handy. I make them for the tire shop where I get the wheel weights from so we have a good trade going. I've probably made 50 of them thru the last 30 years.
Squint

rcscott30 said:

Well, I live near a small town with only two tire shops and they hoard their WW so Rotometals by internet is my only real good source.

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Ebay is another great source.

rcscott30 said:

Do they sell small rolls of soldering
Tin at Wally world?

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NO! They do sell solder. Percentage of tin is printed on the package. Most common is around 60:40 tin:lead. Takes a little math to figure out how much solder to add to get to a given percentage.

I typically use 40:1 lead:tin for BPCR bullets of any caliber. Have done very well with this ratio.

rcscott30 said:

I've been casting from pure lead from Lee molds and the bullets are coming out small. Wanted to know what to add to help fill them, not a pure cast. I should of said that in the first place...my bad.

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Try casting at a little higher temp (say 50 degrees or a bit more) with your aluminum mold and check the diameter again.

Whiteoak15 said:

Try casting at a little higher temp (say 50 degrees or a bit more) with your aluminum mold and check the diameter again.

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You’re right. Mold is to cold and causing the fill out and undersized problem. Needs to cast hotter or fast, probably both.