Lead melting tips

[Ironhorse]

Gentleman,

I have been making my own center-fire bullets and muzzle loading Mini-balls and Round-balls for many years with campfire and leadpot. I have always used wheel-weights as a lead source, of course with centerfire bullets you must add tin and sometimes antimony for correct hardness.

For muzzleloading projectiles you should aways use SOFT lead. The secret to getting soft lead out of wheelweights is to have your heat high enough, 800-975 degrees so that the metal alloys separate and come to the surface as Dross (scum), then you can skim it off of the surface of the shiny soft lead underneath,. I usually do this two or three times at this high heat to make sure I have all the hardening alloys, (Tin, zinc, and Antimony) out of the lead before I start casting my projectiles. The lead should be allowed to come down to at least 750-800 degrees before casting because it will result in a frosted surface on the projectile, which does not hurt anything and is not an indication of hardness, but just looks differant.

The old addage is, "If you can't dent it deeply with your fingernail, its to hard!"

I hope this helped a little and if I have not said enough in the way of explanation, Please don't flame me, I am just trying to help!

Good luck!! ...Ironhorse...

 

[Twisted_1in66]

Fear not Iron Horse. People won't flame you here. They may roast you a bit from time to time, but are much too civilized to flame you.
:crackup: :crackup: :crackup:

 

[waksupi]

Ironhorse, I will have to argue the point with you. I am a moderator on http://castboolits.gunloads.com/index.php?, and cast bullets is my thing, in all varieties of firearms.
What you are skimming off the top of the melt, is oxidation. Granted, it is tin rich, as it is lighter than the lead in specific gravity. If you do skim this dross, save it to add back into center fire bullets. But, it is only a very thin layer. An alloy is much like a cup of coffee with surgar stirred in. You can no more remove the tin content, than you can the surgar. To make any appreciable difference in the tin content would take you seveal days, no doubt. Oncce it is an alloy, it is inseperable, outside of laboratory conditions.
Another way to go about it, is to just cast enough ball from wheel weights to last you a couple weeks. When wheel weights are first cast, they test out on a hardness tester as pure lead, and slowly harden to thier final Brinell hardness of 11-13, as compared to pure lead, 6-8, over the next four to five weeks.
Another variation, is to cast a bunch, and after they cool, store them in your freezer, and they will maintain the pure lead test hardness until you remove them from the freezer. They will once again begin slowly hardening once they reach room temperature, but the supply can be rather carefully controlled in this manner.

 

[Slamfire]

I was under the impression that once antimony got added to a lead alloy it was impossible to get it back out. It would be nice if that were not true. :front:

 

[rmark]

The NRA Cast Bullet Handbook by Harrison, my copy published in 1979, has several articles by Dennis Marshall that discuss metal alloys for bullets. I short, once its all together it stays together, as Ric Carter says above.