Lead

[Gote Rider]

I would like to know if soft lead and wheel weight lead can be mixed together to cast round balls? Will the two mix well?

 

[RC]

ww lead is too hard for rifles,, some use ww for smoothbores..there are many posts on here about ww and soft....many! now findin them..um..not my strong suit.. :redface:

 

[Darkgael]

Yes, you can mix them. The result will be as you might expect...an alloy softer than WW and harder than lead, an alloy of unknown composition (you know it has lead in it, and antimony, and maybe some tin...but how much of each?) Whether the RBs work well is a matter of testing. Try the mix and see.
A nice tool to have is a hardness tester; though somewhat pricey, it allows you to establish a baseline that may be useful as you explore alloys. Saeco ($120) and Lee($45) both make testers that are readily available at MidwayUSA.com. The Lee is somewhat more involved to use but gives a Brinell hardness. The Saeco yields a relative hardness according to a Saeco scale.
Pete

 

[bwhoffman]

it will take a lot of soft lead to tone down wheel weights, like a ratio of around 20 to 1 or better.
Tin and antimony are some fairly "hard" items to dilute.
been there, attempted that!
Now when shooting WW, I patch accordingly.

 

[RedFeather]

The old standby lead hardness tester is the thumbnail. If you can easily scratch it, then it's usually soft enough. Haven't tried to scratch a wheelweight but I doubt I can.

 

[BrownBear]

Some folks actually like RBs that are a little harder than pure lead to limit expansion and give more penetration. It's been discussed here before. The question is making them shoot well in your gun. That will require a little experimenting to find the right load for your gun, and in some cases perhaps a change in patch thickness. Alloys of lead usually cast out at a slightly smaller diameter than pure lead, so if a change of patch is needed, it's likely to be slightly thicker than what you're using.

Lead prices are out of sight, so there's value in figuring out how to use alternate alloys as you find them. There are fascinating tests underway and reported here about using marbles and rubber balls instead of lead for practice rounds. I'm betting that at the very least your alloy is going to make good practice rounds if you never use it for hunting.

 

[CoyoteJoe]

If you have pure lead I would not ruin it by mixing even the slightest amount of wheel weights into it, that will harden the pure lead more than you might imagine. Harder alloys such as wheel weights or cast pistol bullets recovered as range scrap is easy enough to obtain for free, pure lead generally is not so easy to find.
Alloys cast larger diameter than pure lead as well as being harder, so you would need a thinner patch to load a hard ball and that is one reason you likely won't get very good accuracy with anything but pure, dead soft lead. Thin patches blow out easily and also may be cut by the lands when stressed between a hard ball and a steel barrel. Wheel weights are fine for cast bullets in centerfire rifles and pistols but pure lead is what you need for muzzleloading patched balls. I would keep the two very carefully separate.

 

[LFC]

If you have pure lead I would not ruin it by mixing even the slightest amount of wheel weights into it, that will harden the pure lead more than you might imagine. Harder alloys such as wheel weights or cast pistol bullets recovered as range scrap is easy enough to obtain for free, pure lead generally is not so easy to find.
Alloys cast larger diameter than pure lead as well as being harder, so you would need a thinner patch to load a hard ball and that is one reason you likely won't get very good accuracy with anything but pure, dead soft lead. Thin patches blow out easily and also may be cut by the lands when stressed between a hard ball and a steel barrel. Wheel weights are fine for cast bullets in centerfire rifles and pistols but pure lead is what you need for muzzleloading patched balls. I would keep the two very carefully separate.

I agree. I (somewhat inadvertently) melted some soft (could scratch it with fingernails) lead together with a little slightly-harder lead probably containing wheel weights. The resulting balls were so hard that they could not be scratched with a fingernail regardless of the force applied.

 

[bingo1952]

I used to have a friend who cast his RB's out of straight linotype metal. Those things were as hard as ball bearings but he always got his deer. Never could get him to switch to pure lead. I think he had a couple of hundred lbs of the stuff. He passed away on a turkey hunt in SD a few years back.

 

[gooddw]

RC:

I don't know why you would say this. It is true ww is to hard for revolvers since they need to shave some lead to get a goood seat in the chamber but the rifle uses a patch. The lead doesn't touch the barrel. I've been using ww in my rifles for years with no ill effects. They do cast a little larger so I use a thinner patch.

 

[Darkgael]

Yeah. 20-1 is what I cast when making bullets for an old Martini-Henry that I have and for my 45-70s.
I have never tried using that alloy for RBs, always have used pure lead.
Pete

 

[RC]

RC:

I don't know why you would say this. It is true ww is to hard for revolvers since they need to shave some lead to get a goood seat in the chamber but the rifle uses a patch. The lead doesn't touch the barrel. I've been using ww in my rifles for years with no ill effects. They do cast a little larger so I use a thinner patch.

well I've heard of shooters using ww, I haven't, about everything I've read or heard suggest not using ww for rb's.. my thought is the only thing holdin the patch to the rifling is the lead...so is "touching" the rifling.. I'm sure there's a better explanation but that and the expanding feature of soft lead is why I use only soft lead..was considering ww for 600 balls for smoothbore, but, I hunt with it,so I need flattening potential...hopefully.. :wink:

 

[Roy]

:hmm: flattening of the projectile or the recipient? :haha:

 

[RC]

:hmm: flattening of the projectile or the recipient? :haha:

exactly! :grin: