Can you use Wheel Weight lead to simulate 1:20 tin:lead ?

[Maillemaker]

So I understand breech loaders often like slightly harder lead, like 1:20 tin:lead.

Tin is like $20 a pound, which breaks my poor heart.

But I have lots of wheel weight lead. Can I use it like tin to harden up an alloy mixed with pure lead?

What ratio would work well, do you think? Since wheel weights aren't pure tin, I'm guessing 1:20 wheel weight to lead would be slightly softer than 1:20 tin:lead?

Steve

[Maillemaker]

Oh. Just re-found this thread:

http://www.n-ssa.net/vbforum/showthread.php/13869-Shilo-Sharps-Bullet-Recomendation?p=60321#post60321

Steve

[Lou Lou Lou]

You might try over on Cast Boolits website. They have a lot of info on wheel weight composition

[bobanderson]

Steve,
I also scored a lot of wheel weights years ago. I mix 1 lb wheel weights to 3 lbs pure lead to make a harder alloy for all of my breechloaders.

A friend has the Cabine Tree hardness tester and said that mix is almost a 30-1 lead tin alloy.

Side note - (this part was told to me years ago) Wheel weights have all kinds of things in them besides lead and tin, but because there are only 3 wheel weight manufacturers in the country and one of those is Sears (which you seem to never be able to get), wheel weight metal makes very consistent alloy for casting.

I'm too cheap and disorganized to try to buy tin and make custom alloys for each gun.

[Maillemaker]

Thanks Bob, you are the second person to mention the 1:3 ratio.

Steve

[Muley Gil]

I used to use wheel weights by themselves (no lead added) to cast .44 and .45 semi wadcutters for modern handguns. Generally in the 700-900 FPS zone.

[Des]

I no longer use wheel weights in any lead mixture. Current wheel weights may contain no lead but are epoxy, steel, and other non lead materials. Too many garbage materials to contaminate your pot and smoke up the garage.

[Bruce Cobb 1723V]

Just buy some lead / tin solder. There is no question to the quality. They come in 50% tin/50% lead mix and some other percentages. Some are in bars, some in small diameter rolls. Your local scrap dealer or plumbers supply store may have some too.

[Maillemaker]

I no longer use wheel weights in any lead mixture. Current wheel weights may contain no lead but are epoxy, steel, and other non lead materials. Too many garbage materials to contaminate your pot and smoke up the garage.

Well, hopefully you weren't doing your rendering of wheel weights in your casting pot. I have an old dutch oven that I use out in the back yard with a propane burner for rendering wheel weights into ingots. Yes you have to fish out the non-lead weights but there are still enough of them that are lead alloy to make it worth the while.

But in the garage it's nothing but refined ingots and so no smoke.

Steve

[Hal]

I've heard that WW are not so consistent, at least not nowadays. That's NOT referring to the different kinds of materials that some WW are made of. It is referring to what various metals make up the alloy that so-called "Lead" wheel weights are made of. It is my understanding that in years past, they were indeed pretty consistent, not today.

Now, when it comes to other materials....I sort them out prior to "smelting". It takes a while to learn what to look for. Steel and plastic ones are pretty obvious. The bad ones are the zinc ones. Those are the ones you DON'T want to get mixed in with your lead, and the bad thing is, they look almost alike. A lot of zinc ones are stamped Zn, but not all. A quick cut with a pair of dykes will tell the tale. Lead ones, you can cut in half, if you're very heavy handed. Zinc ones, you'll just barely dent. Zinc is hard. Also, if you use a lead thermometer when you smelt, you can keep your melt temp below 700* F, and you'll have no problem. The zinc one will float to the top with your clips. If you just had one or two get mixed in, you'd probably be OK. I forget what it is, but lead will mix with really small amounts of zinc. Maybe 2%? I forget the exact number. Get above the threshold, and it will ruin your melt.

To help things be more consistent, I wait until I have a couple of 5 gal buckets full and melt them all together. After I make ingots, I keep the batches marked and separated so I know that at least all from one batch will be consistent.

[Maillemaker]

Just buy some lead / tin solder.

It seems hard to find out what is in a lot of "solder" sold at the big box stores. Forney 1/8" solder is $10.67 a pound and is 60/40 lead/tin, but isn't carried at my local Home Depot. Pure tin solder is basically the same cost as just buying pure tin from Rotometals.

I agree using known metals is the most consistent way to go, which is why I only use pure lead from commercial sources for the rest of my ammo.

I was just trying to see if I could use my ample supply of wheel weights to harden up some Sharps ammo bullets to see if I could get better accuracy out of it.

Steve

[Maillemaker]

Found this:

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1010250120/national-metallic-20-to-1-bullet-casting-alloy-ingot-20-parts-lead-to-1-part-tin-approximately-6-lb-average-weight

Approximate Brinell Hardness: 10

So I suppose I should get a hardness checker and then I can make my own.

Steve

[jonk]

It depends on what your goal is.

If you want something that makes the alloy harder and flows better than pure lead, you surely can use wheelweights. If you want something of known repeatibility, not really. You have to work it up every batch. And you have to have patience and some intelligence about it.

So, melt the ww, and watch the temp so it doesn't get over the melting point of zinc. Skim off the crap. Make a pile of ingots.

I use the ww as they sit for smoothbore and smokeless reloads.

If you want to approximate 20:1, you need a hardness tester. Start at 30:1 and test. Add more WW to the mix as needed until you hit your desired hardness. There are any number of websites that offer what brinnell or cabin tree rating that would be, and how to use various testers.

Now, even if you do so, be aware that the animony and stuff in the mix will make sprues tear easily, and hardening time will increase. If you are ok with that, you absolutely can make a functional equivalent to 20:1 using WW, but you just hav to work it up for the batch of WW you have on hand. Some are darned near pure lead, some are REALLY hard.

If you DO get some contaminated with zinc, the main issue is with fill out. UP to 5% zinc you can probably still get good fill out if you don't mind hot lead that leads to frosted bullets. But the resulting mix will need a LOT of pure to get to that 20:1 equal. Past that 5% point, you get wrinkles. BAD.

For FREE, WW are worth using. Otherwise I wouldn't pay for them. I get mine free, so that's fine. Maybe for a pizza for the guys at the garage that give them to me.

You might also get some antimony splash/wash in the barrel. It looks like leading but wipes right out. With WW I mean.

[Maillemaker]

Well, while not free, I have a lot of WW lead on hand that I have rendered from WWs I get from my local tire company. They charge me $20 per 5-gallon bucket, though the bucket is often full of trash like cigarette butts and valve stems and the like, too. Anyway.

21 pounds of lead only makes about 300 510-grain bullets. So while I'm all about repeatability and consistency I'm laothe to spend $20 on a pound of tin to make 300 bullets.

If harder bullets make for a more accurate Sharps, then I think what I will do this weekend is take all of my WW lead and re-melt it in my giant furnace and re-ladle it out into ingots, so as to homogenize all the WW lead I have on hand into a single, consistent alloy.

Then I will experiment with some small batches of custom alloy, starting with 1:3 WW:lead and see how that goes.

I have some bullets made of 1:20 alloy so I can do a scratch test for comparison.

Steve

[R. McAuley 3014V]

Steve,

While you can use WW's as well as lead-tin solder for alloying bullets, bear in mind also that besides the obvious reduction in weight of your cast bullets, the resolidification of the cast alloy will also be different, such that not only will your bullets weigh less than they would have had they been pure lead, they will also shrink in size. About the only thing I use WW lead for is casting my round balls for smoothbore, because the same .678 ball that weighed 470 grains in pure lead, weighs just 450 grains cast from WW's and 410 grains cast from 60/40 solder. That means that I could, if I wished, reduce the powder charge needed to get them to the target. So keep it in mind, that while yes using WW's may be cheaper than the cost of pure lead, you also have to consider their shrinkage and weight loss too.

[Maillemaker]

Yes, I am aware that lead alloys weigh less than pure lead and the shrinkage is different. I'm investigating 1:20 tin:lead alloy for my Sharps because I'm given to understand the harder alloy shoots more accurately in the Sharps (and some other breechloaders).

I found someone selling tin for $12 a pound so I bought 3 pounds to experiment with.

Steve

[cjohnson]

Steve,
Blend with marvelux, keep temperature below 700 degrees.
Cass