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I participated in this test with my cabine tree tester.
http://www.lasc.us/Shay-BHN-Tester-Experiment.htm#CabineTree
http://www.lasc.us/Shay-BHN-Tester-Experiment.htm#CabineTree
Bullet mold mixture...............
- Thread starter ETipp
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Sounds like more dangerous way to make bullets if it has arsenic in it .I stick to maken bullets with 100 soft lead but I do it for pcp air rifles that I have .I make .498 round ball got my .50cal ,for my .357 I have both round ball and flate nose 158 grain mold .older wheel weights were made of lead the new stuff doesn't have very much lead I think I read it's like 5% the rest is the mix metals more alloy then pure lead I know some place are crazy enough to crack open old car batteries for the pure lead .I'll buy mine online it's bit high in price but what isn't these days .
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Sure agree with you, Decay. I've used a SAECO tester but didn't like it. Plus you have to deal with the SAECO hardness scale, whereas most bullet descriptions and articles use the BHN scale.
I do like the Lee Precision tester, currently available at Amazon for $77, or elsewhere. There's a learning curve, but that tester is very versatile. Veral Smith's LBT company is no more, I believe, tho his bullets and knowledge live on in many avenues. He wrote a great book about bullets himself.
I'd also like to offer to this thread that a bullet or ball cast from wheel weights usually isn't very hard and should not be termed "hardcast"in the modern sense. Lots of ML shooters have cast their balls from wheelweights, and a key to shooting with a patch is for the patch to be able to "grab" the ball via friction and thus make it spin from the rifling. A really hard ball doesn't want to do that. And a "hardcast" wheelweight bullet cannot be very hard if is obturating enough at firing to take the rifling and provide good accuracy.
True "hardcast" bullets are made at BHN 16 or more likely above that, and used for higher breech pressure situations like modern hunting pistols, or when shooting cast bullets with moderate smokeless loads in a rifle. (And that sure would apply to the pressures generated in an inline ML that pushes a 250 gr. bullet at 2200 fps or more.)
Internal ballistics gets very tricky, but also highly interesting. Try to get Lyman's "Cast Bullet Handbook" and study the pressures listed in there. Another amazing source is Chapter 5 in Charly Gullet's great book "Cowboy Action Shooting".
Short bullet hardness primer for the Holidays, since it's Christmas Eve!: pure lead only rates about 4.5-5 on the BHN hardness scale. As you add tin to the lead, the mix gets harder: just 1:50 tin to lead alloy already casts well but is only about 7.5 BHN hardness. 1:30 moves up just a bit to about 8; 1:25 to 9; 1:20 to 10; 1:16 to 11; and 1:10 to about 12.5. And that's about it with adding tin to gain hardness, which gets quite expensive. To put all this in perspective, Winchester's old time black powder cartridges often used 1:16 alloy for their bullets, and as I recall, Sharps used 1:16 and 1:20 alloy.
Lyman's old time No. 2 alloy was 1:10 alloy, but today's No. 2 is 90% lead plus 5% tin and 5% antimony, for a hardness around 14-15. That will serve for modest rifle-bullet loads below about 1600 fps or so, to avoid gas cutting of the bullet and resultant leading.
The problem with using wheel weights is that their hardness can vary all over the place, per Charly Gullet, and even be as hard as Lyman No. 2 alloy or harder. But since manufacturers like to spend as little money as possible, I think quite hard wheel weights are very uncommon. ( I melted a few hundred such weights, half dull looking lead type and half shiny newer type with "AL" on them, and cast small ingots. After a year's "aging" this mix had a BHN of 11. Fairly hard, but not what I'd call "hardcast".
One last thing, pure lead is soft, and it doesn't take much of a pressure bump to "obturate" it so it swells out in the bore. All these expensive Inline ML bullet of pure lead that are copper plated for looks and little more, to my knowledge, are going to obturate with even the more moderate doses of BH 209, Triple 7, etc. They may be loose going down the bore, but if you can keep them there and achieve reliable and consistent powder ignition, they are going to be a larger diameter coming out with firing. That's how they can take the rifling and spin, even with a relatively loose skirt on the base serving as a gas-check. But again, if they are loose enough to cant a bit in the bore, they are not going to obturate themselves into a bullet perfectly aligned with the bore axis! There goes a little or a lot of accuracy.
If shooting a saboted bullet, and the bullet really is a "hardcast" like Harvester's, the bullet/sabot fit must be tight. That's because only the friction between the sabot petals and the smooth hardcast bullet can possibly make the bullet spin adequately.
Aloha, Ka'imiloa
I do like the Lee Precision tester, currently available at Amazon for $77, or elsewhere. There's a learning curve, but that tester is very versatile. Veral Smith's LBT company is no more, I believe, tho his bullets and knowledge live on in many avenues. He wrote a great book about bullets himself.
I'd also like to offer to this thread that a bullet or ball cast from wheel weights usually isn't very hard and should not be termed "hardcast"in the modern sense. Lots of ML shooters have cast their balls from wheelweights, and a key to shooting with a patch is for the patch to be able to "grab" the ball via friction and thus make it spin from the rifling. A really hard ball doesn't want to do that. And a "hardcast" wheelweight bullet cannot be very hard if is obturating enough at firing to take the rifling and provide good accuracy.
True "hardcast" bullets are made at BHN 16 or more likely above that, and used for higher breech pressure situations like modern hunting pistols, or when shooting cast bullets with moderate smokeless loads in a rifle. (And that sure would apply to the pressures generated in an inline ML that pushes a 250 gr. bullet at 2200 fps or more.)
Internal ballistics gets very tricky, but also highly interesting. Try to get Lyman's "Cast Bullet Handbook" and study the pressures listed in there. Another amazing source is Chapter 5 in Charly Gullet's great book "Cowboy Action Shooting".
Short bullet hardness primer for the Holidays, since it's Christmas Eve!: pure lead only rates about 4.5-5 on the BHN hardness scale. As you add tin to the lead, the mix gets harder: just 1:50 tin to lead alloy already casts well but is only about 7.5 BHN hardness. 1:30 moves up just a bit to about 8; 1:25 to 9; 1:20 to 10; 1:16 to 11; and 1:10 to about 12.5. And that's about it with adding tin to gain hardness, which gets quite expensive. To put all this in perspective, Winchester's old time black powder cartridges often used 1:16 alloy for their bullets, and as I recall, Sharps used 1:16 and 1:20 alloy.
Lyman's old time No. 2 alloy was 1:10 alloy, but today's No. 2 is 90% lead plus 5% tin and 5% antimony, for a hardness around 14-15. That will serve for modest rifle-bullet loads below about 1600 fps or so, to avoid gas cutting of the bullet and resultant leading.
The problem with using wheel weights is that their hardness can vary all over the place, per Charly Gullet, and even be as hard as Lyman No. 2 alloy or harder. But since manufacturers like to spend as little money as possible, I think quite hard wheel weights are very uncommon. ( I melted a few hundred such weights, half dull looking lead type and half shiny newer type with "AL" on them, and cast small ingots. After a year's "aging" this mix had a BHN of 11. Fairly hard, but not what I'd call "hardcast".
One last thing, pure lead is soft, and it doesn't take much of a pressure bump to "obturate" it so it swells out in the bore. All these expensive Inline ML bullet of pure lead that are copper plated for looks and little more, to my knowledge, are going to obturate with even the more moderate doses of BH 209, Triple 7, etc. They may be loose going down the bore, but if you can keep them there and achieve reliable and consistent powder ignition, they are going to be a larger diameter coming out with firing. That's how they can take the rifling and spin, even with a relatively loose skirt on the base serving as a gas-check. But again, if they are loose enough to cant a bit in the bore, they are not going to obturate themselves into a bullet perfectly aligned with the bore axis! There goes a little or a lot of accuracy.
If shooting a saboted bullet, and the bullet really is a "hardcast" like Harvester's, the bullet/sabot fit must be tight. That's because only the friction between the sabot petals and the smooth hardcast bullet can possibly make the bullet spin adequately.
Aloha, Ka'imiloa
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I ordered one a couple days ago. Wont get it til January 5th.
I read part of the instructions, it doesn't have softer than BHN 8 listed and I'm normally working with pure or slightly harder. Not sure about it now.
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Im going to hard cast some bullets for smokeless and maybe for a couple cf rifles. So it may come in handy for that.
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Don't eat the shot. Be wary if you own chickens so they don't eat the shot.
Also don't grind and inhale tungsten, it's very bad for you. Steel shot is probably the safest, but not the best ammunition.
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How do people grind tungsten?
Since most people don't shoot shotguns in the chicken pen I think it will be fine
Not trying to be rude any way dude but inless there another arsenic I'm not familiar with cause the only one I know of is dangerous if breathed in will hurt you enough of it will kill you it use to be in light bulbs in few case in time they've had crazy people use it for some bad things . So not dangerous I don't belive
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I'm not trying to be rude either just honest. Lead shot with a little common sense is only dangerous if you are shot by it.
Arsenic is in tiny amounts along with copper and antimony is used to harden shot.
If you eat a pheasant and a piece of shot is swalled you will be fine.
If you harden your pure lead with a little lead shot and you cast with plenty of ventilation, you will be fine.
I wasnt meaning being shot with it lol I'd prefer not to be shot at all lol I was meaning fumes inhaling when melting it but I'll take your word for it on that I can use it in my guns any how it's to hard on the barrel liners that why use pure soft lead
Tungsten welding electrodes are ground to a point and the dust is fairly dangerous. The same could form from hitting rocks with tungsten shot. I guess what I'm getting at is the lead pellets might be less toxic in the long run. But I can't remember a time when lead shot was allowed for waterfowl, steel was the required load around here.
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Tin, lead, antimony, arsenic, aluminum, copper.. all are dangerous/toxic in the right amounts whether airborne and inhaled or ingested in food or water. If im not mistaken all metals are. Although some are harder to break down and absorb than others, like steel and tungsten. But im sure we all know this stuff.
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Yes, sorry, I didn't mention that significant issue with us ML fans. I told LEE a while back that they sure would sell a lot of testers if they would just make another one that reads hardness for pure lead and the softer alloys. Don't think that message got to LEE's President!
It might work to use the Lee hardness with a lesser time of pressure during the indent-creation, to get a reading for pure lead, 1:50 alloy, 1:30, etc. You could then create your own chart for that, but would have to get or make some known alloy with which to formulate it.
Aloha, Ka'imiloa
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I did that, that is make my own lead tester, I used a dial indicator. Started off with what were factory round balls that should be pure lead and use that for a baseline. I used wheel weights for the top of the line for hardness, and then I tested my other lead, I always used a fresh piece so there would be no oxidation so that my needlepoint could penetrate a little into it. It might sound kind of crude, and I had to design my own scale, but I can sure tell you if a piece of lead is hard or soft, better than my fingernail test. I'll attach a picture to the bottom of this email. You can't see the face of the dial indicator, but it works with a pushbutton from behind. It was what I used to set ring gear spacings.
Squint
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Love "Rube Goldberg" creations that solve a problem. Keep it up!
Tips about lead testing: use the flat nose of a bullet to test, or for round ball, file a flat place. And don't test on the sprue-site of a cast ball or bullet, nor on the surface of an ingot you cast. The sprue site or ingot's outside surface will have a different hardness due to rapid cooling there. Again file a flat place a bit deeper into the ingot, then test.
Aloha, Ka'imiloa
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The thing I like about my cabine tree tester is I can measure soft 5 bhn or hard 5 bhn. Many of us are told that 5 bhn is soft, which it true. But there are degrees of softness that can be measured with my tester.
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Steel shot law of the land in '91 and implemented nationwide for waterfowl in '92....I believe upland use regulated by state. Can still buy lead filled shot shells with hunting loads here in Michigan tho some loads have copper plated lead
