Guys...I hardly know how to melt lead. So, please bare with me. Is lineotype better than wheel weights for bullets. Should wheel weights need hardning before casting into bullets?

Welcome to the forum xyz. Rules are simple, be nice and join in.

I've used a lot of both and both work. I've never hardened wheel weights, just cast them as they come. I do save them up and make ingots when I get over a hundred pounds. Cook them down with an old propane turkey fryer and a big cast iron pot and dip them out with an old stainless dipper into ingot molds.

Linotype makes really hard bullets, but they all seem to shoot well. I use a Lee bottom pour melter and usually just swirl lube with liquid alox and shoot as cast using the Lee aluminum molds.

my 2 cents.

Guys...I hardly know how to melt lead. So, please bare with me. Is lineotype better than wheel weights for bullets. Should wheel weights need hardning before casting into bullets?

"Best" would depend on what type of reloading you are doing..black powder?...standard handguns?...magnum handguns?...small game loads rifle...full charge loads rifle?

Generally people prefer a softer alloy for black powder; from pure lead to several alloys that are softer then wheel weights. For standard handgun loads, at least some magnum handgun loads, and even small game rifle loads, wheel weights are hard enough to work. Linotype is hard to find, but that kind of harness is usually only needed for some of the warmer magnum handgun loads and the faster speed rifle loads.

"Hardening" wheel weights (heat treating) is done after casting when needed...and if you were to harden wheelweight bullets, would be about as hard (and useful in the same application) as linotype. HOWEVER, wheel weight bullets won't stay at that hardness level forever, they want to revert back over time (or at least partly back).

So...tell us what you ant to do with them, and we'll give better advice on the alloy to use.

Welcome to the forum. Rules are to join in, be polite and not post anything our younger readers should not be exposed to. See the stickies in the General forum for further posting rules and information.

Linotype is more expensive and harder to come by. It is harder, as cast (not heat treated), but less dense than wheel weights and some other common alloys, so bullets cast from linotype come out a little light. It fills molds really well. It also has a lower melting point than higher lead concentration alloys.

Whether these properties make them better or not depends on the circumstances. In a rifle with gas checks and correctly sized it does very well and allows higher velocities than some softer alloys before leading becomes problematic. However, if it is undersized it will gas cut and foul the bore more than some softer alloys that bump up to fill the bore more easily and have higher melting points.

Higher antimony content bullets have also been known to shatter on bone in very cold weather. I would not select Linotype for winter hunting bullets. Indeed, even wheel weights can shatter in cold enough weather and some low antimony (2% or less) alloys have been devised for that purpose.

Ad my welcome, xyz.

In general, I believe that harder isn't always better. In fact, I tend to use the softest bullet I can get away with in a given application. If the bullet fits the gun properly, you'll actually get LESS leading and MORE accuracy with a bullet on the softer side - at least in my own experience.

Let us know hat your specific needs are and we can make some suggestions about bullet shapes, lubes and hardness. All free and worth every penny!

HOWEVER, wheel weight bullets won't stay at that hardness level forever, they want to revert back over time (or at least partly back

Not intending to throw this off topic but I have heard the above expressed in so many different conclusions that it is very confusing. One report I read the author said he tested two separate groups of bullets cast at different times and that the bullets had been on his shelf for about 15 years and the BHN dropped from about 22 to 20. Certainly not much to be concerned about. Another fella claimed he has seen the BHN drop from something like 20 to 12 in just a couple months. Anyone have any source or site that can shed some light on the truth?

IIRC, lead-tin alloys soften fairly soon. Lead- antimony alloys stay hard. I think the exact alloy for a stay-hard alloys is important. Some of our more experienced casters probably know for sure.

Bye
Jack

Guys...I hardly know how to melt lead. So, please bare with me. Is lineotype better than wheel weights for bullets. Should wheel weights need hardning before casting into bullets?


I cast hard pistol and rifle bullets using a mixture of wheelweights (75%) and linotype (25%). Melt the metal in a pot on a Coleman stove and dip it out into Lyman or RCBS moulds. I have used more linotype, but there was no difference in bullet performane and no more leading. Take care...
Oberndorf

In the Lyman "Cast Buulet Handbook" you'll find the recipe for linotype or wheelweight or no. 2 alloy. Good luck

There is a general rule of thumb floating around that if you allow the tin content to exceed a lead alloy's antimony content, softening after water hardening occurs dramatically faster. I have not tested this. I would speculate that if the small amount of arsenic needed for water hardening to work well was way too small, that, too could affect the results. We need a real metallurgist to look at the property diagrams and chime in.

I have noticed magnum chilled shot, which stays hard pretty indefinitely, has roughly 8% antimony and 1% arsenic. I bought a couple of bags just before the last lead price jump, figuring to make up some low antimony cold weather alloy (96.75:2.00:1.50:0.25:0.25, Pb:Sb:Sn:As:Ag) with it. Yet one more of a hundred projects I want to work on, but don't have time to do at this point.

I've never know magnum chilled shot to have a higher content of more than 6% antimony but I guess there is always the exception. Generally the smaller the magnum shot the higher the antimony which can be anywhere from 3% to 6% antimony. Even then that is not a hard and fast rule as you can see at this site. http://shop2.mailordercentral.com/bpicart/products.asp?dept=68 Click on the stock number at the left and you can read the antimony content of each type of shot. You will note that shot size #7 through #8.5 have a content of 6% but the smallest size of #9 is at 4% as is their larger #6 shot.

Arsenic itself does nothing for harding of alloy but simply acts as a catalyst for heat treating or water quenching and is generally limited at 1/4 to 1/2 of 1% in any alloy.

So if you intend to buy Magnum shot for it's antimony content, make sure you do a little investigating to make sure what the actual antimony content is of what you are buying or you may very well not be getting what you expected.

Tin does add a bit of hardness, but from what I can tell, tin's main job is to lower surface tension...which makes the alloy flow into the small details of the mold more easily.

100% truth be told, if cost wasn't an issue, could live quite happy with a pile of pure lead and a pile of linotype...mixing the two for whatever hardness was required.


But cost is an issue, and like many shooters, what I do have is a big pile of "whatever"...mostly wheel weights...and a little pile of known alloy (monotype still cast into letters and some 50/50 bar soldier). We learn to get by, mixing up our batches of alloy...test casting...and adjusting.

. . . Is lineotype better than wheel weights for bullets. Should wheel weights need hardning before casting into bullets?

I took the following from a Rick Kelter article you can get to through a link in the first post of this thread: http://www.shootersforum.com/showthread.htm?t=42072 .

Antimony is the key to heat treating by providing the fine crystalline structure but antimony is extremely brittle. The industry recommends 4% Sb for an optimum hardening/time curve. Linotype at 12% Sb can be a poor choice for hunting bullets or for use on steel targets {due to brittleness}. Monotype (19% Sb) and Foundry Type (23% Sb) bullets are so brittle they can actually break in two when chambering the round.

I’ve added a .PDF file to this post that I made some time ago from a newsgroup thread archive from 1996, by Norman Johnson. It references a number of articles from the Fouling Shot, some of which, having now re-read the file, I would like to locate copies off. I may have them tucked away in the basement somewhere, if I could just get time to go through things down there?

The second or third post in the Johnson thread suggests that chamber pressure should be four times the alloy’s yield for optimal obturation in revolvers. This results in dividing the chamber pressure by 1920 PSI to get the optimal alloy Brinell hardness number for a revolver load. The author suggests that in rifles, the peak chamber pressure divisor can be anywhere from 1920 PSI to 2400 PSI and the bullet will still shoot accurately and not foul unduly. Following the aforementioned link from the first post in the sticky on alloy hardness in this forum, you find a Rick Kelter article referring to 3 times the alloy yield as a minimum pressure to see obturation occur. That would mean dividing chamber pressure by just 1440 PSI, to get a BHN that is the hardest bullet number that would obturate a bore.

I am not sanguine that such rules of thumb work across the board. As a bullet diameter gets larger, it will need less growth in base area to achieve a fixed number of thousandths of diametric growth to fill a bore. So I expect you can run the bullets at higher BHN as the groove diameter gets bigger and still get the same obturation. If BHN 8 alloy bumps up a 0.358” bullet up 0.002” at 15,000 PSI, then I would expect a 0.459” diameter bullet to bump up the same 0.002” at 15,000 PSI if it were harder. Expansion would be proportional to the ratio of the areas of the before and after diameters of the bullets. The .358” bullet base area grows 1.1% to expand 0.002”. A 0.458” bullet’s base area grows 0.9% to expand 0.002”. The ratio of 1.1% to 0.9% is 1.22, so I would expect casting a BHN 8×1.22 or BHN 9.8 alloy would get the same number of thousandths of bump from 15,000 PSI. Most modern small arms bore tolerances are well inside the old military standard of +/- 1.5 thousandths, regardless of bore diameter, so a constant bump diameter seems like a reasonable thing to base calculations on.

As an interesting aside, Norman Johnson was also experimenting with completely unlubricated bare revolver bullets at the time, and found that if they had a light friction fit in the chamber throats, he got no leading even without lube for the first 60 shots. This brings up the point that a properly fit bullet in a straight bore or a bore with a slight narrowing taper from breech to muzzle (but never the other way around) will shoot well. Correct bullet size matters a lot; possibly most. I have shot bullets too hard for my charge to obturate in the bore, but had no problems when they were a couple of thousandths over groove diameter.

->

I've never know magnum chilled shot to have a higher content of more than 6% antimony but I guess there is always the exception.

Looking at the prices off your link, I guess I was right to buy those two bags at $25 each!

As to composition, I'm afraid its a whole lot messier and more irregular than we might wish for. I pulled the 8% sb and 1% as magnum shot composition numbers off a shot manufacturer's site a couple of years ago, but I've forgotten whose? Failing to recall that, I took a look at the Lawrence (Mayco Industries) brand shot sold by Gander Mountain, and they claim their magnum shot is "equivalent to 5% antimonial content" in all sizes, and their standard chilled shot (not magnum) is equivalent to 2% antimonial content. The term "equivalent" is apparently a weasel word used to cover alloy composition variance. That supposition appears validated when you look at their MSDS. It states the composition of all their lead shot products (standard and magnum) may be anywhere from 1% to 8% antimony, and anywhere from 0.1% to 2.0% arsenic. I am going to guess that they juggle the alloy depending on what they have on hand and how the market is pricing things at the time they smelt a batch?

Arsenic, like zinc and copper and silver and calcium and barium and a number of other elements, is an alloying metal that hardens lead. I think it just isn't doing much direct hardening when the concentration gets down into fractions of a percent, same as tin or antimony would not affect hardness much at that level. At 2% though, I expect you could measure the difference. I saw a link in the last month or so, to an article that listed lead alloying metals in order of their ability to increase hardness. Arsenic, it seems to me, was somewhere in the middle of the list. If I can find it, I'll edit this post to include it.

The "catalyzing" aspect of the arsenic is something I would like a metallurgist to expound on. I've seen barium “doping” mentioned for hardening battery plate castings. Doping may be a better term for the use of Arsenic, too? I’d like to know what is actually going on in there, whether either of these metals nucleates small crystal formation or just retards crystal size change or metal migration, or what, exactly? At least one of the articles I've seen suggested arsenic is not needed for quench hardening, but rather just to retard the rate of loss of hardness. It was the first time I've not seen it stated that arsenic is required in small quantities for water hardening to work at all.

Anyway, there never seems to be any description of what goes on at the molecular level? If the suggestion that arsenic just retards hardening is right, it might be the fast loss of hardness you mentioned earlier was due to inadequate arsenic in the alloy, and not due to too much tin, as I suggested before? Lots of rules of thumb and broad statements are posted on the web about arsenic in bullet casting alloys, but I seek the hard core explanation, so to speak. Just want to understand it better.

Welcome, xyz
I have a lot of experience at casting bullets,but can't really add anythingg new.I will say that when I had a lot of linotype,I had a lot more problems with bore leading with my pistol.In my experience,softer is better.
Frank

Thanks to all you guys who took time to answer my reply. I am just plinking with a 9mm rifle. The Wheel Weights seem to leave a lead deposit after a 100 rounds or so. I was just thinking that I might need to add some of the lineotype to the wheel weight lead to cut down on it. One person suggested I shoot a couple of copper jacket bullets at the end of my shoot to clean out a lot of the lead. Is that a good idea?

Thanks to all you guys who took time to answer my reply. I am just plinking with a 9mm rifle. The Wheel Weights seem to leave a lead deposit after a 100 rounds or so. I was just thinking that I might need to add some of the lineotype to the wheel weight lead to cut down on it. One person suggested I shoot a couple of copper jacket bullets at the end of my shoot to clean out a lot of the lead. Is that a good idea?
You might change your bullet lube. Sounds like your bullet lube isn't up to the job. I shoot lots of cast bullets in my Swedish Mauser at about 1,630 fps using 1:20 lead. I also use lots of lube on my bullets. After each session at the range I clean and inspect my barrel. No lead build up/streaking has been detected. The rifle still groups 5 shots into 3/4" from the bench at 100 yards.