Can I mix Zinc with lead to make it harder? If I can, please tell me the percentages.

No. Even trace amounts of zinc will wreck your alloy. Zinc makes it almost impossible to get good mould fillout.

Like Sion said. Antimony hardens lead and is present in many lead alloys. Wheelweights run around 3-4% while Linotype has 11%. The usual method is to add linotype to wheelweight metal and bring the antimony content up to 5-8%. Linotype is hard to find now, and pure Linotype is too brittle for hunting.

Tin is also used to harden lead, although it's less effective. Wheelweights have a bit of tin, 1% if you're lucky. Adding 1-2% tin to wheelweight metal improves castability. Linotype has 3% tin.

Heat treating the bullets is an effective way to harden them. You can drop them into water from the mould or oven heat treat them later.

There's much more to this and some of our experts may chip in.

Bye
Jack

Thanks Guys for the heads up about Zinc. I ran across some lineotype back in the early 90's and had so much other metal that I never got around to using it. I still have a good source for wheel weights. Many have advised me to mix 75% wheel weight lead with 25% linotype. Is this the consensus?

Thanks Guys for the heads up about Zinc. I ran across some lineotype back in the early 90's and had so much other metal that I never got around to using it. I still have a good source for wheel weights. Many have advised me to mix 75% wheel weight lead with 25% linotype. Is this the consensus?

Because I have a lot of solder on hand,all that I add to wheelwheights is 5% tin.
Frank

. . . Many have advised me to mix 75% wheel weight lead with 25% linotype. Is this the consensus?

Assuming wheel weights that are 95.5:0.5:4.0 (Pb:Sn:Sb), that mix will give you (rounded to the nearest 0.1%) is 92.6:1.4:6.0 alloy, which is not far from the 92:2:6 alloy used by many commercial bullet makers.

You may find, for best bullet fill out, that you want a little more tin. Many of the commercial lead-free plumbing solders are now mostly tin, and may have a little copper and selenium in them. They have to wet the pipe surface, so they are still a good source of tin that won't increase surface tension and prevent mold fill-out. Add maybe a quarter pound to 20 pounds of your 75:25 WW and Linotype mix to bring the tin content up neared to 2.5%. That should cast reasonably well, though, at current Lowe's prices, adds about twenty-five cents a pound to the cost of your alloy. If you have money to burn, adding three quarters of a pound gets you something close enough to Lyman #2 alloy that the difference is of no consequence.

The question is, do you need to harden your lead? You didn't say what your lead is - pure or wheelweights, etc.

I mix wheelweights 50:50 with range scrap, which makes something a bit softer than wheelweights alone. Works great in my .45acp.

Hardness is a selling point in so many bullet ads - people think that "hard cast" is always the best, but it's not necessarily so for your caliber, which you didn't specify.

So, you should re-ask, What's the best alloy to use for X-caliber, and say how fast you want to load them to.

:)

I am just doing plinking at about 150 feet with my 9mm rifle.

You could shoot almost anything plinking. Hard and soft will both work at modest velocities. The trick with harder alloys is to be sure they are at least 0.001" and preferably (IME) 0.002" over groove diameter. The softer ones will bump up and be more forgiving of sizing errors, but will also tend to lead the bore a bit more easily if your haven't firelapped it first.

Could you tell me about firelapping.

Could you tell me about firelapping.


xyz
Our Host,Marshall Stanton,has all the stuff needed to firelap a barrel.He also has an excellent book/manual to guide you through the job.
Contact Him.
Frank

Short answer. Bullets with an abrasive grit embedded in them are shot though the barrel. This smooths off the rough spots and opens up the tight spots. The devil is in the details and I'd advise buying the book too.

http://www.beartoothbullets.com/bulletselect/book.htm

Bye
Jack

Zinc will wreck the alloy, as it causes the metal to form crystals called Dendrites, which will inhibit flow and mould filling.
Tin helps flow immensely, up to about 4 percent. More than this is added expense. Research tertiary lead alloys on the net.
Antimony adds hardness, but adding more than 12 percent max will lighten the finished bullet too much. 6 or 7 percent is usually all that's needed. If I remember right, linotype is 12% Sb, 4%Sn, and the balance lead.

Hard and soft bullets both have their place. Generally, the heavier the slug and the faster it's shot, the harder it will need to be to withstand the rotational acceleration (hold the lands) as it moves downbore. Hence, .32 wadcutters at 650 can be dead soft, but 45 Colt slugs at 1000 need some hardness.

Lyman's Bullet Casting Handbook is full of good information and good loads.

Ramslammer,

Let me say welcome to the forum, if I haven't already done so.

The dendrite idea is interesting. Are you sure that's the cause of poor mold fill, though, and not increased surface tension of the liquid metal? If so, I would like to understand the mechanism better? I believe all metals crystallize beginning as dendrites that grow to pack themselves up into grains. If the metal is liquid when it contacts the mold, zinc dendrite formation would have to begin before the mold was filled for it to interfere, would it not; much like conventional alloy flowing into a cold mold? In that case, you would expect to see significant improvement in mold fill as the mold got hotter, letting the liquid take position before starting to crystallize. I've not heard that elevated mold temperature helped with zinc contaminated lead, but then, I haven't intentionally acquired any such alloy to do the experiment myself, either.

For others reading this post, click in this link (http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0131_mb/index.html) on "metallic properties" for a description and illustrations of dendrite formation.
The Wikipedia has a NASA video of a dendrite forming down on the right side of the window here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrite_%28crystal%29).

Your comments on alloy compositon remind me that Elmer Keith developed the .44 Magnum from the .44 Special using alloy that was mostly just 95:5 lead:tin. Not especially hard. A correctly sized hard bullet does hug a bore well, though. If you slug a bore with a hard alloy, it takes firm pressure to get it through because of the friction of it springing out against the bore, and find you cannot feel small constrictions because it springs back out after passing through one. It also measures over the groove diameter when it comes out the other end. That spring-back tends to mitigate blowby, which I expect is the source of much of the perception that harder cast bullets inherently prevent leading. In a properly firelapped barrel, though, it is surprising how soft bullets can get before leading is an issue. Some experiments in good condition barrels have included firing bullets with no lube at all and done so without leading appearing for several dozens of rounds. Good gun geometry and condition is first and foremost, IMHO.

There is another recent thread describing bore riding bullet noses collapsing under acceleration to fill the rifling grooves. Another instance in which a harder alloy is desirable. Still another discusses minimum and maximum BHN for obturation, suggesting you can get too hard for best accuracy in some situations. I am always suspicious, however, that the need for obturation suggests a constriction, undersized chambers, or undersized throats (in revolver cylinders), or an undersized bullet. Matching the alloy or heat treatment to a gun's condition would seem to be key to performance.

Got a question!! Has ANYONE HERE had any REAL, first hand, done it, experience with having zinc in their lead pot, used it to cast some bullets and then used the bullets in their gun?? I hear rocket science answers, chemistry answers "they say" answers. Ohhhh, it's bad stuff, throw the whole pot away if you get just a drop of zinc in it, but no real FIRST HAND I DONE IT AND THIS IS WHAT I ACTUALLY FOUND answers!! If not, I guess I'll have to melt up some "zinc contaminated"/lead wheel weights, try to mold some .45ACP bullets, and if they mold and resize okay, then load 'em up and see how they shoot!! I'm not talking about 10,000FPS, 12 mile range deadly accurate loads! I'm talking about some plain old lumbering along 850fps .45ACP loads.

Got a question!! Has ANYONE HERE had any REAL, first hand, done it, experience with having zinc in their lead pot, used it to cast some bullets and then used the bullets in their gun?? I hear rocket science answers, chemistry answers "they say" answers. Ohhhh, it's bad stuff, throw the whole pot away if you get just a drop of zinc in it, but no real FIRST HAND I DONE IT AND THIS IS WHAT I ACTUALLY FOUND answers!! If not, I guess I'll have to melt up some "zinc contaminated"/lead wheel weights, try to mold some .45ACP bullets, and if they mold and resize okay, then load 'em up and see how they shoot!! I'm not talking about 10,000FPS, 12 mile range deadly accurate loads! I'm talking about some plain old lumbering along 850fps .45ACP loads.

Make sure you add some zinc wheelweights to your pot. Regular wheelweights don't have zinc in them. Get some pictures of the finished bullets and post them.

"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves." [Will Rogers]

Make sure you add some zinc wheelweights to your pot. Regular wheelweights don't have zinc in them. Get some pictures of the finished bullets and post them.

"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves." [Will Rogers]
__________________
Sion ap Rhys

This is the sort of BS answer that I don't need. If you have DONE IT why don't YOU post some pictures and explain your problems and don't be quoting me some Will Rogers and acting so high and mighty with your silly *** name to boot!

Calm down, guys.

This is just my viewpoint, but there a whole chapter on alloys, both good and bad, in the Lyman Cast bullet Handbook. Zinc-lead is not one of the good ones, because they don't mix at normal casting temperatures and zinc forms a heavy dross that interferes with good fillout. I have enough trouble casting good bullets with good alloy, so I'm not eager to try it with bad alloys.

Bye
Jack

So many published authorities say zinc in the bullet melt is a bad thing, I've never bothered to challenge them on it. Seems like a waste time, and I would worry about contaminating my casting equipment to the point it requires acid or other drastic measures to clean it out well enough to cast good bullets again.

That said, I do seem to recall someone on the board had got zinc wheel weights into his melt by accident, and said the alloy simply wouldn't fill out in molds, and he had to get rid of it. Try searching the archives for the post.

Zinc in lead pot Theory

Well, to find out the truth I did it.

First off let me tell you that for 7 ½ years starting in 1966 I was a cable splicer for the Bell System and we used molten solder for “wiping” lead sleeves in manholes where open flames were not allowed as they could and would ignite any gas deposits in the manholes. It was an art form and the generation before me were true artists. It was slowly becoming a lost art with the influx of the plastic cables. Anyway I know about the hazards of molten metal and water, etc. We scraped, sanded, melted 50-50 solder for years and not anyone I knew ever had any lead poisoning or any effects from it.

A friend of mine installs alignment racks so I asked him if he could get me some wheel weights. He brought me seven 5 gallon pails. I cast them in 2# ingots and wound up with 497#’s of wheel weight ingots. I got the ingot molds (cast iron) from a friend of mine who owns a steel yard and I can pour twelve, 2 pound ingots from one pot. He also made the pot for me to my specs. It holds 35 pounds of molten lead. The furnace is a Bell System furnace which I got when they were phasing out solder wiping in the advent of plastic splice cases and I rescued it from the dumpster. It is a propane burner.

The wheel weights were the nastiest mess I have ever seen, with oil, grease, spit, snuff, tire stickers, valve stems, broken glass, razor blades, etc. There were weights I had never seen before……ones that were “stick on” , different shaped squares, rectangles, shiny, dull, sintered, etc. Some (not all) of the small square stick on ones had lettering on them that said “zinc”. I figured, good, we’ll see what happens to the zinc.

So, I fired up the pot, added the wheel weights and waited to see what would happen. With the lead pot furnace it didn’t take but 15 minutes and they were starting to melt. All the clips were coming to the top, I kept stirring the pot with an old wooden chair leg, and skimming the clips and dirt off the top. I kept skimming and adding the wheel weights until I had a molten pot of wheel weight lead. I had purposely held back adding any of the “stick on” or small squares or rectangles, just used wheel weights I figured were the old fashioned lead ones. The lead was molten enough to dip out with my 4# splicers ladle so I cut the flame back to simmer and threw in a handful of the odd shaped weights, the “stick on”, and the ones marked zinc. Most of them (including the zinc marked ones) floated to the top!!! I took the chair leg and poked them down, stirred **** out of the molten metal to try to mix it in and they still floated to the top!!!
The zinc would not mix in with the lead wheel weights no matter what. I keep this up thru the whole seven pails and the 497 #’s. Could not get them to mix. When I was all done I had two 5 gallon pails of clips and zinc weights to throw away!

When I was all done and everything put away and the ingots stacked, I went on the internet and checked the melting point of both lead and zinc. Lead melts at 621.3 degrees F, zinc melts at 787.1 degrees F. That is 165.8 degrees higher than lead.

Next, I purchased a Lee 6 cavity .45ACP 200 gr SWC tumble lube mold and some liquid Alox and started casting, as “they say” that the bullets will not fill out as my lead must be tainted by zinc. I have cast almost 2000 so far and they are the most beautiful bullets to come out of a bullet mold, no gaps, holes whatsoever, no problem filling out the mold or sticking in the mold!
I do not size them, just tumble lube them, seat them deeper so they head space correctly, over 4.5 grains of Bullseye and I have the most accurate bullets that ever went down the barrel of my Kimber, or my friends Springfield and Colt 1911. Also there is no leading after 150-200 rounds each Tuesday.

So what does this prove to me?? First off it proves I do not know what would happen if you heated up your pot hot enough for zinc to melt and mix with the lead or how your bullets would turn out. I do not know why you would want to heat things up that hot when it isn’t necessary to 1) melt the WW’s, and 2) cast good bullets. Also it proves that many things are parroted from one person/group to another without anyone taking the time or responsibility to try it and see what happens before jumping on the band wagon and passing on the wrong information.
Now, you can pick this apart, dissect it, call me names or whatever you want, use whatever big name you want, but you know…I don’t really give a s… because I have 497 #’s of ingots, can get all WW I want free, to cast beautiful, accurate bullets that work in both me and my friends guns and get to shoot a couple hundred or more each week!!!

PS: “Leather gloves” which is also parroted to wear when working with molten lead: You have on a pair of those and get that molten metal on them, you can’t get them off fast enough before you are burned they heat up so fast. Also the molten metal will run down inside the gauntlet and burn you bad. Cotton chore gloves with a tight gauntlet is the correct gloves, with a long sleeve shirt over the gauntlet and buttoned.

I've never melted zinc in on purpose, but the concern would be getting some pre-smelted zinc alloy into the pot. I know they use zinc to lower the melting point of tin in some cheap lead-free solder. You are correct that keeping the pot at the WW melting point would not produce much mixing without a strong flux. In the presence of a strong flux, you will, despite being below the low zinc's melting point, start getting some zinc worked in at the surface.

Interesting that your flat stick-ons floated. That's a new one on me. Around here they are all pure soft lead. Higher melting point than WW, but also heavier. Should sink, unless glue and paper ash are keeping it afloat?

Good point on the gloves. I've always used leather, but they are welder's gloves with full-length cuffs that reach my elbows. I keep a pair of the heavy vegetable market rubber bands on them to pull the cuffs closed at my elbows. I always wear a flat (no pocket) leather welder's apron, too.

I like the tumble lube bullets, too. The .38 wadcutter almost cuts groups in half for me, compared with any of the swaged commercial bullets I've bought, including factory match ammo.

Bullseye
The answer is a definate maybe.
I was given a batch of scrap lead;about 20 pounds.I could not get any decent bullets with it.The grooves would not fill out.I added tin,and then more tin,but could not get a single good bullet.
We assumed that it was contaminated with zinc;tat's the only cause that I know.We used the alloy for fishing sinkers.
Frank

Interesting that your flat stick-ons floated. That's a new one on me. Around here they are all pure soft lead.

I work at a dealership (Subaru) and we've been getting zinc stick on and hammer ons from factory for 2 or 3 years now. They are slightly different to the lead stick ons, the lead has the sticker stuck directly to the weight, the zinc is wrapped in a tape with the sticker stuck to that.

Either way I'm just going to stick to lead. We're probably still removing 50:50 zinc to lead weights and the ones we replace them with are lead. The weights come quicker than I shoot so it's no big issue yet.

I somehow got some zinc in a batch of pure lead that I add tin to for my BPCR. What a MESS! :eek: The stuff appears to migrate to the surface of a boolit and it looks like galvanized rain gutters. No boolit fill out at all.
I saved the batch by turning the pot down to 600* before melting and skimming everything off the surface without fluxing. The zinc will melt at a higher temp and floated to the top at 600*. I got a lot of junk off and then boolits came out good.
If you are smelting WW's, keep the temp at 600* and zinc weights will float. Anything that doesn't melt, get rid of. DON'T FLUX until all the junk is out.
Even pure antimony will melt in at 600* with the proper flux. Once antimony and tin are alloyed with lead, they will not separate out so don't worry about the good stuff. A small loss is worth getting rid of zinc.
The stuff is DEATH to casting! :cool:

Tin melts at 447*
Zinc melts at 786*
Lead melts at 620*
antimony melts at 1166*
However an alloy with tin or tin antimony can actually melt at a lower temp then each metal by itself. Antimony that is granulated will melt into lead, tin at 600* with the proper flux.
However, zinc seems to always float in a crystalized form at low temps so it can be skimmed as long as you stay away from fluxing.

I have certainly had some rogue batches that wouldn't cast but whether its due to zinc contamination is hard to say. Thats the danger of mixing scrap from various sources. In a normal lead pot i doubt you would get zinc to melt anyway so its a bit hypothetical.

Zinc alloy is used for a lot of castings so I guess sombody can get it to work but the general view from way back is that its no good. Anyway its probably too light to make good bullets. It has been tried for gas checks and even jackets in the past but it never caught on. If it was any good the commercial makers would be using it for sure.