Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

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Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

Post by Ranch Dog »

Finished up with the initial work with my R92 454 Casull using my 45 Colt bullet, the TLC454-290-RF. This bullet is sized to .452" and seated to an OAL of 1.800" for a perfect fit in the Casull's chamber. The bullet is cast from a 95/5, wheel weights/tin alloy mix, I do add 1 ounce (volume) of #8 shot to 10 pounds of the alloy and then water quench the bullets for a BHN of 21.

I've always considered this mix and BHN to be capable of surviving chamber pressures of 48.0 KPSI and today's shooting reinforced that thinking. My 34.0-grain load of Lil-Gun was producing 2155 FPS at 48.0 KPSI. There was no evidence of leading at this scoped sighted rifle was drilling the same hole at 50-yards. On to the next step of developing the potential of this rifle.

In another post I mentioned the work I was doing on a 454 Casull bullet specific for use in the R92. After looking at what the chamber needs to ensure a good fit (throat, leade, and step via chamber cast), I want a projectile that will maximize these features at the maximum pressure with a full case of propellant form an appropriate powder. The first part of the previous statement, I believe, has been met with my TLC452-330-RF, 330-grain, Round Flat Nose Bullet.
bullet_sketch.jpg
When loading to the max of any given cartridge, a typical target pressure is 15% max in order that the extreme spread of pressure deviations are contained within the max. In the case of the 454 Casull's 65.0 KPSI, the actual target nominal pressure would be about 57.0 KPSI.

My experience has taught me that a full case of powder makes an accurate cartridge. I personally like seeing a case density between 95% to 105%. With cast bullets and their lube, I find it tough to keep a consistent seating OAL between the bullet seating stage and the crimp stage when 105% is exceeded.

Using Quick Load to crunch the 57.0 KPSI NMP/65.0 KPSI PMAX consideration limiting the powder density to 105%, it spit out one of my favorite short case powders as offering the best potential. It seems that 31.5-grain charge of Lil' Gun will be sitting at 57.2 KPSI while pushing the 330-grain bullet at 1960 FPS!

Now, it all boils down to mixing and treating an alloy that can survive another 9.000 PSI. I have several thousand pounds of lino/monotype but little experience in working with it. Always wanted to get to it but really did not need to so now is the time. Also the only oven I have for heat treating the alloys is one that would create a lot of heat for me if I was caught using it for this endeavour.

Of course, I have all the cast bullet references and well versed in sources like LASC to include TMT's Alloy Calculator software but would like to hear what your experiences are. My thoughts are I will need a BHN in the neighborhood of 30 to 32 for the pressure and would like to get there with lino/monotype vs. heat treating. Any thoughts? Your experience would be appreciated.
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Re: Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

Post by Steelbanger »

Michael, You flatter us by even asking for our thoughts. You seem to be on the right track. I have nothing here except for a wish of good luck to you finding "the" load..


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Re: Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

Post by Ranch Dog »

Steelbanger wrote:Michael, You flatter us by even asking for our thoughts. You seem to be on the right track. I have nothing here except for a wish of good luck to you finding "the" load..
Ough oh! Well another 1.2-grains of Lil' Gun with my existing bullet will put the pressure at 57.0 KPSI so I might as well try it in three increments to see when leading develops with the existing alloy mix. You never know, I might get lucky and not need to mix a specific alloy for the 454 Casull. I will knock this shooting out next week.
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Re: Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

Post by Dan 444 »

Michael,

I think that your current 21 BHN alloy may work just fine. I base this on using some 21 BHN BTB's in middle-range reloads for a buddy's 30-06....they did fine.

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Re: Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

Post by Missionary »

Greetings
I am wondering what will be the application of these bullets. Over the years I have seen to hard bullets shatter on contact with harder than flesh impacts.
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Re: Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

Post by runfiverun »

look at his alloy.
his antimony content is low,the arsenic' is the grain modifier.
the waterdropping is where the hardness is coming from.

michael when i am dealing with compressed loads how i evade the seat crimp issue, is to seat just a tick short.
then do the final seat-crimp in the second step.
instead of just doing a seat/crimp seperatly.
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Re: Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

Post by Model 52 »

runfiverun wrote:look at his alloy.
his antimony content is low,the *' is the grain modifier.
the waterdropping is where the hardness is coming from.

instead of just doing a seat/crimp seperatly.
You need just enough antimony to allow the heat treating via water dropping. Wheel weights typically have 3-4% antimony and in my opinion that's more than you need.

My preference for a bullet that will be used for hunting is to cut the WW 50/50 with pure lead, then add 1.5% tin to improve the fill in the mold and reduce dross during the casting process. A group of us who used to hunt with cast bullets in the 1990's had great success with this getting great terminal performance without bullets shattering on bone, etc.

The lower antimony content means it may take a few weeks for the bullets to fully age harden so you need to plan ahead and cast a month ahead of the actual loading, but the bullets will be just as hard and not nearly as brittle. Tinned alloys soften over the same 1 month period and will continue to very slowly age soften for years after that, so don't get carried away with tin content either.

In practice however, pure lead can be hard to find so for day to day shooting, so when I still cast the odd bullet for the couple calibers I still cast for, I'll use WW and 1.5% tin simply because it's readily available.
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Re: Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

Post by Ranch Dog »

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions. I have been sitting back pondering the responses but have also spent the weekend at work with overnights that allowed me to visit some very close family so it has left little time to participate on the forum. If you will allow me a little reflection on what I have worked with to this point...

When I started to get into casting, I quickly realized that times where changing for savaging lead even though this 15 years ago. I quickly found that recycling was claiming the source. I immediately got busy gathering lead alloys. My first stop was to look through the windows of an old printing press, there I saw an unbelievable amount of stock laying on benches and on the floor. An HAC outfit had just bought the building to be used as a warehouse and wasn't sure what to do with the mess inside. I offered to clean out the building and pay them 5¢/pound for any alloy I removed. I ended up with 2,000# of monotype and 2,000# of Linotype for $200 and some sweat! 8-)

Next, I needed wheel weights but all the tire stores here where trading removed weights for new weights so none were available. I had some hunters coming from different parts of the State so I asked them to check with sources enroute to the ranch. In 30 days I had 4000 pounds of wheel weights and had to ask them to stop bringing it!

Having done a little reading, I thought I would mix 25% mono, 25% lino, and 50% wheel weights more to use the alloy uniformly than any other reason. The bullets where beautiful as dropped from the mold and as hard as a rock. I was told that they might be brittle but never saw any bullet debris in the animal and never recovered a bullet. For a nilgai hunt, I used this alloy with my TLC432-265-RF out of my 444 Marlin. Looking at my old bench notes, it was pushed with 47.0-grains of H4198 for at 2400 FPS while generating 44.0 KPSI. I shot the 700# bull at 125 yards through both shoulders, killing it.
Nilgai Kill.jpg
The bullet was one of two that that I have ever recovered, out of about somewhere between 800 to 1,000 big game animals, in the last decade.
Nilgai Boolit.jpg
The bullet was found under the thick hide of the opposite shoulder. The bullet nose is gone, it might have fragmented but I found no evidence of it in debris left in the meat or guts. I did shoot through both shoulder bones and I feel it simply eroded as it passed through these massive obstacles. Unfortunately my notes do not indicate whether this alloy was air cooled or water dropped. With the tools I now have, this is the analysis of the alloy.

50% Wheel Weights, 25% Mono, and 25% Lino
  • 88% lead
  • 3% tin
  • 9% antimony
  • 0% arsenic
  • 10.49 specific gravity
  • 18 BHN
At this point, I decided to get into the mold business and one of the nightmares of being is this business is the variety of alloys in use. The cavities of a mold are fixed and properties of the bullet, diameter and weight, can only respond to the specific gravity of the alloy in use. The witchcraft in designing a mold is working with a certified alloy that has known characteristics, both before and after the drop. Wheel weights is a poor medium to work with in this respect as there is not a standard for it. No doubt the most common bullet certified alloy is Lyman #2, it's properties are well know and documented making it easy to design a bullet around so that is what I used as a standard. If a customer's alloy was under/over diameter/weight, they needed to adjust the specific gravity of their mix to deliver the bullet on target.

Lyman #2
  • 90% lead
  • 5% tin
  • 5% antimony
  • 0% arsenic
  • 10.68 specific gravity
  • 14 BHN
With this know, what I did was start adjusting wheel weights to deliver Lyman #2. Rather that working with my mono/linotype, I used tin as few people (customers) have access to the harder alloys. A straight lead or wheel weights/lead combo produces an under diameter and over weight bullet from a mold that has been designed with Linotype in mind. The lead and/or wheel weight alloys also have very poor definition. With the Micro Bands used on my bullet designs what you see is a reduced diameter in the lube groove area as the alloy does not fill the mold. I simply started adding tin until I had a very "crisp" bullet that looked like it was milled. Some say that beyond a certain percentage, tin is a waste but they must not have worked with bullets with many features. The work was time consuming as I had to work with a new pot of material each time but settled on the mix mentioned.
little_dog_big_dog.jpg
These are my 25 ACP and 45 ACP bullets, I use the same alloy with them but the image shows the amount of definition of this alloy no matter the size.

Antimony provides hardness but it is not a hardening agent. I can water quench this base alloy mix and see may be one unit of BHN increase. Arsenic is an hardening agent, it takes very little to really make a change. I add arsenic via #8 lead shot, adding one ounce by volume, (a loose surface layer on my Lee pot) and it makes a pronounced change at the drop. Here is the breakdown of my alloy.

RD's 95/5 Wheel Weights/Tin with #8 Shot
  • 85% lead
  • 11% tin
  • 4% antimony
  • <= .1% arsenic
  • 10.45 specific gravity
  • 15 BHN Air Cooled
  • 19 BHN Water Quenched
This is the only other bullet I've recovered, from a desert mule deer I killed. It is using my 95/5 alloy and the same load in my 444 as the nilgai kill. The deer was shot immediately behind the facing shoulder and through the shoulder on the opposite side at 196-yards. It folded up like it's legs had been knocked out from under it.
Mule_Deer_2004.jpg
The bullet was also found trapped under the skin on the exit side.
tlc432_mushroomed.jpg
With the amount of critters falling to this alloy, I've always left good enough alone and as the pictures suggest I use it with my handguns as well. What I don't know is how it will respond to the pressures generated by the Casull and taking the advise offered in the above replies, I will shoot it today and see. That was kind of a "duh" for me. Just shoot it then worry about it. All this thinking and I didn't think of that.

Here is the make up of a couple of the alloys mentioned in this topic so far. I use the TMT Cast Bullet Alloy Calculator for all my work.

Wheel Weights with 1 to 2 % Tin
  • 96% lead
  • >1% tin
  • +4% antimony
  • 0% arsenic
  • 11.01 specific gravity
  • 12 BHN
50/50, lead/wheel weights, with 1to 2% of tin
  • 96% lead
  • 2% tin
  • 2% antimony
  • 0% arsenic
  • 11.59 specific gravity
  • 11 BHN
When my supply of tin is exhausted, I will not purchase any more. I will start working with one of the other "O" types to duplicate the specific characteristics and specific gravity of Lyman #2. I will always be adding #8 shot though, that is the one component that I will continue to buy. I had originally not used it in my handgun mix except for the 9mm Luger but have found it easier to to worry about the small amount not being used in the air cooled bullets. Much easier to use the same that segregating and tracking alloy. I do not have any rifle cartridges that use air cooled bullets, all my rifles are shot at max velocities/pressures, no different than jacketed bullets.
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Re: Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

Post by Steelbanger »

Good morning Michael,

I don't believe that you'd find any traces of broken bullets in game. I used to cast 100% stereotype bullets and when a bullet impacted a steel target it would look like blue smoke. I didn't care because the target fell over and I had lots of raw materials at home. These days I watch my supply much more carefully as I don''t want to have to go looking when I'm eighty! I've been busy casting for a few weeks so my supply of bullets is growing. I intend to give you a weight of all that I have cast when I wrap it up for the winter. That is at least a few weeks away.

One of my printer friends, sadly, is closing up his shop and has lino for sale. He's asking $1.50/lb. which isn't so bad when you see what people are getting at on-line sales.

I pulled this list from the LASC site and some may find it interesting

Alloy Tin% Antimony% Lead% BHN Arsenic (Trace)
Foundry Type 15 23 62 ? No
Monotype 9 19 72 28 No
Stereotype 6 14 80 23 No
Linotype 4 12 84 22 No
Lyman # 2 5 5 90 15 No
Electrotype 3 2.5 94.5 12 No
1 to 10 tin/lead 9 --- 91 11.5 No
1 to 20 tin/lead 5 --- 95 10 No
1 to 30 tin/lead 3 --- 97 8 No
1 to 40 tin/lead 2.5 --- 97.5 6-7 No
Hard Ball 2 6 92 16 No
Clip-on .5 2 97.5 11 Yes
wheel weight 12
Stick-on * ** 99.5 6 No
wheel weight
# 8 Magnum --- 2-3% 97-98 *** Yes
Plumbers Lead --- --- **** 100 No
Lead --- --- 100 5 No
*Not known, presumably .5 to .75% tin. Stick-on weights are nearly pure lead with a BHN of 6.


Edit to explain that I had all the columns lined up but it was lost in the post. If anyone would like to view it undistorted visit the LASC site.
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Re: Your Experience With Tough Alloys?

Post by Ranch Dog »

Well... going to need a bit tougher alloy for the trip up to the max of the 454 Casull. Haven't had an issue with the load I've been shooting in the high 40 KPSI but immediately ran into leading at as I went past 50 KPSI through 57 KPSI. As I was shooting, I thought about the fact that I've already been here with the work I did on the 308 and 338 Marlin Express. Forgot about those rifles. Same observations, just decided not to work with those cartridges but I will stick it out with the 454 Casull. I think I will go back to my 50/25/25 wheel weights/mono & linotype mix, add #8 shot and see what kind of BHN it drops. I think I will see 22 to 23 which will get me past the bump I need.

Oh... at 57 to 65 KPSI, this little beast will rattle your teeth!
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