Lead ball casting

[AZbpBurner]

Check with these guys. They havew a lot of different metals and alloys & around holidays have discounts for anyone on their mailing list:
https://www.rotometals.com/lead-mini-ingot-pure-99-9-1-pound/

 

[Kansas Jake]

I picked up about 80# of lead at a local scrap yard for 60 cents/# this last week. They had lots more, but I didn't want to buy more at that price as I usually get it much cheaper or for free. They had a mix of plumbers lead and harder scrap I could choose from. I got a mix of ingots including some harder lead for unmentionables.

 

[Scota4570]

Some confusion going on in this thread. Modern wheel weights are zinc or steel. Zinc will poison the lead and your pot. The alloy will cast like cream of wheat cereal. No amount of heating or fluxing will separate it. You will have to throw it all away. You will have to clean the pot, and anything else that touches the lead to eliminate all traces of the ruined alloy. Even trace amounts of zinc will ruin your casting efforts.

Burning out the antimony or tin or letting it float to the top? Sorry... impossible. It is an alloy and can not be separated by any ordinary means.

 

[Howard Pippin]

hey guys, where would you recommend the best place ls to get lead? What’s the going rate for lt?
l have a couple ball molds and l would like to dive lnto making my own balls. l
already make my own BP so lts about time! Hi there TheTyler7011. If you have a salvage Yard within a short distance, most of them do buy lead water pipe from assorted sources, and all I have tested is pert-near soft. Wheel weights are the hardest of any that I've tested, but I do use them for making round balls. Pick up the old style wheel weights Like used on those steel car rims With clips on them, or Get the big 10 to 14 ounce used on trucks. They generally are mainly lead.I see no way they would hurt the bore of a rifle especially when you use a patch as the ball is undersized to start with. One way to test the purity of lead round balls, is weigh them on a scale. Round balls For a 50 caliber that are .49 in diameter should weigh 177 grains. If there's anything else in the lead they will be lighter.You can check on what a .44 ball of pure lead should weigh or any other caliber. The information is easy enough to find. There is even a formula that I can give you, By measuring the round ball with a Mike you can find out exactly what it should weigh if it is pure Lead.
Hope this is useful,
squint
PS if you do Get wheel weights and melt them and then flux them,Please do it outside, the fumes are not good, as someone mentioned, there is zinc in them, and I was a welder part of my life and I can tell you getting zinc sickness from welding galvanized is not good.

 

[ZUG]

I casted some Earas Gone .44 caliber revolver bullets from lead that was not pure lead (#7 on the brinell hardness scale) and I could not get it to seat in the 1860 cylinder. I only got it 3/4 of the way in. It was way too hard to budge it any more. I then purchased 20 pounds of pure lead from Rotometals. I use a cupcake pan to smelt my lead into "pucks" that weigh about 1.5 pounds depending on how much lead you pour into each cupcake form.

 

[Eutycus]

I'm no expert but I dont see why a hardness of only 7 wouldnt work. Would a loading press mar the nose of a conical bullet?

 

[Scota4570]

Another thought on zinc wheel weights. You can cast zinc bullets from zinc casting alloys. You will need a dedicated pot and mould. IF you shoot them at a range where the backstop lead is recovered for bullet casting you will have ruined all of the lead in the backstop. I strongly urge everyone to avoid getting mixed up with zinc alloys.

 

[ZUG]

I'm no expert but I dont see why a hardness of only 7 wouldnt work. Would a loading press mar the nose of a conical bullet?

It's not that they will not work it's that it is difficult to ram them totally into the chambers with the revolvers rammer. They could be loaded into the chambers with a dedicated cylinder loading device such as "The Tower of Power" quite easily.

 

[Howard Pippin]

Good morning. Several years ago I made 2 molds to pour lead hammers, I make two different sizes of them using Split pipe for the mold and pipe for a handle covered with heater hose. The small one weights 3 1/4 # with the handle, and the large one ways 6 1/4 # with handle I won't go on to detail, but I have probably made 50 and they were all made with wheel weights. I do follow the logic of not shooting wheel weight balls where you are recovering them,For if you ever mix lead you can't separated it out and it's hard enough to keep pure lead pure, I never have shot in a place like that so have a problem either way. I don't understand this dedicated pot deal, I generally melt them in a rather large (10 in.dia.) homemade frying pan look-alike made out of thin wall pipe with an 1/8 in. steel bottom. It has a 3 ft. Square tubing handle. In this I can melt 15 pounds of wheel weights or lead pipe or whatever I want to use. From that I pour it into either an old cast-iron Dixie cup mold That makes 12 1 1/2 pound ingots or a regular 24 ingot mold That makes 2 pound ingots.Then if I am making just a few balls or mini balls, I melt what I want in a 5 inch diameter cast iron frying pan if I just want a few. It's too much work cleaning out an Electric lead pot every time you change material. In the 30 years I've played with muzzle loaders, I doubt if I have used 20 # of lead. 20# would make 790 round balls, and being I started with 200 Hornaday round balls, that lots of shooting. Minie balls are for deer hunting, so it doesn't take many of them.
Squint

 

[ZUG]

Here is what I used to other day to process some lead and lead alloy pigs. The mold I used were mini bread tins from Bed Bath & Beyond. They will make ingots that weigh up to about 10 pounds depending on how much lead you pour into them. I also label the lead ingots with their weight & hardness using metal stamps from Harbor Freight. This way there is no guessing what I have when I do my bullet casting in the future.

 

[8 BORE]

I may have to get some pans
I have about 2000 pounds of wheel weights I have been collecting for years.

 

[MaterielGeneral]

Wheel weight lead works fine if you process it right the first time you melt it. When melting it and removing the clips DO NOT flux the metal. This will cause the tin and antimony to stay combined. Just get it hot and skim off all the clips and dull colored silver until you have shiny silver on the top. Now you have pure lead or very close to it.

If you have a scale and a micrometer you can determine if your ball is pure lead by the weight times diameter. Here is the formula.

Diameter to the 3rd power X.5236 X 2873.5 Here is an example for a .440 bullet.

.440 X .440 X .440 X .5236 X 2873.5 = 128.1648 Grains if the ball is pure lead. If the ball weighs less it has some impurities in it. The numbers in the formula stay the same except the ball diameter. A .495 ball if pure lead should weigh 182.48 grains.

I got this formula from the Black Powder Handbook by Sam Fadala.

I am new to the hobby and tips like this is really helpful. Excellent post

 

[MaterielGeneral]

What type of hardness tester should you use for lead? I briefly looked on eBay and there is a variety. I saw Rockwell, Wilson-Rockwell, Wilson, Ames etc. I would be looking for simple and cheap.

 

[45man]

The danger of water and hot lead is not with what is in the lead. That will boil and steam off as the lead heats. The danger is water droplets going into melted lead. Never, never ever, lean yer face over the lead pot while casting, sweat droplets can cause you serious injury, like blindness.

Not that way. The safest way is to put the lead in the pot before it is melted and bring to heat. But a drop of water on the surface does nothing at all but turn to steam. Water under the surface is the danger.
WW's are too hard for balls and even smaller balls and thicker patches does not work well at all. I have been casting for about 76 years, fishing sinkers and home made jig molds before bullets and balls. No piece of lead got past me so I must have several tons of pure and WW's stashed up. I have been into it so much I make my own molds for revolvers and the only thing I have not made is a swing cutter for round ball cherries. I can make a bullet cherry for 41 cents plus time. I make blocks from scrap aircraft aluminum I got free at United Airlines. Scrap stainless for sprue plates out of a dumpster. Welding class metal.
I can tell you one thing about lead balls and the patch must engrave the ball IN THE GROOVES by .005". That means the lands need compressed so lead must be soft.

 

[45man]

What type of hardness tester should you use for lead? I briefly looked on eBay and there is a variety. I saw Rockwell, Wilson-Rockwell, Wilson, Ames etc. I would be looking for simple and cheap.

Best I found and the easiest is the LBT made by Veral Smith. No magnifying stuff needed, instant reading.

 

[bang]

Y

I picked up about 80# of lead at a local scrap yard for 60 cents/# this last week. They had lots more, but I didn't want to buy more at that price as I usually get it much cheaper or for free. They had a mix of plumbers lead and harder scrap I could choose from. I got a mix of ingots including some harder lead for unmentionables.

You are lucky. No such luck where I live.

 

[josie wales]

Here is what I use for checking the hardness of your lead. It is cheap....all you need is a scale,(I use an 100# postal scale), a drill press, a ball bearing of a known diameter and a caliper. It is accurate. Check YOUTUBE for the exact procedure.

https://www.ajdesigner.com/phphardness/brinell_hardness_number.php

 

[Eutycus]

Whoa, too early for all that math. I need some coffee first. Are all steel ball bearings made of the same material? I mean would one from factory A weigh exactly like one from factory B?

 

[Griz44Mag]

I picked up a Cabinetree tester several years ago. Super easy to use, fast and reliable and can measure everything from ingots to small balls. I had a Lee optical, but had a hard time using it.

 

[Griz44Mag]

If you are near a LOWES store, they normally carry pure lead in the plumbing department.