plumbers solder

  • 3.5K Views
  • Last Post 14 January 2010
jppr26 posted this 05 January 2010

i got a few pounds of plumbers solder that is 95/5 tin/antimony and was wondering how much to add to pure lead im casting for 9mm and .45

Attached Files

Order By: Standard | Newest | Votes
JetMech posted this 05 January 2010

Because of the low antimony content, I don't think you'll be able to heat treat your bullets, so 10# lead to 2# solder should give you a good mix. That should yield a BHN close to 14. A 10:1 mix be be about 11.5. That might be too soft. It would help if you could add some wheel weights to that mix. It would cut down on the amount of tin you need.

Attached Files

Duane Mellenbruch posted this 05 January 2010

Please reconsider adding that 95/5 to soft lead as a casting alloy.  Better, if you are considering heat treating, is to add 50% ww and 50% soft lead and about 1% of your expensive tin rich solder to aid in mold fill out. 

You also may consider contacting the Antimony Man for enrichment alloy specificly for your soft lead to make up the alloy hardness you are  looking for.  Not knowing what you had to pay for your solder, it is difficult to determine the most economical source of reliable casting alloy.  I would suspect that you are paying somewhere between $10.00 and $15.00 dollars a pound currently.  That is a very expensive recipe to make up. Depending upon your cost, your alloy (10 soft lead/2 95/5) will be somewhere between 1.67 and 2.50 per pound if the soft lead is free. 

I doubt that you will need as hard an alloy for 45 ACP as you may want in 9MM.   Duane Mellenbruch  Topeka, KS

 

Attached Files

jppr26 posted this 05 January 2010

every thing has been free except the ww that cost me 25 bucks for a 1gal pail with steel ones mixed in the solder i have is the leftover drips and bitts of solder that i pickup from work and the lead is from the old hub and spigot pipe, im a plumber so it is easy for me to get. sweet hu  :P

Attached Files

Lillard posted this 05 January 2010

Plumbers solder works well for me mixed with ww. Six feet of solder to twenty pounds of ww will give you two to three % tin. I use this mix for 38, 357 mag,44 mag,45 acp, and 45 70 air cooled and water quenched.

Attached Files

jppr26 posted this 07 January 2010

how do you quench them if there air cooled do you reheat them in the oven?

Attached Files

Lillard posted this 07 January 2010

 I use that alloy for air cooled bullets and hard bullets. I drop the air cooled bullets on a towel if I want hard bullets I drop them from the mold in a bucket of water. I have never used the oven. Droping them from the mold in water gets them as hard as I need them. I have buddy that is a plumber I get my solder the same way you do. Free tin makes better bullets than bought tin. I use his old lead pot for smelting when full it holds 95 pound of ww then I add two rolls of solder.

Good luck and stay safe

LILLARD

Attached Files

jppr26 posted this 07 January 2010

nice but for me ww are a precocious commodity but i have about 1000lb of soft lead would just the solder and lead work you think

Attached Files

Lillard posted this 07 January 2010

I bet I know where you got the soft lead. Your question will be better ansered by some of the more experienced casters. I put a pound of 95 5 in twenty pounds of soft lead to cast 44 h.p. bullets it expands good but they will lead the barrel after about 50 rounds. I only shoot a few of them for hunting so I dont mind a little lead in the barrel.

LILLARD

Attached Files

tturner53 posted this 08 January 2010

jp, a lot of us(me) aren't all that scientific with the alloy. Maybe throw a couple handfuls of the ww in with the 10 lbs. of lead and a lb' of solder and try some. The gun and target will tell you what is working and what isn't. With that mix you could heat treat in the oven and produce some very hard bullets, if you thought you needed them, and shoot them air cooled too. Heat treating is easy, lots of instructions here. I've cast many hundreds of bullets from unknown scrap mystery lead and got good results. You can always get more specific as you learn. Tim

Attached Files

jppr26 posted this 08 January 2010

would the bullets be harder if i quenched them and then oven treated them or is just one or the other better

Attached Files

JetMech posted this 08 January 2010

jppr26, do yourself a favor and read some of these articles. They explain in excellent detail the lead/tin/antimony alloys and how best to achieve what you are trying to do: create a useable alloy.

 http://www.lasc.us/HeatTreat.htm>http://www.lasc.us/HeatTreat.htm, http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm>http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

You can use your tin to create a good alloy, but it won't be heat treatable. Without an antimony content that exceeds the tin content, I believe your success at heat treating will be minimal, and probably uneccessary, as the inclusion of sufficient tin and antimony will yield an alloy that will hold up fine in the calibers you are shooting, given velocities are not excessive and a good lube is used. As I said earlier, a 10:1 lead:tin alloy is about a BHN of 11 and is what I use in BPCR at about 1300fps. Most cartidges require a harder alloy, around 12-14BHN. You can use the alloy calculator, on the CBA homepage downloads, to calculate your own alloys and determine what you need to mix together to achieve your goals. Good luck.

Attached Files

CB posted this 08 January 2010

One of the CBA members made an alloy calculator spreadsheet that can help you get the percentages right.

Attached Files

tturner53 posted this 08 January 2010

It's one or the other, I asked that same question here myself a while back. The addition of the ww is what will make that mix heat treatable. The ww contain arsenic. Quenching will get you plenty hard buulets, the oven can get them even harder than that. I like using the oven because I think it's more uniform and you can control the process more. Most instructions are for getting maximum hardness, but by lowering the oven temp and/or time you can get a lower bhn.

Attached Files

jppr26 posted this 14 January 2010

i scored a 5gal. bucket 3/4 full of WW for 10 bucks today if i am mixing it with the pure lead and solder how much sould i use i've looked at the spread sheat calculator but im not shure how to use it. I am totaly new at this i just got my first molds just last month so im gona ask every question i can think of i don't have any one arround that casts bullets that i know of, so thank you ALL for your input

:dude:

Attached Files

Categories
Search
Popular Tags
This Weeks High Earners
Hot Topics
Close