Blending hard cast

[gman]

I have about 4,000 200 gr swc for 45 acp's that are testing 18-19 bhn on my cabine tree. I bought these from an individual and figured I could always melt them. Not able to pull up my calculator so I was wondering if blending 50/50 with pb would be enough to get it close to 50/50 ww + pb? Might be a little harder. Opinions?

 

[Ian]

Depends on what you call "50/50". To me it's about 1.5-2% antimony and about half a percent tin.

Probably close to 6% antimony in those. Old WW had about 4%, or acted like it anyway. New WW have something like 2.7%. To get my "50/50" with modern WW I mix equal parts soft scrap, which isn't dead soft (7-8 bhn) with sorted clippy weights and get the same thing we used to get 20-30 years ago with 99% pure and clippy WW mixed half and half. Ends up about 10 bhn air-cooled depending on caliber, 19-20 water-quenched from the mould, and about 22-24 at max oven heat treat.

 

[Brad]

Go 50/50 with pure and make some bullets. Air cooled they won't be bad for most handgun shooting. Heat treated they will handle most rifle shooting.

 

[gman]

Thanks fellas!

 

[fiver]

that 18 might just be water dropped ww alloy.
I'd try a re-melt and a re-test of maybe 20 of them before I went too far.

 

[Ian]

that 18 might just be water dropped ww alloy.
I'd try a re-melt and a re-test of maybe 20 of them before I went too far.

You got a point there. I forgot some of the commercial casters set up machines to chuck the bullets into water.

 

[gman]

Made me think also. I'm going to cook some in the oven for an hour and air cool. See if they reduce any. Good call guys!