Leading at muzzle

wish you'd stop saying that, I'm trying to work on that white circle around the forehead look.

I'm glad Ian brought it up cause I was trying really hard not say . . .

Brad said:

I have a few ideas on an alloy to try. Will try to get some cast this weekend.

Click to expand...

Make enough to try and to test, don't make a 100 pounds of it.

As a SWAG up the SB to 5% and for a start the Sn to 2-3% and heat treat them to 18-20 BHN. With that much Sb they will age harden sufficiently in about 3 days, no need to wait a month for them. Roto Metals Super Hard is wonderful stuff for things like this.

That is a little lower than I was going to go on alloy. I hadn't thought about heat treating but easily can.
I have lots of monotype to use and some tin and solder. Easy enough to use the alloy calculator and get a recipe,

we had been discussing a 3% tin 4% antimony alloy earlier.
I think whichever is easiest to make is where I would start, you can always up the percentages.

Seems to me that Sn should be roughly 2/3 of the Sb? Not exactly but as a rough number.

Brad, let me put some perspective on it: The 6/4 XCB bullets you and I have been shooting test at exactly 24 BHN.

They be water-quenched, no doubt about it, I didn't even have to ask Fiver. Not going to do much HV work without heat treating or coppering. Reason being that when you add enough antimony etc. to make them tough enough to handle the land torque, the metal is so brittle it just crumbles off the leading side of the land and leaks on the trailing side, poof goes your lube and your accuracy. Basically I think we need to work on an alloy near if not equal to his alloy, treat it as a base, and do exactly what Rick did with his 357 Max and experiment with heat treating it to different levels to achieve the characteristics that our rifles tell us they want.

We know there needs to be some tin in there to control sloughing of metal, the question I still have is how much. I know 6% Sb and 4% Sn worked like a champ bumping near 2500 fps in a ten-twist, with less fouling (basically none visible at all) in the corners of the lands than I've ever seen before in anything above 2400 fps. 5/3 might be fine, and can be made harder via heat treat than by water-quenching from the mould. 4/3 or 4/2 might also be fine at maximum quench. 5/3 might be perfect at a medium heat treat. Bullet design will likely have a lot to do with which works best, but at this point the more I do with richer alloy the less I know. Ask me about 50/50 or straight WW with various amounts of tin and I don't look quite so dumb.

Maybe one of us should look at a ternary alloy phase chart, just a thought.....

here is the thing about that number.
cold alloy, cold mold, and water at least 75-F.
there is no tsst sound, just a clunk at the bottom of the bucket.
but that sound when you rattle them in your hand it clicks and clacks, it doesn't tinkle clinkle like a hot soft alloy into cold water does.

The lack of a sharp "tinkling" sound is what made me test them in the first place. They don't FEEL 24 bhn.

the sprue cut doesn't either, they almost felt like I was tearing the base on a ww alloy.
I know if I let them sit too long it took a good whack or two with the stick to cut the sprue.
when the mold was at temp I was watching the flash over then counting to 7 before cutting it.

My question is why is there so much deposited in one spot and not of equal dispersion around the crown? I think Rick was hinting in the direction I'm thinking, when he mentioned the bore scope. My SWAG would be a rough spot in the bore, and the GC is depositing it in the same location at the muzzle.

Will said:

So after reading all of this does anyone think using just plain old heat treated wheel weights would get you there?
It would sure be nice I’ve got 55 gallon drums of those, I just can’t find pure lead.

Click to expand...

55 gallon drums? As in plural? Clip on wheel weight is my base alloy, it is 99% of my shooting. I don't add soft or pure, I do add 2% Sn. It works really well for me in just about everything, air cooled in rifle to about 1950 fps and all my handgun shooting. In high end magnum revolver I heat treat to 18 BHN. With the gold mine your sitting on I don't know what you need pure lead for. In low end HP loads such as the 45 ACP I again use WW with 2% Sn added but for these I use the stick on weights. With the tin they are right at 8 BHN.

IMO he changed the shape of the bullet into a wad cutter cylinder.
probably a slightly crooked one at that.
and then widened out the groove marks in the side of the bullet to about double what they should have been on the front end of the bullet.
I bet at the muzzle the BHN of the bullet was about a 3 or a 4.

someone mentioned a thixotropic bullet here earlier and this is a good example of that.

Most likely Fiver. I can visualize the bullet base trying to catch up with the nose and there can't be much doubt the nose didn't have nearly enough strength to take the rifling without skidding. He did mention white smoke with each shot. Hhmmm . . .

vaporized lead is white, more kind of a grey white.
but yeah the bullet for sure didn't come out the same as it went in.
bet the recoil knocked some snot free too.

At least the holes at 100 were round

Brad said:

At least the holes at 100 were round

Click to expand...

Holes in the berm? How can ya tell if a hole in the dirt is round.

A few did hit the paper. A 2.5 ft square piece of paper. those holes were round.