Questions from a new bullet caster

[Goat]

1. How do you know the difference between wheelweights with zinc and those without?
2. How can you get rid of the zinc? I've read something about the lead melting sooner than the zinc but the temp difference not being much. Does that mean you need a thermometer to keep it in the right spot?
3.What is best to flux the mix in the pot?
4. If I waterquench straight wheelweights can I expect any expansion at 1600-1700fps without annealing the bullet nose? Do I even need to waterquench at that velocity anyway? I have a Ranch Dog mould that drops three plainbase and three for a gas check.
I am SURE I am going to ask many more quesions as I learn to enjoy this new "habit" and I thank you now for all the help I am sure to get.
Goat
PS I am beginning this adventure for the 38/55 and then my 32/20.

[fordwannabe]

Hey goat, I'm gonna try to give ya my knowledge(should take about 5 seconds!)
1) some Zinc weights will have a "Z" on them, some won't so I nip each ww with a pair of side cutters. If you can cut it pretty easy no Zinc iff you have to work at it Zinc. IMO better to be extra cautious, especially at first than to contaminate your mix
2) I have found no RELIABLE waty to separate the zinc without getting rid of some of the "Good additives in the ww. If you find something that works be sure to let me know!

3) If you ask that question to 10 casters you'll prolly get at least 12 answers I have used wax I got for nothing,oil from a deep fat fryer and am now on a sawdust kick. I have also heard of just using green sticks from the yard, and kitty litter. Glenn Fryxells article that was posted heree recently has a good summary of the different fluxes and he recommends sawdust, thats why I'm trying it.

4) I'll let some one else to talk about the expansion properties at specific velocities. I do hollowpoint a few of my boolits and I sometimes use 50%ww and 50% staight lead for an alloy but you gotta test it in your gun.

Next to marriage casting is the most frustrating, time consuming ,experimentation involved thing.. I love
I was out yesterday shooting a 38-55 and a 32-20 along with 2 others, but those others use J word bullets.
Other than Magnum handgun bullets I have pretty much quit WQing. Tom

[BigSky56]

Goat read the treatise about casting it has alot of answers for you. danny
http://www.lasc.us/HeatTreat.htm#top

[Thunder50]

Zinc have the Zn on the weight and are harder to cut than wheelweights. You do need a thermometer if you suspect you have zinc weights. You can melt the lead based ones and have the zinc ones float.
There is a bit over on castboolits.gunloads.com about using sulfur to remove the zinc. Outdoors only!!!

You might get some expansion, with water dropped wheelweights, but it will be minimal, I would think. You might be able to shoot the plain based ww's at that velocity, without water quenching, using a good lube, and I would say definitely with the gas checked boolits. You should get some expansion then. If you want more expansion, try 1 part lead to 2 parts ww's and water quench, then draw (right term?)the noses of the boolits to soften the nose, using the base of the boolit in water, and the nose exposed to air. I would lube/gas check them first so you don't distort the nose when you lube/gas check them after softening the nose.

[O.S.O.K.]

Water quenched ww alloy is very hard and most likely will not expand. Really, just regular cast ww alloy - air cooled is about ideal for hunting. The bullets will rivet and give performance very much like an X bullet. I load mine with gc and lee liquid alox to 1950-2000 fps with no leading and usually very good accuracy.

[Charles]

There is no reason to water quench bullets for a 38-55 at the speeds mentioned. Air cooled wheelweight is plenty hard enough. If you are talking 1.6K and above, likely you will need a gas check design bullet to get good performance.

[txpete]

+1 to the link above.I quit water quenching bullets years ago.I use dental wax to flux but candles work ok also and smell better .

[gundownunder]

The link to the LASC site is useful and you will find dozens of hours of good reading on that site.

There are almost as many flux recipes as there are bullet casters. I have read of candle wax, sawdust and even old engine oil. I would point out though that some of the things used as flux can cause noxious fumes and some of them can cause smoke and fumes which will burst into flames after leaving the pot.
I don't think I wanna go were Fordwannabe is going with the green stick, because if you introduce moisture into the mix you can end up with a big mess and a lot of life altering burns. I tried the stick method of fluxing with a dry piece of dowel and even that spluttered a bit, and that was only at low temperatures while I was making ingots.

Which brings up the next point, water quenching. If you drop a hot bullet into a pot of water and a drop of that water splashes back up into the melting pot you will wear the entire potful of lead as a face mask.

Contrary to popular belief, whether to quench or not is related to pressure, not velocity. If you keep the pressure on the base of the bullet below the pressure threshold for the lead you are using you will not get leading. Google an article on "high velocity cast bullets in the .223" and you will find a formula to work out the pressure to BHN figure.

[Tycer]

1. How do you know the difference between wheelweights with zinc and those without? Don't bother
2. How can you get rid of the zinc? I've read something about the lead melting sooner than the zinc but the temp difference not being much. Does that mean you need a thermometer to keep it in the right spot? The temp difference is huge enough. When your mix goes from slush to liquid the zinc is floating with the clips, just skim them off and then flux.
3.What is best to flux the mix in the pot? Lots of answers. I use old candles.
4. If I waterquench straight wheelweights can I expect any expansion at 1600-1700fps without annealing the bullet nose? Do I even need to waterquench at that velocity anyway? I have a Ranch Dog mould that drops three plainbase and three for a gas check. No expansion on water quenched. The LBT style bullets RD makes are designed to work without expanding. I quench all LBT style bullets.
YMMV with my opine.

[foxtrapper]

I find that if the WW clips are molded into lead = straight WW, now if the clip is riveted to the WW you have Zinc. Just keep a eye on your melt ,the zinc will float to the top. I use bees wax as flux, bought it on e-bay, two big book size bricks. It should last me forever

[Tycer]

Contrary to popular belief, whether to quench or not is related to pressure, not velocity. If you keep the pressure on the base of the bullet below the pressure threshold for the lead you are using you will not get leading. Google an article on "high velocity cast bullets in the .223" and you will find a formula to work out the pressure to BHN figure.

Agreed. The only reason to worry about hardness is whether you want your bullet to expand. Period.

If the bullet fits and the firearm will shoot cast bullets (most will), you will not get leading.

A barrel should have no copper wash and be relatively smooth for best results. Problem barrels are sometimes near impossible to get plain based bullets to shoot well and the addition of the gas check often fixes that.

For beginning casters, WW with a little tin added if the mold does not fill out well is pretty hard to beat. Better stock up on a bunch of WW as lead will probably be out of all weights in our lifetime. Gotta think about them grandkids.

[coyote nose]

My Chaparral needs hard cast bullets to shoot well. I use linotype alloyed with lead, but experimented with water quenched wheelweights. Tested them every couple of months with a brinell hardness tester. After about a year they had softened substantially!! gave up on these, sometimes I cast a lot and keep the bullets on hand for a couple of years...cant have the alloy change like that. tried freezer storage too but it didnt slow it down much.

[Martini450]

I'm brand new to casting as well; as a matter of fact, so far I've only collected wheel weights and melted them down for ingots. Like you, I was initially very concerned about zinc weights, so I started out checking a batch of about fifty pounds with the "pinch them with side cutters" test. This worked very well, as there is absolutely no mistaking zinc for lead. I then got a lead thermometer and monitored the temperature of the first melt, and found it was no problem to keep the temp between 600 and 700 degrees, which is comfortably under the melting point of zinc. Like everyone has said, the zinc weights float nicely with the rest of the flotsum. You'll need to get a lead thermometer anyway, so for whatever it's worth coming from a newbie, I'd recommend just keeping the temperature down around 650 and scrape off the junk. By the way, I noticed that while all of the riveted weights were zinc, there were a few non-riveted weights that were also zinc.

As far as flux goes, I got a half pound of Marvelux, and it seems to do a really nice job.

Good luck!