Lead and powder coating

should be fine, cast a few and see how they come out. i wish i had the place to salvage the keel lead. so many old free sailboats by me. a chain saw works good for cutting up.

Water quench will not help harden pure lead needs antimony or arsenic in it for it to harden with a wq. That being said powder coat and don’t push them too hard in the 45 and you might be good to go.

Tin is more for fillout than anything. You want good crisp sharp edges with your cast bullets.

This bullet has a double crimp groove, good fillout is needed

Same mold different hp pins


What all those cast bullets have in common is the molds were ran hot. Hot to the point the bullets started frosting. They also have good fillout/sharp edges/excellent bullet bases. Even though you're going to pc your cast bullets you need excellent bullet bases. Garbage in garbage out. All those bullets pictured above were cast from nothing more than free range lead (8bhn/9bhn). Some 45acp cast from the same range lead.


Some people want nothing more than free/cheap bullets for plinking/blammo ammo. Myself I want free bullets and I want performance out of them. Those 45acp's 10-shot group @ 50ft.

10-shot group @ 50ft with those 125gr bullets pictured above from a 1911 9mm

6-shot groups @ 50ft with those 158gr bullets.

Playing around with a s&w 629 and those 245gr hp's. Thru a scope on it and did a quick sight in then shot this 6-shot group @ 25yds


Cast and pc for a quality bullet & you'll have countless hours of excellent range time with all your firearms. It all starts with good bullet fill out.

Sailboat keels can be almost anything. If I were you, I would get in touch with castboolits member bne. He has access to an xrf tester and for the price of a pound of lead he will analyze a sample for you.

As stated you need antimony or arsenic in the lead for water quenching to work.

I'd get a sample of the keel tested just to make sure.

If it's pure lead and you want to use it for casting contact me. I've got some linotype that would work awesome for hardening up pure lead.

forrest r very impressive. I am in the middle of testing some samples that a few generous members sent to me to try before I decide if I wasn't to get involved with casting. Right now I'm working with .356" to use in the 380auto.

A local engineering place should have a Brinnell tester. Test a sample and you'll know if you need to alloy it harder.

A $6 set of artists pencils will get you within +/- 1bhn of how hard your keel is. Take a pencil and cut back the wood exposing the graphite/lead. Using a piece of sandpaper sand the exposed lead/graphite down until it's flat and the full diameter of the lead/graphite.

Hold the sanded/flattened tip of the pencil at a 45* angle and try to put a gouge in the keel. If the pencil gouges the keel use a different/softer pencil until you can't gouge/scrape the keel.


Take a little of the keel and melt it and water drop it and do the same tests with the pencils. The difference in hardness between the keel/water dropped keel will give you an idea of what alloy it is.

I've shot nothing but free range lead for decades & make #100 batches at a time. The alloy from those #100 batches tend to be in the 8bhn/9bhn range and in the 12bhn/13bhn range when water dropped.

Hardness is one thing. Alloy composition is another.

It could be contaminated with zinc.

if lead has zinc when you heat lead very hot you will see the zinc on top of the lead.

With that much lead I'd just cast 50 for each cartridge and let the barrel and accuracy tell you. If it isn't up to your liking then test it.

Muratic acid. Lead won't react but zinc will.

That keel's too smooth to have zinc contamination. Zinc looks like oatmeal floating on the melted lead and leaves lumps/voids in cooled/hardened lead.

You can have up to 2% zinc in a lead alloy before bad things start to happen.

If you do have an issue with leading with any of the above cartridges, 45 will probably work the best. It's the slowest moving and lowest pressure of the bunch, so I don't forsee you have any issues with it. If you want a super-light plinking load for 45, I load 3.3gr of Trail Boss under a 230gr lrn. It gets 650fps out of my 3.75" Ruger Blackhawk convertible, and it did function well in a friend's Ruger Stainless 1911. It makes a 45 feel like a light 9mm. I've also heard of people using a 200gr LSWC, but with a bit more powder for the semi autos...