lead?

[tdoyka]

i have a question about lead bullets. now i don't know, but if i had a bullet made from "pure" lead(comes out of lead water services) can i shoot it out of a 45-70(400gr-450gr) from 1300-1400fps for deer? or does the lead mess up the rifling? i don't have anything to melt antimony. the lead is made into bricks, dad made them. i was wondering becuase we melted the lead and made it into muzzleloader balls, which we used for deer.

thanks!

 

[Slamfire]

Pure lead is too soft to push fast. It will strip the rifling. I only use pure lead for blackpowder.

 

[Sam1911]

As he said, pure lead is great for muzzleloaders. It doesn't do very well with higher pressure smokeless powder rounds and needs to be alloyed with other elements to make it a little harder.

It won't mess up the rifling, it will deposit/melt itself off into the rifling and create a mess which is difficult to clean out and ruins your accuracy.

 

[wgaynor]

If you want to make a bullet to shoot at that velocity, try trading someone your lead for wheel weight ingots. It'll do what you want it to do.

Or you could sell your lead and buy your bullets from MBC. Lead can be sold for a decent price to the right person.

 

[GLOOB]

You can also read up on paper patching. That might be viable for low volume hunting rounds out of a 45-70.

But easiest is to trade. AFAIK, pure lead fetches higher prices than good bullet alloys.

 

[[email protected]]

Most likely you will have to add a little tin to the pure lead to get the cast bullet to fill out in the mold. With that you will have a good alloy for a low pressure round like the 45/70. I tried a small amount of pure lead bullets in my 40 s&w when I was playing with my hollow point mold. It didnt lead.

 

[John3921]

A decent source for tin is 50/50 solder. You can mix this in with your pure lead and develop a 20:1 (95% lead / 5% tin) alloy that is a bit harder than pure lead.

 

[plmitch]

Cut it with some coww lead and water drop it, all will be good, don't need tin for a big old mold to fill out just watch the heat, those slugs will hit like a sledgehammer.

 

[Curator]

tdoyka,

Pure lead can be made into very good and useful bullets once you learn of its limitations. It works great for .38 special, and .45 Colt bullets at moderate velocities without leading if it is sized correctly. Reloaders who have problems using cast bullets do so because they did not learn the important details relating to size, hardness, and technique. Start your education here: http://castboolits.gunloads.com/

Pure lead can be traded (keep some, you won;t be sorry) for lead/antimony alloys like linotype or wheel weight alloy to make bullets that will work well at higher velocities and pressures. Reloading with cast bullets you make yourself is the PhD of reloading.

 

[A Pause for the Coz]

If you have some magnum shot around. just throw some of that in with the melt.

 

[plmitch]

If you have some magnum shot around. just throw some of that in with the melt.

Good call there.

 

[BruceB]

There are many myths and legends surrounding cast bullets.

First: BULLET FIT is King! With a properly-fitting cast bullet (meaning, correctly-sized FOR THAT FIREARM), most potential problems never occur. The standard "accepted" diameters for JACKETED bullets are often too small for good cast bullet performance, and often result in leading.... far more often than a case of just having a "too soft" alloy. For example, most of my cast bullets for nominal .308" bores are sized at .311"...and they work superbly, with great accuracy and NO LEADING.

I've made something of an amateur career out of testing-and-trying various things that "everybody knows" in handloading, with the aim of proving -or disproving- the concept in question.

One of these tests involved PURE LEAD bullets in my .416 Rigby rifle. I loaded fifteen rounds with the RCBS 416-350 bullet cast from pure lead, using the same charge as used in my "standard (cast) load" in that rifle.

With bullets cast ffrom WHEELWEIGHT alloy, the rifle groups TEN rounds in about the magic one inch at 100 yards, departing at 2050 fps. With the PURE LEAD bullets, the ten-round group was 1.25".... from that muzzle velocity of 2050 fps. That would be a marvelously effective hunting load, believe me.

After firing all fifteen rounds, there were NO deposits of lead in the rifle's bore.... NONE, nada, zip, rien. The inside shone like a mirror. In a rougher bore, or a worn one, perhaps there might have been some visible lead fouling. In THIS barrel, there was none.

The fact that something 'sounds reasonable', doesn't necessarily mean that it's correct.

Even so, I'd lean to an alloy that's a tad harder than pure lead, mostly because some folks are uncomfortable with the idea. Regular, unhardened lead wheelweight bullets generally seem to give decent results on game, and some limited expansion can usually be expected. HARD hunting bullets are a no-no in my book, due to relative ineffecteiveness.