Wheel weights

mooseless · Post by **mooseless** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 4:29 am

I have been shooting a mixture of pure lead and WW for about a year or so And as Gunny said in his post WW is a unknown alloy. A welding buddy of mine made me a large steel pot and I melt my lead on top of a fish cooker. I can mix 200# of lead and 100# of WW at one time. and this gives me an alloy that tests on my hardness tester similar to 20 to 1. I have several # of pure tin would it be of any benifit to add some to this mixture would it improve casting or bullet preformance.

Thanks Rick

Gunny · Post by **Gunny** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 9:47 am

The original question that got this thread started had to do with shooting pure WW. Is it O.K. as is? Do I need to change or add anything to the mix? Is it going to lead my barrel?

The responses have all almost all dealt with success with WW, as a matter of fact in re reading all of these posts there is not a single one that relates a problem. This is a good thing and any new shooter would feel pretty good about giving WW a try.

There has been a couple of references to the Lyman Casting Handbook and what it says about WW. It is reported that Lyman says "WW are the same hardness as 30:1 lead tin, another poster ays with his own hardness tester WW check out around 20:1 in hardness. Reference was almost made as to what lyman says the composition of WW is, that being 95.5% pure lead, .5% antimony and 4% tin. If this was the case WW would be an almost true lead to tin mixture, the 1/2 of 1 % of antimony would add little to this mixture. Now with that said I must preface the following with this. Lyman knows about a 1,000 % more about casting than I ever will, hell guys they wrote the book. However when it comes to the composition of WW I think that on page 57 of there handbook they don't have a clue about what they are talking about. I melted down 2 batches of WW. Each batch weighed around 80 lbs, both batches came from one source ( a local tire store) and both batches came from the same bucket. I then poured these two batches into about 1 lb ingots. I then sent two of these ingots, one from each batch to a metallurgy co in Bakersfield Ca. Here is a little clue for you guys, if you sent a lead alloy to be tested and mention the word "lead" the price will be around $80.00 to $100.00 for a components test. If you ask them for a tin test they will give you a printout os all of the components and the price is $22.50. The components in the two batches was different there where a myriad of stuff in these W --Lead, Tin,Antimony, Chromium, Arsenic, Alumium, Sulfuric Acid, Mercury, Nickle, Copper and several other components. Now granted some of these where trace amounts, but the stuff was there. I then started checking on WW there selves. Is there a standard for WW a specification? There sure as hell was not as far as I could find. I was told by several Co's that use and sell WW that almost all are made off shore today and that don't have any control over the Chinese as to what the put in to anything much less WW.

I know a feller that has shot BPCR Silhouette almost from the beginning of this sport. He holds the senior record at Raton for a 120 shot match to this day, he was the Sarurday over all winner this past weekend at the Montana State Shoot against some of the best shots in the game of BPCR Silhouette. The Raton record and all of his early shooting was done with straight WW. He changed he tells me to 30:1 because of peer pressure and 30:1 has never shot as good for him as WW did. And I must say that some of my best shooting was done with WW, never had the leading problems with them that I kave always had with 30:1. I personally am not suscepticial to peer pressure but I changed because "certified" 30:1 sounded like it ought to work. WW may just be better and they are a lot cheaper, hows about FREE.

The proof is in the pudding, it sure as hell doesn't cost very much to find out if they will work or not. And no matter what is in WW as long as you use "SAFE" casting practices you are ahead of the game.

Gunny

PS... I sure hope that this post passes the Steve Garbe smell test for non threating internet communications. Seems some folks think that we are doing a lot of harm to all of the BPCR Sports what with this internet. Maybe we all need to take class's in politicial correctness and how to get along a little better. :>))

bulldog · Post by **bulldog** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 10:58 am

Gunny;
Your post is very nice and very informatitive. I learned a lot and I can see you do things very exactly and with knowledge, not guesses. It's very interesting what you did with getting the ww analyzated and checked out. It would also be interesting to see what that company would find in 30:1 too. I use ww and my main gripe is they turn out different all the time from the same batch depending on temp cast, how cooled, etc. like that other good post pointed out and gave hardness for annealed, etc. What I like is they are cheap, esp if you consider shipping. One suggestion given to me was to take out those little flat square things and not include them as they contain something, I can't remember what that does something. What matters, I think , is consistency; but haven't gotten it too well.

I think internet can hurt the sport but can help it too. Sometimes we make jokes and are mis-understood or misunderstand and sometimes we see red because of some remark or stupidity as we see it and others do the same. Same without internet too so who can really say it hurts more than helps? At least it keeps us intouch with things and developments so can keep interest up this way.

e15cap · Post by **e15cap** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 9:07 pm

I sure apreciate all the replies fella's, I am not a big one for re-inventing the wheel and if someone has been there and done that I sure want to hear about it.
My partner and I have been casting on and off for the past week and we cannot get a consistent weight +- 1 gram. They seem to fall into about 3 groups weight wise and they all look great and as long as they are kept in their respective groups they all shoot great. So do we need to work on our technique or what? Mould is a Lyman 457125.
One thing I am curioous about, we were told to marry the dipper to the sprue plate and the rotate upright and lwt gravity flow fill the mould. Well we cant make that happen unless we seperate the dipper from the mould so air can escape??? The cutoff plate is pretty floppy right now but do we need to go looser? As always your thoughts are apreciated.
Regards Roger

Harlan Sage · Post by **Harlan Sage** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 9:16 pm

One thing I like about using WW for casting or mixing with lead/tin alloy is that it gives a bullet better shelf life. Lead/tin alloy will get softer as it sets on the shelf and you most likely cannot tell the difference between 20:1 to 30:1 after several weeks after casting and the bernell hadness will be little difference between the two. WW has other metals and antimony in it to perserve the hardness over time.

Like Monkey Boy said, it does take a little more temp to cast WW, but they do cast a good bullet. If WW gives the right diameter and hardness and shoots good....don't be afraid of it.

Harlan

Tasmanian Rebel · Post by **Tasmanian Rebel** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 10:49 pm

e15cap, I think you are right in getting close contact with the ladle and mould as you roll this upright. I would like to mention a couple of months ago I started getting whiskers and all sorts of problems and finally realized I had gradually started everting this "unit" too fast in my haste to speed up my pouring rate. I slowed to where it took a count of 4-5 seconds to turn the mould/ladle unit upright and my problems disappeared. I wouldn't worry about not letting the air escape-that's why you have vent lines in the moulds. Sounds like your sprue plate is OK. When mine gets too tight I start getting a rat-eaten appearence to the bullet base edges I think because the thing is not venting here due to the tightness of the sprue plate. Loosening the plate solves this problem for me.

Ken Hartlein · Post by **Ken Hartlein** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 9:02 am

Gunny, thanks for a lot of great info in your post. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said you can never tell for sure about WW and whats in them because they come from so many different places. Ditto on if they shoot good, use 'em.

Sean Thornton · Post by **Sean Thornton** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 9:53 am

Some things seem to be repeated here and that is that WW seem to shoot for most that have used them, they do not seem to lead the barrel and no one knows what they consist of. If they shoot good and people are capable of high AAA and Master class scores and they do not lead the barrel then does it really matter what they are made of? Will switching to 20-1 really make a big improvement? Does 20-1 really stay 20-1 after it has been sitting around for a while in either bar form or bullet form? Which will make the biggest difference in a person's score, shooting 20-1 or more trigger time and attention to sight picture and trigger pull?
Just asking.

Michael Rix · Post by **Michael Rix** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 12:01 am

Gunny,

Two questions for you:
What were the percentages of lead, antimony, tin and arsenic in the two batches you had tested?
You are the first guy I know that realy did a test that I know of. Good job!

[quote]Reference was almost made as to what lyman says the composition of WW is, that being 95.5% pure lead, .5% antimony and 4% tin. If this was the case WW would be an almost true lead to tin mixture, the 1/2 of 1 % of antimony would add little to this mixture.

I have read WW make-up as the other way, as in 95.5%lead, .5% tin and 4% antimony. This from the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook, third edition, page 57.
Which book were you looking at?

By the way, newly cast air cooled WW is about the hardness of 30/1 but in two weeks time it will harden up to about 12 BHN or just a little harder than 20/1. However, if you batch it up with the addition of 2% tin (2lbs tin in 100lbs lead) it will be about the same hardness is 20/1 and will be very time stable and it will cast better and at a lower temp. (850f v 775f)

Michael Rix, confessed wheel weight shooter.

Sean Thornton · Post by **Sean Thornton** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 9:51 pm

Well I just picked up another 5 gal bucket of free WW that I am sure will cast up some good bullets. Now if I can find the time to cast, load and shoot.