Don't you love surprises when casting?

[Rickf1985]

A couple years ago I bought a ton of wheel weights and also some lino pigs and a lot of unmarked blocks of lead. There is a fair amount that I believe is pure tin. Pics of all of that are on here somewhere. But, in that haul I also got a bucket with 60 lbs. of what I call lead trash. It had all kinds of small pieces of lead, old bullets, a couple wheel weights and cut offs from who knows what. So I just started tossing all in the pot and making 1 lb. ingots. This was a couple months ago and yesterday I was cleaning off the workbench in the garage and all these ingots were in the way and I never marked them for hardness. So I took one of them and put it in my Cabine Tree tester and it came out to around 12-13 bhn. So, I stamped all of the ingot 12. I then moved on to addressing my old SAECO lead pot that was dripping. That pot has a rod with a sharp cutoff where it goes into the tapered spout. This works very well to prevent drips because it is very unlikely to get a piece of dirt caught in the tiny sharp edge. On mine I had run it in with compound like all the experts said to do to seat it in. Well it leaked ever since so I checked the rod in my drill and worked the bottom of it back to a sharp edge. Reinstalled it and since it was cold and nasty out I decided to fire it up and check my work. Still had those ingots on the bench so I dropped a half dozen in the pot. I had my thermometer in the pot between the ingots so I would see where they were melting. This stuff was malting at 560-580 degrees! I dropped three more ingots in to freeze the pot and watched the thermometer and yup, same reading. I wasn't planning to make any bullets but I wend in and got a .45 mold with a large flat nose on it and without even heating the mold I poured out a few loads. By the third pour I was getting great bullets! I kept thinking that this is really strange for scrap lead. So I made a dozen bullets and shut it down. The next day I checked one of the bullets on the Cabine it came up to 89 on the dial, 22BHN!!!!! I checked all dozen and all the exact same reading. I have no idea what the composition is in that mix but I really don't care, I will cut half those ingot down to 1/2lb Lee ingots and use them for sweetening up my softer stuff. Now I just need 500lbs. of soft lead!!

[lightman]

Thats a nice surprise!

[Rickf1985]

Unfortunately my parade got rained on. I casted a few more bullets with that alloy and decided to test a few with my Lee tester. So I filed the side of the bullet for a flat spot and tested it with the Lee tester and it comes out to 14 BHN! I went back to the 45 cal. bullets that were reading 22 on the nose of the bullet with the Cabine tree tester and filed the side of one of them and yup, 14 bhn. I took that same one and ran it on the cabine tree tester on the filed side and it showed in the 14-16 range. So I tested the bottom of the bullet where you are not supposed to test and both testers showed 14 bhn. I tried a few more of the 45 bullets and all showed 22 on the nose of the bullet but 14 everywhere else. I have no idea what is going on but I am just going to cast them directly into bullets and shoot them. I am not going to worry any more about it. I just finished up casting several hundred 7.62-39 bullets. We will see how they work out.

[Winger Ed.]

I am not going to worry any more about it. We will see how they work out.

That's my approach to things like this.
It's easy to get all tangled up over thinking stuff. But for 300 year old technology--- I try not to.