It's a luv hate thang...

[Mike / Tx]

Man I sure do hate having to heat up and smelt those big ol iso cores.......

but I sure do love it when I have a full box of ingots that fit into my pot.

This time it went fairly fast, if you could call it that, it only took about two and a half hours, to heat up the core and cube, then flux, pour ingots, and pick everything up. Net results however was only 62# of my HP alloy. That said, it sure will pour up a bunch of those 200gr MP Hp's, and a bunch more of the couple different MP 640's that I have, and will hopefully be receiving soon.

[Beagle333]

I haven't figured out how I'm gonna smelt em yet. I'm just keeping them as big shiny souvenirs right now.

[FrankenMauser]

I love the cores.

Speaking of which... has anyone seen any for sale, lately? I need more, but haven't seen any available.

[Mike / Tx]

I haven't figured out how I'm gonna smelt em yet.

Well with mine I set them in my cast iron pot on their side. Then I crank up the turkey fryer burner until I get a nice flame that just starts to roll out from under the bottom of the pots edges. Then I fire up the Mapp gas torch and go to work heating up the middle of the cavity, and sort of melt a trench on the bottom side that allow the alloy to pour out. Then I simply start working the torch to try and melt it in half.

Usually this gets it plenty warm and it will start to settle into the pot. I then just keep heating it with the torch as needed to get it all into a liquidious state. I try not to overheat it as I don't want to screw up my tin, so I just keep the flame up above it enough that it is melting the core but no really heating up one spot in particular.

Now if you have one of the propane brush burners, that would facilitate things a bit quicker. I don't think where I did this inside my shop, would be a good place to fire one of those up though. I am however going to pick one up so that I can do a mass smelting project out in the back yard. That would alloy me to do more than one at a time. As it was I did the core, and one of the big cubes, and half of a small cube all at the same time. I was working on them all with the torch to get the up to the melting point. The cubes have a thick paint on them that doesn't want to burn off, and it takes up a lot of BTU's to work through it.



This is the recipe I used for the batch I made up, if you use the alloy calculator, you have to use increments of a pound which is why there is the .6 of tin. This makes a wonderful alloy for HP's. I use the grey cube as pure.

LG Iso Core - 30#
Pure / Cube - 29.5#
Tin - .6# (or 9.6 oz)

Once it and the core are both melted and up to around 675 or so degrees, I fluxed it twice with sawdust, then I added in the tin, and stirred well for a few minutes, then fluxed again with about a half inch chunk of paraffin. After that is when the fun starts.

As with most alloys, this is only one means to an end. I simply used what I had the most of as a base alloy and worked on it from there. When I got serious about my HP's working like they should, I blended up small batches of a couple of pounds until I found what I wanted, then worked it on up into bigger batches. This alloy is good for PB HP's up to around 1050 or maybe a touch more. However if you really push it with a PB bullet you will end up with this after only 4 shots,


I have however run it up to around 1300 out of the 357 with a GC'ed SWC, and haven't had any issues. That said, by simply adjusting the formula above to end up with a 1.75/1.75/96.5 you can bump up the velocities of the PB bullets to the mid 1250 - 1350'ish fps range with no issues. At least with the loads I have used in my revolvers.

The key thing to remember is to keep the tin equal to or greater than the antimony so that you get the molecular chaining going on which allows it to be hard, but malleable. I am also going to brew up a batch of bullets from some 2/2/96 that I have on hand to see how well they do. I'm hoping that they will at least let me get up into the 2K fps range from my rifle or Contender in my 30-30 AI. We'll see.

[FrankenMauser]

I just drop one in the 8" dutch oven with a couple 1 lb ingots of the same alloy, and crank up the heat (to my "melt" temperature sharpie mark on the regulator ). The extra ingots help get the core up to temperature quicker.

When the alloy has been cast into ingots and the pot is almost much empty, the heat gets turned down, the melt is allowed to start crystallizing, and the next core goes in. The heat comes back up, and the cycle repeats. ...until I run out of cores.

I love the alloy, but I only have 2 cores and about 32 lbs of ingots left!