Tire weight to raw lead ratio for handgun bullets?

[P Flados]

For a 45 colt, most published loads are either very mild (use for any gun) or down right mean (Ruger / TC loads).

Assuming you are at the mild end, you will not get much expansion unless you are in the "medium soft" range. And medium soft does not mean prone to leading. In fact in some guns, going softer can eliminate leading as the bullet will "upset" into the rifling and seal off any gases from blowing by (the real cause of leading in most handguns). Over at the Cast Boolit web site the standard response to avoiding leading is "fit is king". You never want the bullet smaller than a revolver throat and you want the bullet at least 0.001" bigger than the bore. The recent alternate method to avoid leading is to powder coat (I powder coat my heavy duty stuff and tumble lube my light duty stuff).

If your wheel weights are straight clip on, 50-50 is at the "medium" level when water dropped and close to "medium soft" with air cooled. If you water drop, I would not be surprised if optimum was closer to 1/3 wheel weights and 2/3 pure.

If you have a decent percentage of stick on, the best recommendation is to sort these out intially and consider these to be close to pure.

[Ifishsum]

I mix my clip-on WW alloy about 50/50ish with range scrap (which tends to be softer) or pure lead for my .45 Colt, .45ACP and .38 sp bullets - that has worked great for me, plenty accurate with no leading. Haven't tested for expansion; anything I would purposely hunt with handgun wise are .41 and .44 mag which I generally cast with straight WW alloy. All air cooled; I've only water dropped rifle boolits

[44 AMP]

make sure to wash the wheel weights well, before melting them down. Road salt residue isn't something you want in your casting pot.

[mikld]

mikld:
In post 8 the OP says .45 Colt. In the opening post he indicates round nose.

My answer was more generic. I also mentioned 38 Special and .44 magnum. I mentioned 45 ACP because I don't cast tor a 45 Colt. I was talking about bullet alloys and the applications I use...

[F. Guffey]

and I use 10 pound bars of tin and lead mixed 50/50. My bars have little dents from one end of the bar to the other.

F. Guffey

[condor bravo]

A 50/50 mix of tin and lead certainly is much harder than a 50/50 mix of wheel weights and lead. That tin and lead alloy is also known as plumber's solder I believe. Does anyone know the hardness rating for that?

[F. Guffey]

Does anyone know the hardness rating for that?

I do not know about anyone but I know. Back to the top, the OP has wheel weights, I have wheel weights. When I melt wheel weights I do not mix anything with wheel weight; BUT, I drop the bars after casting and listen for the sound, if the bar hits the floor with a dead lead sound I add tin again, knowing it is a 50/50 mix, I know half of it is lead so I divide by 2, it is nice to know how much tin I am adding.

And then there were the two x-ray rooms lined with lead. I still have some of that stuff in the back of the P/U, the wife was complaining about looking through the steering wheel instead of over it, she did not buy the first story, I know, I should not have started the story with "You are not going to believe this".

F. Guffey

[noylj]

wheel weight: 100%
pure lead: 0%
if you have type metal or Pb/Sn solder, you can add some pure lead and some of the harder alloy.
PS: a proper bullet fit and lube will give NO leading at a BHN of 8-13. Alloy is not that critical. A large enough bullet and good lube are critical. The .44 Mag was development by Keith with no leading and a 10 BHN alloy (and no gas checks, either).

[sixgunnin]

OK I will try straight wheel weight on a few as well. What do you mean by a good lube

[reddog81]

Regarding lube – How are you sizing the bullets and are you using lube, powder coat, Alox, HiTek to prevent leading? You can’t just cast and shoot the bullets without some type of coating/lube.

Regarding the percentages to use – How much of each material do you have? I mentioned 50 / 50 earlier assuming you have approximately similar amount of each. If you have 25lbs of WW and 75lbs raw then I would have suggested a 25/75 mix in order to maximize the number of bullets you can cast. Realistically there is a large ranges of alloys that will work for 45 Colt or .45 ACP. You could try just about any combination of the materials you have with success, conversely improper casting techniques, incorrect sizing, or bad lube techniques are just as likely if not more likely to be the cause of any problems you run into when loading or shooting the bullets.

[Mike / Tx]

Been meaning to get over and post up on this thread but family matters and work have kept me hopping.

I shot a BUNCH of mixed alloy out of my Ruger Redhawk in 45 Colt a year or three back. Seems time is passing at warp speed nowadays. That said, I tried soft, I tried hard, an I tried in the middle. The problem I had was that all shot so darned well I really found no huge differences between the mixes to be overly concerned.

As mentioned above by several, fit will be your primary and lube should be your secondary cause of concern. For most "modern" production handguns chambered in 45 Colt a .452" diameter should be just right. Note I said most. Some will possibly be as big as .454" simply due to variations in production and the companies who made them. I would however start with something in a .452" flavor if your firearm was produced in the past 50yrs or so.

For sizing and lube, it is hard to beat the ease of the Lee system. Simply drizzle a little on a bowl of bullets, roll them around until coated an shove them through the sizing die. Once sized repeat the lube. You do want something on the bullets as they pass through the die simply to give some lubrication. The Alox that comes in the kit can be thinned around 50/50 with unscented mineral spirits and still to a great job. You only want enough on them to see that there is actually something there or that the lead has a wet shiny look. If they are brown looking you probably used a bit much. Not an issue in reality but they will smoke a bit more.

If you want to pan lube, I highly suggest looking into the White Label Lubes Carnuba Blue. In reports the bullets shove right out after it cools with little effort and all lube grooves have been reported to be full.

If your using a sizer like the Lyman 4500 or similar then White Label has a wide assortment to choose from. Going from real soft to real hard where lube is concerned. I have used the Carnuba Red for quite a while with no issues what so ever, but you will need a heater or will have to wram the sizer up with a light for about a half hour before starting. It is a hard lube but it works great. I just filled up one of my sizers with the Carnuba Blue and went through a couple hundred assorted 45 caliber bullets, but haven't shot any yet. If your using it in a Lyman 4500 you won't need a heater unless your temps are below around 65.

As for expansion, well it helps in some cases but if you simply look for a bullet with a wide flat meplat, in a weight running from around .250 up to around 280-300grs, you will not have any issues putting a deer or feral hog down with a proper shot. With the velocities your going to get from a handgun or rifle even in the 45 Colt, expansion isn't really going to do much for you except limit penetration. What you have to remember is that the bullet is already starting off as big as most others expand too, so if you get anything or nothing your still doing good. Too much expansion though is only going to slow or even can stop the bullet from penetrating through to an offside shoulder or punching through to give two bleeder holes. With a deer, expansion isn't needed at all with a shot through the vitals, on a hog the vitals are up front right behind the leg bone and as such expansion can even keep the bullet from reaching them sufficiently. A good flat nose will deliver a solid punch, drive through the leg bone and/or cartilage and still make for plenty of damage in the internals, even if it exits.

Hope this helps, and good luck with your hunting loads. Try Universal, Unique, AA-5,or 7, and HS-6 depending on what model gun you have. These have all worked good for me with loads from mild to wild. (just bear in mind I am running a Redhawk).

One last thing, look up the PDF by Brian Pierce on loading the 45-270 SAA. He listed three different load tier levels depending on what variation firearm you might have.

[Beagle333]

Link provided to Brian Pearce article.

Clickey here for article