JWFilips
Well-Known Member
Over the past few years I have picked a few hundred pounds of lead & bullets off our public range. Just walking the berms each trip to the range and picking up what is laying on top. When I get home I wash it clean & store it away in buckets. Well this late fall I decided it was time to smelt it all. On our range 50% of the pistol shooters use Commercial cast bullets ( hard cast BHN18) on our rifle range 25 % of the shooters use a lead alloy enriched with linotype. So before the smelting; my wife.(..the angel that she is) & I sat down and hand sorted all the buckets separating the jacketed projectiles from the cast bullets. It took two days!
My first smelt was all the cast bullets & I ended up with 101 lbs of ingots
The next smelt was all the jacketed & I ended up with about 130 lb of ingots. Now after a month & a half I tested the hardness of both. The Jacketed ingots are at approx 10 BHN
But when I checked all the cast bullet ingots they are only at BHN 11/12!
I was surprised by this because the commercial alloy is normally hard cast BHN18
I thought the cast batch would be much harder then it is!
Now I almost regret all the extra work to separate it all!
My first smelt was all the cast bullets & I ended up with 101 lbs of ingots
The next smelt was all the jacketed & I ended up with about 130 lb of ingots. Now after a month & a half I tested the hardness of both. The Jacketed ingots are at approx 10 BHN
But when I checked all the cast bullet ingots they are only at BHN 11/12!
I was surprised by this because the commercial alloy is normally hard cast BHN18
I thought the cast batch would be much harder then it is!
Now I almost regret all the extra work to separate it all!