Good General Purpose .357 Magnum load?

[358156hp]

For what it’s worth, when I tried casting hollowpoints on .357, 10mm and .44 those cast with wheel weights or 50/50 wheel weights/lead were prone to shear off the hollowpoint portion when fired into water jugs.

The guys on the Cast Boolit site suggested a mix of 10 - 20% tin to soft lead. I tried 15% tin to 85% soft with air cooled bullets and got some very nice mushrooms with minimal shed lead. I need to visit this again but haven’t had time to cast anything except a some 154gr .357 SWC and 255gr .430 SWC out of my junkyard COWW / recovered range lead mix for the last year or two.

Antimony is a grain refiner for lead. In small doses it strengthens lead based alloys but in higher amounts it will make the lead based alloy increasingly more brittle. Wheelweights are a true "mutt" alloy anymore, with all the recycling, some really sketchy alloys get blended into wheelweights so you never really know what you're getting if you use salvage wheelweight alloy. For hollowpoint casting I prefer to use basic lead/tin alloys. Depending on your intended target, the most popular alloys for hollowpoints are usually 20:1 https://www.rotometals.com/1-to-20-b...tin-5lb-ingot/, and 30:1 https://www.rotometals.com/1-to-30-b...97-lead-3-tin/. Elmer Keith favored 16:1 https://www.rotometals.com/1-to-16-b...94-lead-6-tin/ for most uses. There is also a 10:1 alloy, which is pretty close in hardness to Lyman #2 alloy, but you generally have to mix that yourself. Notice that Rotometals and I speak in reverse when describing alloy content. We're saying the same thing different ways.

I gave up on using salvage alloys for hollowpoints quite a while back. There are significant variations is salvage alloy performance in hollowpoints even with the so-called "stick on" weights. Variances in alloy will cause variances in bullet performance. As mentioned above, antimonial alloys can fracture on impact depending on the variables like antimony percentage, velocity, bullet and hollowpoint design. I wasn't getting consistent, dependable expansion until I went to foundry alloys.

[Malamute]

Was there a point in time wheel weights were less flaky of an alloy?

Some of my wheel weights, perhaps 4 gallons or so worth, are 35 or 40 years old. I had them stashed at dads place and retrieved them after he passed.

Buying the roto alloy comes out to about 221 bullets for the 5 lb ingot for $22. No idea what shipping would be.

A buddy gave me a lead shower pan he removed, I dont know how much weight it is, I cut it up into strips and packed it in 2 gallon buckets. I could soften the wheel weights with it, but as mentioned, I was planning on using it for percussion pistol bullets and possibly rifle round balls, another strong interest I plan to pursue more before long.

[Rick R]

Antimony is a grain refiner for lead.

Much well thought out and knowledgeable stuff redacted

As mentioned above, antimonial alloys can fracture on impact depending on the variables like antimony percentage, velocity, bullet and hollowpoint design. I wasn't getting consistent, dependable expansion until I went to foundry alloys.

I posted my answer last night while tired. You are correct the ratio I was given by the CB guys was somewhere between 1 part tin to 10 - 20 parts soft lead. I had 1 pound ingots of 50/50 solder and mixed each with seven pounds of soft lead, giving me a 1/15 ratio. The mushrooms with that mix into water jugs were textbook.

I don’t know what orifice I pulled those percentages out of. Mea Culpa.

[4given]

Skeeter Skelton loads


http://www.darkcanyon.net/MyFriend_The357.htm

[358156hp]

Was there a point in time wheel weights were less flaky of an alloy?

Some of my wheel weights, perhaps 4 gallons or so worth, are 35 or 40 years old. I had them stashed at dads place and retrieved them after he passed.

Buying the roto alloy comes out to about 221 bullets for the 5 lb ingot for $22. No idea what shipping would be.

A buddy gave me a lead shower pan he removed, I dont know how much weight it is, I cut it up into strips and packed it in 2 gallon buckets. I could soften the wheel weights with it, but as mentioned, I was planning on using it for percussion pistol bullets and possibly rifle round balls, another strong interest I plan to pursue more before long.

If your WWs are that old you should be in good shape. Nowdays WW alloy is blended with other alloys to lower the cost. One favorite that is commonly used is zinc, which has poor casting properties when combined with lead, and has a much higher melting point than lead. The net result of zinc contamination is most commonly poor fillout and porous castings. Some WWs are now made of zinc which is less toxic than lead, other WWs are made of steel. Zinc WWs are marked "Zn", the designation for zinc: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=zin...ages&ia=images Steel WWs are normally marked "Fe": https://www.bendpak.ca/wheel-service...eight-5150265/. I think the most common way to sort WWs anymore is with a pair of sidecutting pliers (sidecutters). If you can dent the WW with sidecutters using moderate pressure, it's most likely lead. If you can't dent the WW, it's most likely zinc or steel. Zinc is a really hard metal. Interestingly enough some guys actually cast bullets with zinc! It makes a very hard, very lightweight bullet. The guys doing this report some really high velocities. Zinc does require casting at very high temps compared to lead. Personally, I'll stick to lead.

Another potential source for lead is bullet swaging companies. I just ordered 60 lbs of scrap bullet core lead from RMR:https://www.rmrbullets.com/shop/rmr-...nnel-hardness/. It is most likely pure lead with about 2% of antimony to make the lead swage into shape more consistently. It should be around 12 bhn or so, and has no tin in the mix. I'll see how it works out and let you know, but it'll be awhile before I'll get a chance to do it. I suspect I may end up adding a couple of percent of tin at most if this alloy doesn't fill out the moulds well. Tin basically reduces the surface tension of lead alloys, improving mould fillout and overall castability. I won't add much, if I add any at all. Tin percentages should be lower than the antimony content and I really don't want to play Mad Scientist trying to balance the two out.