Playing with lead and tin

[David LaPell]

I finally got around to casting some more bullets recently, some #358156 HP's which I added some tin to. These were wheel weights with about 1/4 pound of tin added as well. I fired them into some wet newsprint. They started off as 147 grains and ended up about 141 grains and expanded well without breaking up. I am going to do some more testing (these were in my .38-44 loads doing about 1,200 fps). They penetrated about a foot.

 

[Frank237]

I use 4% tin with my WW's. Allows especially keith style slugs to fill out with clean,sharp edges and seems to make the slugs less prone to breakage in dirt. They do what yours did....flow versus simply shearing off.

Never recovered any Keith slugs from game, but a little tin can't hurt. Trouble it it's so darned expensive now.

 

[loc n load]

Casting

The 358156 is a great bullet, I have cast thousands of those since I started casting in the mid 70's. I just use straight wheel weights, as they have always worked well for what I use them for. I normally run my 357's with 13.5 of 2400 or if hunting deer I bump them up to 15gr of 2400. Over the years I have harvested over 30 deer with my 357's, 41 mag's, 44 spl's, 44 mag's and 45 LC's...all using my cast SWC's, powered by Unique or 2400 depending on the caliber and the barrel length. I have also cast thousands of rn or swc's for my autoloaders as well using straight wheel weights also. It's all good. Good shooting.

 

[308]

I've shot untold hundreds of pounds of ww's and have never added any tin. I've smoked a few moulds, and turned the heat up a bit sometimes to make them fill out but never saw any reason for adding tin.

I have about 3-4 buckets of sorted, read good ww's and when these are gone I plan to start shooting a lead tin alloy, I plan to try 20-1 first and hope it will do for my shooting, 1000fps plus or minus 50 or so, if it won't I'll try 16-1 and keep fiddleing untill I find a good replacement for the old pre zinc and pre calcium ww's

One thing I do agree with though is tin is dang expensive these days!

 

[fredj338]

My prefered alloy for any LHP is 25-1 lead/tin to 1100fps+. Up to 1400fps, 20-1 works a bit better. The tin allows teh lead to be ductile & not fragment like ww alloy. So your 1/4# of tin will sweeten about 10# of pure lead. If you are just adding tin for good mold fill out w/ ww alloy, 1-2% is plenty. More than that & you are just spending money.

 

[Scot Templar]

Unique tin source

Have been helping a friend and a CAS shooter do some casting in my area and ran across pure tin in a powder form in 1/2/5lbs bottles. The powder is granular and can be measured in precise amounts with a scale and while not exactly cheap it does allow tailor made runs of alloys in casting. Supposedly because of the purity and form, less material can be utilized compaired to solder or alloyed tin. The friend I was helping has used it for a couple of years with good results in his loads both in CAS and hunting. It was obtained from a welding supply company in Va., called Maintenance Technology of Va., 8046392456 per data on the label.