Today I will be cleaning .22 revolvers, while hanging out at my old stomping grounds at Coal Creek Armory.
Both my Model 34 and my K-22 Combat Masterpiece have sent enough lead downrange that it's time for the complete-taking-apart and bathing. The Kit Gun is so fouled that the cylinder is getting hard to turn.
It's tough to get a centerfire gun that dirty, at least when you're poor like me.
"tough to get a centerfire gun that dirty"
ReplyDeleteJust shoot Wolf. :)
I think what people really want to know is: where is Noah's pistol in the Gunsmith Bob receiving line?
ReplyDeleteShootin' Buddy, friend of the people
The .38 Special equivalents of your two revolvers can get downright dirty when fired with home-cast SWCs made with scrounged wheel weights and charged with Bullseye or Unique. The Lewis lead remover and lead wipe-away clothes comes in handy. :)
ReplyDeleteInstead of bricks of .22s, I go through three-pound coffee cans of .38s. When the rain washes the spent bullets out of the berm, I melt them back down. It refines one's fluxing technique. If the lead gets a little too soft, I throw in some 60-40 solder. The tricky thing is that every so often, primers become hard to find.
Pity JMB PBUH and Boss Kettering didn't have a productive professional relationship. Ethyl Corp's rationale (or "excuse" depending on which side of the Scandal you backed) for adding lead compounds to fuel was, secondly, that the dissolved lead acted as a lubricant in difficult spaces like the oilite bushings of valve guides. Kettering was at first a proponent of alcohol fuels, then bit the billet (ostensibly at directorial behest) and enabled leaded gas by developing better compounds to accomplish the task.
ReplyDeleteHad lead not such become such a bugaboo, so early, great minds might have come up with heat- and pressure- sensitive metal compounds to accomplish the same task in a pistol. Clearly, internal combustion science was developed in the gun shop, and only perfected (to its current point) in the automotive labs that GM does not run anymore.
Somerled, are those car wheelweights, or tractor wheelweights? I have several hundred pounds of remelt car weights, and that lead usually runs too hard, not too soft. We need to talk to a wheelweight historian, then stalk the back streets with a pair of those funky pliers...
ReplyDeleteI haven't googled it yet, but I'll just bet there are wheelweight historians. I've probably met one and not known it.
WV: "forti." How it's spelled when you give a 12-pack to the Queen.
Aren't 'Lead' wheelweights being prohibited or phased out in the tire industry? I know its getting harder and harder to find 'Lead' wheelweights around here.
ReplyDeleteAll The Best,
Frank W. James
That's because all the wheelweights in White and Tippecanoe County are in Shoaf's basement!
ReplyDeleteShootin' Buddy
used to have a ruger bearcat single six... super little gun
ReplyDeleteenjoy the cleanup :)
Darn my dumb job thing... had I know, I would have swung by on my lunch break and said hi.
ReplyDeleteAnon: Just shoot Wolf. :)
ReplyDeleteI swear to ghod, that Wolf ammo would shoot cleaner if disassembled, and reloaded using Swiss FFFg as propellant ... this is not a joke or hyperbole.
I get lead from plumbers who do a lot of remodel work and roofers ... old homes used lead sheet to waterproof bathroom floors and roofs.
ReplyDeleteEver thought of getting an ultrasonic bath for these jobs?
ReplyDeleteWord verif- anarke In the UK?
There's a difference between 'poor' and 'gun-poor'...
ReplyDeleteShootin' Buddy sez:
ReplyDeletewhere is Noah's pistol in the Gunsmith Bob receiving line?
Uh, one RIA .45 is in the bedroom on the nightstand, the other is on my hip. Unless you meant the .32 Brazilian revolver hand-me-down? That's in a case...somewhere in the house.
Unless you meant another Noah...
The wheel weights are old, broken ones my Dad brought home in buckets from various junkyards.
ReplyDeleteActually, I add tin to the lead pot every so often so the the poured alloy better fills mold cavities. Sometimes antimony has to be added, but not so often. I have to refortify the alloy from time to time because 22 slugs and pure lead projectiles wash out of the berm as well. I make ingots with the aid of old muffin pans when the alloy tests out hard enough.
Some heat treat bullets made with wheel weights to make them harder. I've also heard that older wheel weight alloy had more antimony in the mix, which made it harder.
I use plumber's lead and solder to make 20-1 alloy for .45-70 BP loads.
kbarrett, don't waste that lead sheet by melting it down! It works as one layer of a radiation shield, and it's sure easier to save than it is to beat it back out into sheet. Wish I had more.
ReplyDelete