A novel reduction method has been developed to fabricate ultrafine tungsten heavy alloy powders, with ammonium metatungstate (AMT), iron(II) chloride tetrahydrate (FeCl(2)center dot 4H(2)O), nickel(II) chloride hexahydrate (NiCl(2)center dot 6H(2)O) as source materials and sodium tungstate dihydrate (Na(2)WO(4)center dot 2H(2)O) as a reductant. In the preparation of mixtures the amounts of the source components were chosen so as to obtain alloy of 93W-5Ni-2Fe composition (wt.%). The obtained powders were characterized by X-ray diffraction, XPS, field-emission scanning microscope (FESEM). and chemical composition was analyzed by EDX. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.