In school: We learn lessons, and are given tests.
In life: We are given tests, and learn lessons.
OK People. Enough of this idle chit-chat.
This ain't your Grandma's sewing circle.
EVERYONE!
Back to your oars. The Captain wants to waterski.
Member BNE does XRF. He'll send you results for a pound of lead alloy for each test, sent with the small sample you want analyzed. He has very specific instructions that he will pm to you; be sure to follow them exactly.
High tin lead alloys are good for adding to casting metals, improving mold fill out and changing the hardness and terminal ballistics. Up to 2% total tin in the final mix is used for changing casting properties, for the hardness and effects on mushrooming and weight retention, I'll defer to those who actually hunt.
IIRC, if those numbers are ratios, the first number, at least for solder made of just Sn and Pb, is the tin content.
That's correct. Though most solder with lead in it is 60/40 or 63/37, with that last one the lowest possible melting point for lead based solder. If you find lead free solder, some of it is 95/5 tin/antimony. A bit of antimony hardens the lead, and also helps a bit with mold fill out. Antimony is a weird metal. It expands a bit when cooling, like water, and not much of anything else. You'll also sometimes find ingots that look like lead or solder, but are Babbitt metal, used in bearings for machinery and some old engines. There are a bunch of formulations for that, mostly tin with small percentages of copper, antimony, and other metals sometimes including lead. I've managed to scarf a couple of those here as I play with old machine tools, as well. Haven't actually re-poured a Babbitt bearing yet, but I'm sure it's in my future if I live long enough to get the SB Heavy 10L lathe rebuilt.
Bill
If you’re needing something like wheelweight lead, I can help you out of a pinch. I’m not in the habit of ripping folks off, or selling a crapload to a friend cheap...then find out later they had it resold before they bought it.
A very good multi-generational family friend keeps his lead for me and a few other friends. Most of the time, they do the collecting, and I melt it down slowly, flux twice with bees wax, then pour it up into ingots. A flat rate box full of whatever weight they allow, goes a long way when lead is scarce.
I’m not a lead dealer, nor do I want to be. But a buck a pound plus shipping is what I think is a decent round number. I’ve got some wheelweight lead to spare, so if you just need 50 pounds or so...hit me with a pm.
ive seen bar solder marked with cast in numbers like that. they were usually about a foot long and back in good ole days they were very common in auto repair shops to fix radiators and do body work with.
I'd would not hesitate to buy the stuff for $2/lb if I had the $$ in my pocket.
ive been using bar solder like that to add tin to clip on wheel weights for about as long as I been casting bullets. I'm getting down to my last handful of pounds left and then I'll be into melting down the pewter stuff for tin
just for reference as far as ive ever seen odd numbers like the 63-37 is very common for soldering wires kester solder with pine tar flux. the 50-50, 60-40 and 70-30 in bar or block form is much more common for radiators and body work and maybe even for plumbers and telephone cables but I have no expertise in plumbing or telephone work
Last edited by farmbif; 02-09-2021 at 10:46 AM.
You didn't provide a picture of what you have. The ingots of solder we're referring to are factory produced, not home cast, and the numbers are cast in by the factory molds, not hand stamped. As farmbif described, some of the solder ingots have a distinctive shape.
Some folks will melt scrap solder into ingots and mark the content, if known (I have done this) Such ingots tend to be shinier, tend to oxidize much less, and are significantly lighter for their size than lead ingots. Caveat emptor still applies.
Did you buy what you asked about in the OP? If so, if the marked ingots actually are factory or reingotted scrap solder, having a good number of them makes the price paid for the lot much more reasonable (the wholesale price of tin is 10-15 times that of lead).
Last edited by kevin c; 02-09-2021 at 01:36 PM.
No. These are darker, not so light and numbers are hand stamped into the ingots. Not a factory production ingot. This comes from an old mans estate. Didn’t pay for it. There are a lot of shiny, light weight ingots with either a “T” or “TIN” stamped into them.
I wasn't clear enough in my description; high tin ingots will be lighter than lead ingots of the same age and size, but both will tarnish, given enough time and under conditions favoring surface oxidation. It's just that the high tin alloy will darken less (and I don't think will get white lead oxides on the surface).
It seems a good bet that the light, shiny "T" and "Tin" marked ingots contain a lot of tin; what's not certain is how much in each, percentage wise. Used for improved fill out, some would just add small amounts of what you have to a pot until it casts well, and call it good. Others, wanting the properties of a specific alloy, would like to know exact content in order to add an exact amount of tin.
If you want exact content, there are density and hardness tests that can help, but XRF analysis is probably the most definitive. Rather than test every ingot, if you can group them by type and send a representative sample for testing, it'll cost much less. Some might go so far as to melt all the various marked ingots together to have a single homogeneous lot defined by a single test, but at the cost of time, effort, propane, and the risk that a contaminant in one ingot will taint all the rest.
I have pulled out a sampling of ingots from all that I have, about ten. Some large and some the small 1/2 size and one of my own Cupcake ingots. I plan on shipping these once I have the instructions.
There are about 10 samples
Last edited by mkj4him; 02-09-2021 at 04:57 PM.
If you use BNE, the sample to be tested should only be BB sized. He's very busy and it's apparently harder and more time consuming to work with a large test piece. The ingots used for payment can be standard size.
I usually use a propane torch on the corner of an ingot to melt off a sample. Dripped onto a flat metal surface just 3 to 4 inches below the ingot, the drop splashes and hardens into a disc or oval with a very flat underside. This gets taped to a card with sample information and my screen name here so BNE can get the results back to me.
rotometals has certified pure for $2.50/# TYD
https://www.rotometals.com/cut-in-ha...ight-included/
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -- H.L. Mencken
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.― H.L. Mencken
You can get it cheaper than that by buying quantity.
Lead-ingots-99-9-1000-pounds-freight-included/
Matt
44 Special Articles
With regards to gun control in this country, everyone should be asking themselves one question:
What is it that this government feels they need to do, but can't do, unless the citizens of this nation are first disarmed?
(I seriously doubt you can come up with any plausible answers that you will like...)
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
I recently went to my local scrap yard and got wheel weights for $.75 a lb. there have been a few zinc and steel weights but the percentage was low. I was pleased with that based on the relative scarcity of lead clip in weights these days.
Matt
44 Special Articles
With regards to gun control in this country, everyone should be asking themselves one question:
What is it that this government feels they need to do, but can't do, unless the citizens of this nation are first disarmed?
(I seriously doubt you can come up with any plausible answers that you will like...)
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |