Adding Silver to the mix...

[Iron River Red]

I just added 4 oz of some kind of solder called "Safe Flo" Silver lead free solder.

It doesn't give the blend on the label, but WOW! Talk about some nice looking bullets!!!!!!!!

I added the 4 oz to 35lbs of ww and fluxed lightly... now I'm planning on going back to the hardware tomorrow!

Am I screwing up here? Does anyone know anything about this stuff?

I'm not quenching them and they appear fairly hard.

Please advise...

[kenjuudo]

It is 95% tin, 5% antimony.

jim

[beagle]

Sounds like good stuff but I'll bet it's pricey.

Silver's not a bad alloy material either but a bit pricey. I've put some scrap in the pot and it made some hard bullets./beagle

[StarMetal]

I tried some of Oregan Trails cast bullets with silver in them when they first came out and boy, they leaded all my guns up bad. I told them about it too. I wasn't shooting hot loads either. They sent me more.

Joe

[JSH]

Ditto to that Joe. I ended up having to tumble lube them in alox, but still wasn't what I would call good. I called and told them the same thing as to their "no leading" policy. They pointed their finger at every thing but the bullet. Thanks, but I will cast my own from now on. The last couple of hundred got thrown into the smelting pot.
Jeff

[NVcurmudgeon]

Red, Lead free solder is usually 95% tin. In this brave new world where everything is a haz-mat you can go to the manufacturer's web site and read the MSDS sheets. If my calculations are correct you are adding about 7/10 of 1%, which may be enough to improve castability. I use 140 grains with each one lb. ingot, which is 2%, which a lot of posters here say is overkill. The proof of the pudding is in the keeper ratio, and it sounds like you are making some great boolits.

[Iron River Red]

The 7 tenths is probably more like 1% now that I have weighed the remaining solder.

That 1% makes an awesome difference. The bullets look like none I have ever done before. They don't frost as bad when the mold temp gets a little high like they did before. It may be me , but it doesn't look like the crud that I have been seeing in the flux residue is as bad either.

I probably paid too much for the roll. It was $8 for 8oz. I'm not going to add it to my less expensive bullets for the economy plinker and cowboy action people, but I'm going to test them thoroughly and may offer them in my 405 gr .458, 350gr .500 offering. When ready they will be a custom (borerider type) gas check design and available in hollow point too.

If any of you guys are shooting the 500S&W and want to help me evaluate them let me know and I'll send you a sample.

Does anyone have a cheaper source for this type of solder?

Is this the same stuff that Oregon Trail calls their silver bullets? I have never tried adding actual silver to them, but would be open to a trial if anyone knows how to get the alloy together.

Has anyone tried adding Nickle? I have some scrap Nickle and Silver that I'm not scared to sacrifice...

:coffee:

[mike in co]

speaking of oregon trail silver boolits......one of the clubs i shoot at, had very good results with thier boolits. they use to deliver to us on thier way to dropping off to large buyers. a bunch of us shot thier boolits when the cost was right, when we lost the shipping we went to rainier. silver was just marketing...the lead source had small amounts of silver. so you spends your money and you takes your chances...

[tall grass]

I think what Red is using is silver solder not to be confused with lead based solder. Thats about the right price for it Red. Great brazing type stuff, real tuff and you dont use much. The two surfaces need to mate well, heat to red or almost red hot and let the silver solder sweat in. I've always wondered how it would alloy in boolits. Will wait on your report on how they shoot.

Jim

[Lee W]

I found Homedepot has 95/5 for around 12 bucks a pound.
Be carful with the "lead free" stuff, some have copper in it which is said to hinder casting.

[felix]

Not for the amount you will be using in a whole pot's worth. ... felix

[carpetman]

Not enough weirwolves around here to justify buying it. There is one guy that wears a black mask and seems to have a phobia about them as he uses silver bullets. If the population of them becomes a concern,guess I'll let him handle it.

[Iron River Red]

How about adding Nickle? I don't know if it will alloy or if the temp is too high. I just happen to have some nickle wire I'm not using?

I guess this is all about R&D anyway for now...

[David R]

Home depot has 97/3 for $8.76. see their web page. That is pretty cheap for tin.

[NVcurmudgeon]

Carpetman, I know you won't remember this, but maybe your father told you about it. In about 1960, Gun World magazine had a writer cast silver bullets, in (naturally) .45 Colt. This was before another gunwriter added "long" to the cartridge name. He wore a complete Lone Ranger outfit, and his partner was dressed as a perfect Tonto. IIRC, the bullets were not very successful.

[Scrounger]

Carpetman, I know you won't remember this, but maybe your father told you about it. In about 1960, Gun World magazine had a writer cast silver bullets, in (naturally) .45 Colt. This was before another gunwriter added "long" to the cartridge name. He wore a complete Lone Ranger outfit, and his partner was dressed as a perfect Tonto. IIRC, the bullets were not very successful.

That would have been Jack Lewis. I well remember that story. CarpetMan was probably too busy playing with his little pickup to read much. You'll note he does wear glasses...

[tall grass]

Guys

I am mistaken about the stuff you are using Red. I was reading the post, rather quickly, on my break at work and realize that it couldn't be silver solder. The price you paid for this is comperable to 95-5 solder. I have seen silver on the lables of 95-5 before also. The silver solder we have at work is alot higher in price. $8.00 per ounce or more I'm guessing. Sorry, didn't mean to add confusion.

Jim

[Linstrum]

Like the others said, the lead-free plumber's solder nowadays is mostly tin with varying amounts of bismuth and antimony added to control hardness and melting point. They sometimes throw in some copper and/or silver to increase strength. The stuff I have seen is around 95% to 98% tin with the remainder being the other ingredients.

Harbor Freight sometimes has solder alloy that is 98% tin 2% silver for $6 per pound, and when I see it for that price I grab all they have.

Silver's physical properties are virtually identical to copper. If copper weren't red you couldn't tell it from silver without doing some pretty sophisticated tests. One of the few differences is that copper oxidizes somewhat easily while silver does not. Both react with sulfur and sulfur-containing materials. That is why real silverware tarnishes so badly around food and in the kitchen - - - stick a silver or silver-plate fork in a pot of cooking broccoli or some scrambled eggs and it starts to turn dark pretty quick!

It is too bad that The Tale of the Lone Ranger had our masked friend sitting around the campfire casting silver boolits out of his frying pan, or whatever. The author either didn't know or didn't care that it can't be done exactly that way. Silver melts at a slightly lower temperature than copper, but not by too much, both melt at a pretty good red heat. They are both fairly difficult to get alloyed into lead and it takes a lot of time and patience to get them stirred in, I have spent an hour getting some fine 22-gauge copper wire dissolved into a pound of solder, and the solder had to be heated to the point of producing lead fumes to get the copper melted in, meanwhile the other ingredients were getting burned out and oxidized.

Nickel is a pretty rough customer, which is why it is used as a substantial percentage in rifle barrel and connecting rod steel, stainless steel, jet engine alloys, and a myriad of other high temperature high strength applications. To get it to dissolve into a lead or tin based alloy it has to be heated up to its melting point in an inert atmosphere of argon or nitrogen. Red-hot nickel reacts vigorously with carbon monoxide produced by a welding torch flame to form a very poisonous gas called nickel carbonyl and a lot of the nickel can be lost because of this. In fact, that is one way that super pure nickel is made. If you need nickel dissolved into your alloy it is extremely difficult to do that at home. It can be done, but it takes a long time and a lot of patience, plus a lot of flux to keep the other ingredients in the melt from burning out while you are waiting for the nickel to get around to dissolving. The easiest way is to work outside and use a welding torch to heat the nickel in a graphite crucible with it covered with molten borax or boric acid, and when it gets molten to add either tin or lead to it. The tin/lead will boil a bit and is why you need to do it outside and downwind from where it could poison your neighbor. There are nickel-containing plumber's solders available and if you want to add some nickel, then find that stuff and add it. Nickel bearing plumber's solder is used where poor fit-up is a problem because the nickel solder bridges gaps and is physically pretty strong. From my experiments with nickel solder boolit-casting alloys it messes up mould fill-out big time exactly because of this gap-bridging property! But, it may decrease leading, so if you want to try it I don't see any reason why not, but be prepared for it behaving really different from what you are used to.

The stuff that I think has the best promise as an additive in boolit alloy is phosphorus, and I have been buying phos-copper brazing rod that is used for refrigeration tubing to add to some of my alloy as a hardener and anti-leading ingredient. The phos-copper of course has mostly copper in it, but in the amounts that I have been experimenting with, I have not had any major problems from the copper causing brittleness or other problems - - - yet. The only thing that worries me about adding phosphorus is that it forms phosphoric acid under some circumstances and it may rot out the melting pot after awhile. With my Lee electric pot I haven't had any trouble so far, though. The boolits are pretty hard and what I had in mind with using phos-copper is to make a lead-based cast boolit with characteristics like the Barnes solid copper.

[StarMetal]

Back in the 60's Guns & Ammo did an article about the use of silver bullet by the Lone Ranger. Aside from the casting problems because of a much higher needed temperature, they said that the silver being much much harder then lead would have probably destroyed those early model blackpowder frame Colts. They even stated that it might have blowed the gun up just from the pressure of trying to force that hard silver bullet down the bore.

Joe

[Iron River Red]

I appreciate your words of knowledge and Wisdom, gentlemen. I am humbled to be associated with men of your caliber.

I'm going to check out the Home Depot this afternoon and will keep my eye on the Harbor Freight bunch too.

Again, much appreciated.

Red

[KCSO]

Jack Lewis is still alive and writing. He had an article in last months Leatherneck Magazine. I still have some of those old magazines around and I will see if I can find the Silver Bullet article.