New To Casting-How do I tell what scrap lead I have?

[quillgordo]

I bought a reloading room from a gentleman. I just got a new Lee furnace and I have the mould (45/70 Lyman 457132), flux etc.
I have over 100 pounds of material. It's Lead Ingots, and some wheel weights, and some industrial looking rods etc.
How do I tell what the makeup of my materials are? I probably want to cast 30 to 1 to start with. thanks

[mroliver77]

How about asking the fellow? Is this possible?

Solder sometimes comes in bars. It is usually marked as to the tin/lead content. Alloy with high tin content is usually more shiny than pure lead or WW (wheel weights).

Here is a free book on casting, alloys etc. Everything you need to know about casting and more!
http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Contents.htm

And Welcome!!!
Jay

[randyrat]

Drop the ingots on a concrete floor and compare the ring, ding, dong, or thud
Ring= harder alloy
Thud= soft or pure lead.
Acquire a few WW ingots and some pure lead, drop them on the floor and listen for comparison.
It is not a joke, it works. One thing you want to be careful about is if you have some Tin Sn ingots, they will fool you. Melt temp is real low compared to WWs or ever further apart from soft lead.

[Tar Heel]

WOW. Without knowing I would wager that the best (and least expensive) way to determine what you have is to test the BNH. That would be about the least costly way to determine what you are working with. Correlate the BNH with existing allows. A great list can be found in the previously mentioned book. Odds are you either have wheel weight metal or Lyman #2 alloy.[smilie=s:

[littlejack]

quillgordo:
Welcome to the CastBoolits.
You did not mention if you will be loading the 45-70 with black powder or smokeless. If bp, you can use 20-1 or 30-1 alloy as you stated. I use 20-1 alloy with no problems at all.
If you are going to load with smokeless powder, you can use straight ww metal or you can add 1% tin to the ww metal, whatever you like.
What shape is the metal rods? I worked in metal fab shops and the solder was bought in triagular extruded sticks, about 3/8 per flat side and 16" long with no markings. The tin/lead content was marked on the outside of the box the solder came in.
If you have a salvage yard near you, you can bring some to them and they may have a tester to read the composition of the material. I have done this locally where I live.
Jack

[ghh3rd]

That's a nice heavy boolit - hope you have lots of alloy ;) I get picked on cause I shoot 420 gr boolits.

[454PB]

This is a good example of the reason we should all mark our alloy, loaded ammo, primers, etc.

When I buy powder, I write the purchase date on the container, same with primers.

When I cast a batch of boolits, the cast date and alloy are in a note with them. If I size a batch, alloy and size are noted.

Every box of handloads has the recipe and date loaded marked on a card.

All my lead alloys are also identified, either on the individual ingots or stored in a marked bucket.

Some of this effort is for me, but also for whomever has to sort all this stuff out after I start my dirt nap.

[sqlbullet]

Test the following values:

Hardness - Any test that will get you within a few points if good enough. I have a Lee test kit and it is amonth the cheaper ones.

solidous point - This is the point at which the metal actually 'freezes' and no longer behaves as a solid. After heating above this point the lead alloy will have a consistency like a slurpee until it reaches....

liquidus point - The point at which all the ice has melted from your slurpee and all you have left is actual liquid.

For pure lead, 63/37 solder, linotype and other alloys the solidus and liquidus points are the same temp. These will melt like an ice-cube in a drink. The chunk of metal will just get smaller and smaller in the liquid. All the others will get soft, then mushy, then slushy, then liquid.

If you know these three properties, hardness, solidus and liquidus you can consult the data on melting point and hardness for various alloys and get a pretty good idea what you have.

[Tar Heel]

This is a good example of the reason we should all mark our alloy, loaded ammo, primers, etc.

When I buy powder, I write the purchase date on the container, same with primers.

When I cast a batch of boolits, the cast date and alloy are in a note with them. If I size a batch, alloy and size are noted.

Every box of handloads has the recipe and date loaded marked on a card.

All my lead alloys are also identified, either on the individual ingots or stored in a marked bucket.

Some of this effort is for me, but also for whomever has to sort all this stuff out after I start my dirt nap.

What he said!! ;-)

[quillgordo]

Thanks to all for the quick and numerous replies. I'm in a bunch of forums, but this is by far the most helpful. I have a pic of my stock that I took and saved to the computer. then I clicked on the hosting link and saved it, but i get this error message saying my file is not an image. I don't know how else to post a pic. Thanks

[454PB]

Do some reading here, it should help you with posting pictures:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/faq.php?faq=vb3_reading_posting#faq_vb3_attachment s