What hardness Are Battery ends

[Odie]

Hi,new here,been casting handgun for a while just starting rifle...Friend gave me about 200 broken battery cable terminals-what hardness are these?When I melted down,they are greyish...don't look like pure lead Thanks...

[largom]

I just finished smelting 100 lbs. of battery terminals and clamps.They are not pure lead. The test samples I made tested 17 BHN after ageing one week. I suspect they have a high antimony content. Hardness will likely increase with more ageing.

Larry

[Odie]

Thanks for quick reply-I think use them for rifle...

[geargnasher]

I've had them be anywhere from 7-8 bhn to 12-14 or so after "aging". They're one of the dirtiest sources of lead that I've ever messed with, you can tell by the amount of junk that comes out with the flux. I think lots of calcium, aluminium, copper, zinc, and who knows what else is in the mix, since the manufacturers are thinking CHEAP first when putting in purchase orders of alloy. They make good boolits once you clean up and sweeten the alloy, though.

Gear

[runfiverun]

some of the newer ones contain [or are made of] zinc, part of the whole lead is dangerous to look at thing the world is going through .

[williamwaco]

I bought about 180 pounds of them and they averaged 10BNH.

They make excellent bullets as-is.


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[largom]

I think the clamps on the battery cables contain more lead and are softer than the battery terminals/posts. What I smelted contained more battery posts than cable clamps thus the higher BHN.

Larry

[BulletFactory]

I had one that must have been nearly pure zinc, I had the lead melting at about 700*F, and it floated on top not offering to melt. It got tossed pretty abruptly.

[Mal Paso]

The more expensive forklift type battery Lugs are 98% Lead 2% Antimony. They used to be massive but the last new set were quite a bit smaller.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I've smelted two batches of auto battery cable ends,
Yep, some of them are zinc, Brass, and/or the steel strap type.

The first batch I got, over a year ago, was a small bucket weighing about 40 lbs and they looked real old, like they came off 1960's autos. they were all lead alloy (no zinc or brass), and fairly soft, BHN of 7 or 8.

The second batch was from a different source, A auto-salvage yard currently crushing today's autos.
Oh, the melting/burning plastic and flumes from heated acid oxidation is still in my nose. Yep of the 300+ lbs of these I smelted, there was 6 zinc ends, 10 or 20 ends of the steel strap type, and about 15 lbs of brass ends. This alloy (BHN 13) was considerabling harder than the previous batch and a little harder than my typical WW alloy (which is about BHN 11 to 12). all BHN measurments were at one day after smelting.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

The more expensive forklift type battery Lugs are 98% Lead 2% Antimony. They used to be massive but the last new set were quite a bit smaller.

I also got what looks like lead alloy connector links for multiple batteries, like in a fork lift or other...they were harder than WW alloy and were probably around 2% antimony.
Jon