chemistry class please...

[mike in co]

i have some nice clean soft lead and some shot.....

what mix gives me what alloy/hardness ??

shot is older...1970/80's

lead is fresh...esy to mark with my thumb nail

thanks

[Blammer]

9 pounds to 1 pound of shot would be my guess for WW consistency.

[grumpy one]

Lead shot usually contain somewhere between 0.5% and 2% antimony, with a maximum of 6%:
http://www.shotgunreport.com/TechTech/TechnoidArchive/19-May-06.pdf

If you want to produce the equivalent of WW for example (typically 4% antimony) you'd pretty much have to use 100% shot and no pure lead at all. Even then you'd probably come up short on antimony.

Unless you are trying for a very soft alloy, such as for BP use, you'll need to alloy with something having a much higher antimony content than ordinary lead shot.

[montana_charlie]

Information about lead shot can be found on this page ( http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm ) a third of the way down on the left hand side.

The stuff is harder than WW...
CM

[grumpy one]

CM, shot are normally water-dropped, which results in them being pretty hard when fresh, though they soften with age.

[GP100man]

make an ingot from the shot & see how hard it is then youll know what you have to start with ,then you can start at 50/50 or 70/30 accordingly to what you gonna shoot!!
just thinking out loud.

GP100man

[cohutt]

Smelted some funky nasty shot today that came form a boat keel. Cleaned and in ingots it was similar to wheel weights but even a little more "clinky" like lino.

I'll send a small piece to anyone who wants to test it for hardness and post results.

I only had 1 partial bucket, about 75 lbs. I had been putting it off due to the oily solvent coating and pieces of fiberglass etc stuck in it. Wind was right so i put up a big toxic cloud over my town..... the pot burned off for 10+ minutes. nastiest stuff i have ever messed with.

[Jon K]

If it came from a boat, it is probably zinc anode- not lead. Boats use zinc for electrolysis. and yes it's naaaasty!

Jon
:castmine:

[NuJudge]

I want to say I remember high antimony giving lots of hardness, but causing a lot of shrinkage on freezing. Cracking and other things would be the result.

CDD

[montana_charlie]

grump,
According to the information on the webpage (not my experience) the arsenic in shot makes it hard...and valuable for hardening other alloys.
CM

[grumpy one]

CM, Britannica says arsenic is added to shot to improve roundness:
http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-9272963

This site says the same:
http://archive.xstrata.com/brm/www.brm.co.uk/lead/uses/shot.htm

This site has what I see as the most coherent explanation in relation to hardening: arsenic alone can harden lead but has low solubility and is therefore impractical. (It is stated elsewhere that the maximum amount of arsenic that will dissolve in lead is 0.3%) However arsenic added in trace quantities to lead-antimony alloy improves heat treatment (age hardening) properties:
http://www.key-to-metals.com/Article88.htm


We each have to decide individually what we regard as more reliable and less reliable among the various allegations we read on the internet.

[cohutt]

If it came from a boat, it is probably zinc anode- not lead. Boats use zinc for electrolysis. and yes it's naaaasty!

Jon
:castmine:
??

it cast out into ingots pretty well when i got the 1/2 inch of ash off the surface. I noticed that a pretty good number of shot did not melt- maybe zinc there. they floated and bobbed around just like the zin wheel weights do. I was thinking maybe steel shot mixed in.

isn't electolysis a salt water phenom? This likely was local unless someone drove a nasty funky bucket of shot 400 miles form nearest coast. (But stranger things happen)

[buck1]

I will test it for ya ...PM sent

[leftiye]

Electrolysis- They use zinc around aluminum to keep the aluminum from decomposing. Call it sacrificial electron donor. That "ash" sounds like zinc to me. I didn't think lead decomposed that way in Salt water. Some that I cast into ingots from a boat keel had a thin yellow skin on it. Skin wouldn't melt.

[Goatlips]

Sailors clamp sacrificial zinc anodes around their prop shafts so that electrolysis won't eat away their brass propellors.

Since I can't seem to sell my boat, I stabbed the keel with my Spyderco and it went in deep and shiny. Gonna drill out some shavings next week and if it's pure lead, I'll consider having a chain saw party. :mrgreen:

Goatlips