linotype vs tin in alloy

[Hayfield]

Has anyone mixed some alloy replacing tin with linotype in a lead alloy. I'm shooting 25:1 now with a 9.5 hardness on the bhn scale on aged bullets. I do all my casting in the winter and the bullets sit till the season starts here in April. I happen to have been blessed with a source for linotype so I bought 700 lbs in 22 lb ingots. With the price of tin now I was hoping to replace it with the type. Got a recipie for me?

[glicerin]

Hayfield: linotype has approx. 80% lead, 12% antimony, 6%tin. I believe the lino will harden your alloy too much, but the high velocity casters' would die for it. Tin babbit at 80% tin, 12%antimony might be a little better, if available.

[grumpy one]

If you want to come out with a hardness of 9.5 BHN, you will need a considerably lower antimony content than pure WW alloy - my WW ingots average 14.9 BHN after one year of aging. Five parts of pure lead to one of linotype will give you 0.7% tin and 2.0% antimony, which might be close to 9.5 BHN, and will probably be acceptably castable. I suggest you try that for a start, and adjust the lead-to-lino ratio slightly until you get the hardness you want. Note that you could get the same result more cheaply by mixing lead and WW in somewhere about a one-to-one ratio, then adding a tiny amount of solder. (The WW contain arsenic, which complicates the hardness situation somewhat.)

[Hayfield]

Thanks for the responses guys. I was hoping that someone else had to dealt with this same situation and could give me a formula without me having to mix some small batches and wait a month or so to test aged hardness. I guess thats what I'll do now. I've got to save my ww for dropping shot so thats out. I just need to keep my hardness reasonable. 9.0 to probably 12.0 should be acceptable for BPCR sil matches. If I get something that looks good I'll post it here.

[Boz330]

I have gotten some pretty good groups with WW in my BPCR but it also tends to lead up more than the tin lead mix in a full match. Sorry I don't have a formula for you, but I don't see why it wouldn't work using one of the mixes listed above. Besides experimentation is half the fun.

Bob