something found in my WW's

[**oneshot**]

I was smelting some WW's today and came across a nickel sized piece of metal. It has a rounded edge and is slightly thicker than a nickel. I'm not sure what it is but it sank to the bottom of my pot. I fished it out without a problem.

I'm going to search and find out what kind of metal will sink in lead.

[sledgehammer]

Please do, and let us know, too. This should be interesting. Maybe carbide?
Jon H aka sledge

[Lee W]

I have heard that tungsten or depleted uranium is used to balance crankshafts. that could be it.

[randyrat]

Get your "will & Testomony" in order.... I wonder if it is Cadium from batteries or spent platonium(non radioactive) See if it glows in the dark

[Jon K]

Ditto- I got a bucket of WW last week, I thought I scored pretty good- seperated clip-on & stick-on WW. Smelting @600* Clip-on yeilded 32/42 lb and surprise surprise - Stick-ons yeilded 27/34 lbs- In this were floaters and what looked like a core to the little square weghts which sank to the bottom. What will turn up next? Your guess is as good as any.

But anyways It's hard to complain for FREE!

Jon
:castmine:

[leftiye]

If it's real hard, it might be carbide. I understand that is denser than lead. Barnes experimented with some carbide cored solids at one time- now that's a hard cored bullet!

[jhalcott]

When I worked in the steel mill the rolls would get chipped once in a while. This meant down time to change the rolls.If the chip was transferred to the back up rolls even more time was lost. They traced the damage to the carbide tools that the machinists were throwing into the scrap bins. Apparently the 24-2500 degrees in the furnace wasn't enough to melt the carbide.

[Firebird]

The only common metal that sinks in lead is tungsten, and it's so much denser (about 75%) that most tungsten alloys will also sink in lead. Gold and most of the platinum metal group (palladium, osmium, iridium etc) are also much heavier than lead, and also very expensive (gold is actually cheaper than most of the platinum group).
As far as carbides, yes tungsten carbide is very heavy due to it's tungsten content. But there are other metals that will combine with carbon to form very hard, high melting point substances. Redding uses titanium carbide in their die inserts, and vanadium carbide can also be used for cutting tools as it is twice as hard as tungsten carbide. Boron carbide is used in bullet-proof vests for the light weight ceramic armor plates used to stop rifle rounds.