Mystery Alloy?

[RU shooter]

Its lighter than lead, lower melting temp. and too hard for my thumb nail to even touch it needs a sharp knife to scratch it. Its also shiney and cools very quick ,clinking sound when tapped together. The guy said he got it from the sawmill ,said they used these to somehow hold the blade from moving in the template when they resharpened them???? Got me on that one!. I read the acticle about specific gravity test so thats next as soon as Im dong pouring whatever it is into small ingots. So what do I have oh alloy masters and metalurgist's ???? Would be nice to find out I can actually use the stuff,If not I got some shiney paper weights for sale! cheap! TIA, Tim

[No_1]

It may be simular to cerosafe. There is a metal product out there for machinist that is low melt point just for making fixtures. I am sure the machinist here will pipe in what the name is since is escapes me at the moment.

R.


Its lighter than lead, lower melting temp. and too hard for my thumb nail to even touch it needs a sharp knife to scratch it. Its also shiney and cools very quick ,clinking sound when tapped together. The guy said he got it from the sawmill ,said they used these to somehow hold the blade from moving in the template when they resharpened them???? Got me on that one!. I read the acticle about specific gravity test so thats next as soon as Im dong pouring whatever it is into small ingots. So what do I have oh alloy masters and metalurgist's ???? Would be nice to find out I can actually use the stuff,If not I got some shiney paper weights for sale! cheap! TIA, Tim

[trk]

Cero has quite a few alloys that would fit the description and intended use. Cero Base is one. Low melting temp, sets up strong enough to clamp and hold for machining.

Do a search on Cero and alloy.

[RU shooter]

In my quick and very unscientific test of the melting point comparison i took a piece of the whatever it is and a piece of boolit base cast from WW approx. the same size put them in a little SS bowl and turned on the hotplate the mystery metal started melting approx. 4-5 sec. before the WW alloy So the melting point is not too much lower than WW alloy. On what I read about Cerro safe its melt point is considerably lower than lead .As far as relative weight compared to WW alloy I cast some boolits made from this stuff in a Lee 309-160 mold that drops WW alloy at 155 grs and a dia of .3115 the mystery stuff cast boolits weighing 145.3 avg. and a dia of .3095-.310 Could it possibly be pure Tin? or a usable tin alloy? Oh I hope so ,Please say yes Please say yes!!!! If someone here had a way to find out for sure what it is I would glady send you a chunk of it .

[leftiye]

RU,
Go to the "Classics & Stickies" at the top of this forum page. Maybe the sticky about using specific gravity to determine unknown alloys will be of help. If it only casts 10 grains lighter, I'd put my guess on it being something like stereotype, or foundry type metal. Lots of antimony and tin. If you could test it for BHN, those type metals run around BHN 30.

[RU shooter]

I did the test as in the sticky post I had a dry weight of 146.2 grs. and a wet /submerged weight of 131.9 grs.difference of 14.3 then divided the dry weight by that gave me a value of 10.22 for the specific gravity. I found this specific Gravity table on the web ,Dont know if its usable for this as its all out of my knowledge comfort zone at this point.http://www.reade.com/br/Reference-%10-Educational/Particle-Property-Briefings/Specific-Gravity-Table-for-Metals,-Minerals-&-Ceramics.html

According to that table its between 50SN-50PB and 10SN-90PB and if Im translating correctly SN is tin? and PB is lead? correct? So the alloy is what roughly the same SG as 30sn-70 pb?????? which in boolit casting terms means what to me?

[leftiye]

R.U.,
Perhaps I shouldn't have suggested that. Reading your post just now, I remembered that the process was a shot in the dark with three part alloys. The results you got might be more meaningful if you could be sure there was no antimony (or something else) in there. But even when restricted to lead/tin alloys that is an abominable range. Sorry

[Typecaster]

Re No 1's comments, do a search on "Cerrolow" on this site, or just from google. I ran across an ingot of Cerrolow 136; it's used for holding irregular parts, and since it melts at 136ºF it is easy to remove. It's also VERY expensive ballast (look it up at McMaster-Carr or another industrial supply company). Here's part of my post:

"Cerrolow 136 is a eutectic alloy with a melting temperature of 136º F. Initial expansion then shrinks to .0000" per inch in one hour." Supposedly it is also used to mount optical components for polishing, etc., but I never heard of it when I went through a precision optical fabrication program in college.

It's the amount of indium it contains that makes it so expensive.

It's from the same foundry that makes the Cerrosafe that we use for chamber casts, but that's primarily bismuth, as I recall.