Can I expect any hardening

[whisler]

Having read Larry Gibson's suggestion of 50% WW +2% Sn/50% Pb as a good alloy that can also be hardened by water quench, I decided to try something. I have a quantity of range scrap from a College target range where they only use Eley .22s.
Research indicated that Eley .22s contained about 1.5 % Sb, so I added 1.5% Sn, which should approximate Larry's alloy. These worked well, so I decided to try water quench. Afterwards I realized that my alloy probably lacks Arsenic. So can I expect hardening. I know I can just wait and test, but I'm impatient so thought I would just ask.

[RickinTN]

In the absence of arsenic I'm not sure either. I'm curious to see what others here say and what your results are. Keep us posted.
Rick

[RobS]

They will harden when water quenched but it will take more time with the absence of aresenic.

[williamwaco]

The wheel weights contain antimony.
That alloy will harden if quenched.

[whisler]

I know that WW contain Arsenic, but I didn't use WW, I used Eley 22 lead (1.5% Sb) +1.5% Sn. Thus my question!

[oldandslow]

whisler, 8/14/13

Your alloy should heat-treat with water quenching fine without arsenic. I can give you some numbers from my alloy which I had analyzed at Rotometals for content- it was 2.2% Sb, 0.4% Sn, and the rest being lead. No arsenic. I oven heat them to 460 degrees for 60 minutes and then water drop them into either 70 degree tap water or ice water. The hardness BHN goes from a baseline of 9 to one of 16 with 70 degree water dropped and 21 with ice-water dropping. So the short answer is that your lead-antimony alloy should heat treat without arsenic.

best wishes- oldandslow

[Nickle]

According to what you said, that Eley lead has antimony in it (Sb). Should harden up nicely.

Antimony is what causes hardening, IIRC, and arsenic just speeds it up.

That's why using clip on wheel weight lead is good. It's got enough antimony in it.

[RobS]

According to what you said, that Eley lead has antimony in it (Sb). Should harden up nicely.

Antimony is what causes hardening, IIRC, and arsenic just speeds it up.

That's why using clip on wheel weight lead is good. It's got enough antimony in it.

Bingo

[whisler]

Thanks for the replies. As a quick and dirty test, I put an AC boolit and a WC boolit butt to butt and squeezed them in a vise. Based on shortening of the AC vs WC, I definitely got "some" hardening. That was at 1 week old. I will wait one more week and use the ball bearing hardness test to compare hardness.

[fredj338]

The wheel weights contain antimony.
That alloy will harden if quenched.

^^THIS^^
Arsenic helps raise the BHN, but if there is antimony, it will harden some.

[fredj338]

Thanks for the replies. As a quick and dirty test, I put an AC boolit and a WC boolit butt to butt and squeezed them in a vise. Based on shortening of the AC vs WC, I definitely got "some" hardening. That was at 1 week old. I will wait one more week and use the ball bearing hardness test to compare hardness.

If you want to post me a couple, glad to test them on my CT tester.

[1Shirt]

Yep, will harden some I suspect. Probably about 3-4 BH up!
1Shirt!

[whisler]

Fredj338: Thanks much for the offer. If I am not successful with the ball bearing test, I may take you up on that. Ball bearing method on ingots versus pure Pb show approximate Bhn of 9 for the AC. As long as the boolits aren't too small I should be able to obtain relative Bhn for WC this way.

[dondiego]

Add a little ****** and see what happens!