Another Solder question

[chaos]

I keep hearing mention of 95/5 slodier. It dont exist in this neck of the woods.

I can buy 50/50 bar solder for $12 a pound or 97/3 for same money.

I got one of each to experiment with. The 97/3 is 97% tin and 3% copper.... Is this usable since it has copper in it? If so It seems a much better deal.

Chaos

[leftiye]

Yes, the 97/3 is a much better price per unit of tin, though still maybe twice what you might find tin for elsewhere. You gotta calculate that the 50/50 at $12 lb is $24.00/lb for the tin in it. There's a guy on ebay that keeps selling 4 lbs of Babbit for about 25 dollars.

The 97/3 solder is fine, the copper will be less than 1% and will be good for your boolits in that small of a concentration. To give you an idea, I got 40 plus lbs of 60/40 solder for $120 dollars that's about 6 dollars/lb for the tin.

[Calamity Jake]

Check swapen and sellen, I have 60/40 for sale, pretty cheep.

[Ghugly]

Expand your lead scrounging to include radiator shops. I have an old guy that sells me solder ends and pieces that are fairly clean for $1 a pound (he says that that's all the solder dealer pays him for it and he'd rather I got it). My alloy is 10lbs of wheel weights to 1lb of radiator solder. No clue as to what the official name for that would be. But, it casts great and Lee and Lyman molds drop boolits that are the same weight as the mold says they should be so.....I guess......it's kind of.......sort of......like Lyman #2. :drinks:

[grumpy one]

Ghugly, if your solder is eutectic (63% tin, 37% lead) and your WW are 2% antimony, you are shooting 6% tin, 1.8% antimony, which is not a good alloy according to the literature. If your WW are 4% antimony your alloy is 6% tin, 3.6% antimony which isn't good either. If your solder is 50/50, the corresponding figures are 4.8% tin, 1.8% antimony for 2% WW, and 4.8% tin, 3.6% antimony for 4% WW.

The short summary is, you are using way more tin than seems to make metallurgical sense. If we take an average for the WW of 3% (i.e. an equal mixture of the two types made in the US) you need to add 3 pounds of linotype to the pot to end up with something pretty close to Lyman No. 2 alloy (it would actually be about 4.6% tin, 4.7% antimony, based on 3% WW and 50/50 solder).

I don't actually recommend Lyman No. 2 alloy, but that is how you can get it if you want it.