Another question on bar solder

[Blacktail 8541]

Does any one use 63/37 bar solder? If so anything I should know about it?

[felix]

Blacktail, checkout radiator lead or solder. That what 63/37 is, or 60/40 for short. Use as a tin additive. ... felix

[Buckshot]

Does any one use 63/37 bar solder? If so anything I should know about it?

..............Most usually anything over about 2% is just pure waste. Lyman #2 alloy is touted as a exemplary alloy to cast with, and it is. But at 90 - 5 - 5, it is an expensive alloy at 5% tin. Like 10-1, it is an alloy from another era.

...............Buckshot

[JohnH]

..............Most usually anything over about 2% is just pure waste. Lyman #2 alloy is touted as a exemplary alloy to cast with, and it is. But at 90 - 5 - 5, it is an expensive alloy at 5% tin. Like 10-1, it is an alloy from another era.

...............Buckshot

I'd never quite thought of it that way, an alloy from another era. True enough I 'spose. But I've always suspected that high tin content alloys shoot and react to impact differently from lessor tin and higher antimony content for the same hardness alloys. I've really no way to prove that. But antimony, while hard is frangibile, while tin has a far greater amount of ductility. I suspect that a 15 BHN alloy such as Lyman #2 would deform more readily than a 15 BHN alloy richer in antimony. Again, I've no proof, just a suspicion. It would be interesting to be able to prove or disprove. I've been full of **** more than once, wouldn't hurt my feelings to find I'm wrong, but it'd take more than cyber ink to prove it to me. Not dissin' ya Buckshot, I've no proof for my point, just seems sensical to me, that and $1.50 will buy a cup of coffee.

[Buckshot]

.................JohnH, I'm with you on that. Antimony DOES produce a more brittle bullet. A 15 BHN boolit created via a preponderance of tin is a 'different ' 15 BHN then a higher antimony/scant tin 15 bhn in static testing. How the cast boolit appears and how it casts are different also.

While 12L14, 1018, and 1045 steels share, or are surprisingly close in many areas that metalurgists measure, they also are distinctly dissimilar in others and their areas of usefullnes. Using one over the other where not required is an expense for no improvement.

My comment in the earlier post is based pretty much on the casual shooting/plinking, where any more then 1-2% tin is like throwing it away for no good reason.

.................Buckshot

[Blacktail 8541]

The reason that I asked is that I have about 60 lbs of it . On my first batch of alloy that I made up I goofed and added to much of it. That Alloy consisted of 90lbs WW, 20lbs linotype and 8.3 lbs 63/37 bar solder. I did some rough calculations and came up with a tin content of 6.6. Iwas thinking of just doubleing the amount of WW to bring the tin content down.

[garandsrus]

Blacktail,

I wrote an Excel spreadsheet to figure out alloy percentages and ways to mix things to produce specific alloys. I plugged in what you added and ended up with 3.9% tin, 5.1% Antimony, and 91.1% Lead., which is close to Lyman #2.

I used the weights you indicated and these values:
Wheel Weights - BHN 9
Tin 0.5
Antiomony 4
Lead 95.5

Linotype:
Tin 4
Antimony 12
Lead 84

60-40
Tin 40
Lead 60

Can anyone verify that the calculations are correct?

Thanks,
John

[Blacktail 8541]

Just re crunched the figures on my alloy program and came up with these numbers, tin 5.4693, antimony 4.311. and lead 90.2198.

I must have been pretty tired when I was checking the numbers before.

[drinks]

G;
As to electrical solder, it is Tin=60, Lead = 40. I do not know for sure about radiator solder.
A number of sources give wws as BHN 9, but on another forum, several of us, using 4 different testers, got mostly BHN 12, fresh and BHN14 after 1 week.
As I first saw BHN 9 in a 1956 Lyman publication and Lyman is still putting it in with mold instruction today, I suspect no one at Lyman has bothered to retest since at least 1956.
Don

[Blacktail 8541]

Every referance that I have found has listed WW with a BHN of 12, so that is what I use untill I get a tester. At witch point I will measure several samples to reach my own conclusions for WW in my area.