Another "What do I have" with Pics

OK, picked up this typeface lead the other day. The guy used to be in the printing industry. He said the typeface blocks were foundry type, while the spacers for the small type was linotype. I melted the spacers first, and it formed nice muffins. I then melted the small type blocks and had some oatmeal on the top. Increased the heat and some more seemed to melt, but still not all. Fluxed good, skimmed off the remaining oatmeal and poured muffins. They ended up very porous on the sides. I did not plan to use this straight anyway. Thought it would alloy good with WW for HP rifle boolits. I paid $.50 a pound. Did I make a mistake? Do I dare mix it with some WW lead and try to make some .312 boolits? Some background info, to pre-emt the questions: Turkey fryer, heated up on high. Lino hardness before melting 17bhn. Block type before melting 24-26 bhn.
Small typeface:
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/e7b76a8e8c.jpg
(the little tubes of lead were from ankle weights he tossed in for free. They ended up being pure lead 7.6 bhn and smelted separately)

Large typeface:
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/a97edb8b5d.jpg

Single large block:
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/5d51c0f32e.jpg

Porous Muffin:
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/ecfff15d78.jpg

OK, pour on the expert opinions. And please, spare me the "Useless, just send it to me" stuff... LOL

Probably the block letters are Mono or Foundry type. You needed more heat and flux. Clearly the metal casts beautifully once you get it right. It came cast in letters.

And resmelt that oatmeal. You skimmed off good metal.

looks like lino type to me! good deal!

Yes, re-smelt that oatmeal. That was all of your antimony and tin. If you get it back in the metal you probably won't have porous muffins. Also, add more heat and more flux, if need be to get that "oatmeal" back in crush up a charcoal briquette and drop a table spoon in the melted mix and start crushing it and the oatmeal against the side of the pot until there is nothing left but the charcoal ash. I generally go cut a cedar stick about an inch in diameter and stir with it to eliminate the oatmeal floaties.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch,

Joe

This is foundry type which is very hard stuff. It is not the same as lino or mono. Lino and mono are about the same and was for use in machines which cast type for one time use. Foundry type was bought as a font and put in a type case from which it was set by hand and after use put back in the case to be used again and again, for that reason the hardness.

Thanks guys! I will resmelt it. I don't know if I can get it any hotter, but I will try. And it sounds like I didn't flux enough. I have ashes I remove from my wood stove. I will sift it for some charcoal lumps that smothered out and crush them for flux. I have a cedar tree in the side yard. I can cut a 1" branch. Will a wet stick cause problems (WATER EXPLOSIONS)? Or will the heat dry it out quick? Do I want to set it across the woodstove for a day or two first?

A wet stick is problems. Even a dry stick sputters a bit. I often use the large size paint stirrer sticks that are free from the local home center.

Whatever stick you use to stir, ease it in slowly. If there is any humidity in the air where you live there will be some moisture in the wood. I have found easing it in kind of boils it out as it goes under without getting out of hand.

also, good tables here for lino, mono, foundry composition: http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

The small block letters are mono and when mixed with other alloys will work. I was given a 5 gallon bucket full of the mono type about a year ago. My wife saved a box full for display as this is history in the printing world. I would use it and save some. I've never had the foundry metal and can't give you any help on it.

Any dry wood stick seems to work well for me. I have been using oak, but have some butternut I will use up next. It always seems to be the same kind of wood as whatever floor we are putting down at work....

The porous muffin ingots look like your melt was way too hot. For fluxing I use a piece of 1x2 pine and gather all that thick oxide to the side of the smelter and give it a good scrubbing against the side of the pot.

Melt up a twenty pound batch. Get the temperature up to about 800 degrees. Pull the plug. Using a casting thermometer take temperature readings at EXACTLY one minute intervals. Plot up these temperatures. Linotype has a very specific cooling curve. You can not miss it. Just be sure that the thermometer needle is NOT draging on the surface behind it.

Chemical elements, like lead, or eutectic alloys, like linotype, have a unique cooling curve. Initially the temperature will drop as the liquid is cooling. Once the melting point is reached the temperature will remain absolutely constant until all the alloy has changed from a liquid to a solid. This temperature is called the melting point even though here the liquid is turning into a solid. Once it is all solid the temperature will drop gradually again as the solid cools. Only chemical elements or eutectic alloys will do this. So this will identify linotype (or lead for that matter).

Foundry type I'm not familiar with but even if it is a eutectic it will have a different melting point from that of linotype.

OK, found some free time this afternoon to remelt the ingots and return the oatmeal to them. I used a 3/4" square piece of cedar I had blanked out for making ricing sticks I used as a stir stick. I sorted through my fireplace ashes and got a bunch of charcoal. I added a bunch of the charcoal (crushed) and stirred in the oatmeal. You guys are great, it worked. The ingots still came out somewhat crystallized, but no biggie since they will be alloyed with WW when used. I was just not fluxing enough. One more notch up the learning curve. I am thinking since there is so much antimony and tin in Foundry type a 3 parts WW to 1 part foundry should make hard WC 30 cal boolits. I have 5 muffins of linotype from the spacers as well. I should be able to use that 50/50.

KLW, I don't have a thermometer yet. Plan to get one though. This stuff melted wierd. Turns to mush then finally to liquid (at high heat!). Takes forever to cool. Even with melting small ice chunks on the surface of partially cooled muffins it seemed to stay hot forever. When cooled, I used the blade of a sheetrock hammer to mark an F into the surface to differentiate it from my WW muffins. It marks hard!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by snaggdit

KLW, I don't have a thermometer yet. Plan to get one though. This stuff melted wierd. Turns to mush then finally to liquid (at high heat!). Takes forever to cool. Even with melting small ice chunks on the surface of partially cooled muffins it seemed to stay hot forever. When cooled, I used the blade of a sheetrock hammer to mark an F into the surface to differentiate it from my WW muffins. It marks hard!

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Then it clearly is NOT linotype. A eutectic alloy would NOT turn to mush, an apt description incidentally.

There is a way to do an exact chemical analysis using nothing more than a stop watch, a casting thermometer and phase diagrams but it would take forever to explain. I tried writing that up once decades ago. Even had my manuscript checked by a fellow chemist (yes I was a chemist once) but it just was too labor intensive a procedure and hard to explain. Once of the few articles I ever gave up on because I couldn't really make it all that understandable.

Hello the camp! Not much 'how to' to add--I'm a newbie. BUT, in a previous lifetime, I was a typesetter. Pics I see appear to be various sizes of what was, generically, called Broadhead--after newspaper headline broadhead. Someone back said monotype, but I kinda doubt it; mono was all but dead when I worked (late '60s). You can id mono--and lino and a couple others I forget--by their not having smooth sides--if the typeface was supported by a web and a shoulder for spacing was included, you didn't need matl to make smooth blocks. Further, if you look closely, you can see 'nicks'--yup, a printer-kinda-guy bizness word--on the bottom face near the edge. These were used to orient the type in the same direction while composing. A good composer could tell the font from the nicks. 'Spose that's enuf of this--bottom line, since I failed to say at start--foundry type is buku hard--even in a job shop, we could get years from a font. It's mostly lead, though; if you can figure the tin and antimony ratio, you're on the road to hard-cast boolits.

Sorry to interrupt what seems to be an expert discussion but I am not familiar with the term "oatmeal". I'm a new caster and I'd like to learn the words as I go along.

Snaggdit---Most of that stuff will probably work. But the letter S might shoot crooked.

Carpetman - I'll send all the S's to you! Maybe you could use the C's for some neighborhood problems? LOL

GregH - When it melted, the main volume of lead was liquid, like you would get from WW. But floating on top was a mushy layer about the consistancy of oatmeal. I just called it like I saw it. I don't know if it is a proper casting term, but the experts seemed to understand what I was referring to.

I use foundry type to WW metal 1:8 and get equivalent to 92/6/2 hardness (14-15 BHn). I've seen the oatmeal, too--and handled just as you did, heated it up well past 800* and gave it thorough fluxing with CFF. That's CA Flake Flux, from Pat Marlin, a member here. Not only an effective casting flux, it smells like a campfire in the garage when using it. Prompts thoughts of hunting and fishing, that.