Mystery metal

In my wanderings, at the local scrap yard, I found some type of decorative metal. Because of the decorative figures, it sorta looks like the top edge of a round flower pot. It was in the lead pile so I scarfed it up with whatever else I got that day. I doubt it is lead.....when dropped on the concrete it has a dull "thud" similar to lead, but it is much harder and sorta brittle. I can bend the longer piece but it takes some effort. The photo of the reverse side has a red arrow near the bottom which is pointing at what appears to be a tab that was soldered? on. I would like to discover it is tin, but with my luck its probably just pot metal.......any help is appreciated.

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Might be pewter. If I had it, I'd apply some heat and see what happens.

The fine detail would suggest pewter. Try the muriatic acid test. Or melt a couple pounds of lead and add a one ounce piece of it. You would then have roughly a 30/1 alloy that should cast nice boolits if it is free from zinc.

Pewter usually is ductile, not brittle. You might have a white metal zinc alloy, in which case it has relatively low melting point (zamak alloys of zinc, aluminum, copper and magnesium, commonly used for die casting, melt around 700* F, whereas pewter melts at or below tin's melting point around 450* F, and both will melt in a propane torch).

I would try the muriatic acid. If it bubbles up, it's got zinc in it.

Looks like pot metal to me, but try the acid test mentioned above to find out.

Did the acid test.........no bubbles, just left a slightly darker color to that area.....see area circled in blue.
Ref the observation about the detail......yeah, it looks fairly well done.....second photo.

So, if I am understanding this, it still might not be tin?

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If you have a thermometer, melt some in a clean container. Pewter melts at 338–446 °F.
Make some thin ingots. Bend them while listening for the "scream". If it cries it's probably tin. Do you have any known tin to make even one similar flat ingot to compare to?

I will try the melt test, unfortunately I have no known tin at this time.....I will try and locate some asap.

So how many pounds of this "stuff" do you have? If sufficient quantity, it would be worth having an x-ray test done on it. The yard where you bought it should have a gun. Mine shoot everything I buy at no charge because I generally buy a lot. Check with them.

BNE on here used to do gun shoots for members but I heard he is currently on hiatus from that. Check with him to see if he is back at it soon. Your metal stuff is not going anywhere soon!

Ok, we have some progress. Just to see what would happen, I stuck a few pieces in an iron casting pot and hit it with a propane torch. I was trying to hold my laser thermometer at the same time but I think it began dripping at about 450 degrees......by 500 it was liquid. I sawdust fluxed the crap out of it and it got really pretty and shiny. I heated up some molds and did a test pour......it came out shiny and cooled with a very fine surface texture.
I had some ingots that I had done early on where I had used a bunch of old nasty, broken rolls of solder that I had gotten at the scrap yard. Not knowing any better at the time, I had mixed it bout 50/50 with plumbers lead.....they came out a lot smoother looking than anything I had done to that point........these ingots have an even smoother texture than those.
I do believe this is pure tin.....all 10ish pounds of it.

Here they are in front of an ingot marked "High Solder", one of those I did early on.

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The only thing you don't know is what other minor additions it might have. At least you know it doesn't have zinc.

Treat those ingots as pure tin. You can always add a little more to get good fill out. I've got about 10 pounds of quadruple plate pewter ingots and I'm going to smelt a 50 pound batch of 95/2.5/2.5. When I start casting with it I can sweeten the pot with tin if I need to.

Thanks to all. Now I know what to look for when I'm at the yard next time......:cast_boolits:

Do you realize that you have now guaranteed that you will never encounter that form again? You'll have to do the red rooster chicken ritual to clear up the pewter karma. ;-)

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Originally Posted by Ural Driver

Thanks to all. Now I know what to look for when I'm at the yard next time......:cast_boolits:

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