Alloy with 3 % Fe

I was at my local scrap dealer today and purchased some lead. In there together with sheat lead and pipes there were some ingots of different shape and weight. I threw them on the floor and as I suspected they were hard, and had a ring to them when dropped. With this kind of ring my experience has thought me that it could be an alloy with either Antimonny or Zink. As you all know the first is good and the latter makes it unusable for boolit casting.

I expressed my scepticism to the dealer and he went to get the analyser. He shot them with his XRF gun. The two first ingots were good, 8% sb! Cool!!

The last suspicious ingot showed 1.65% sb and no zn but 3% Fe and somthing that could be contamination of the sample. That said the * next to the 3% shows that the reading is somewhat uncertain.

I've encountered Fe before but often maybe just a tad above zero. Approximately 0,1% and it causes no problem.

My question is: Does 3% Fe cause a problem using it as boolit alloy or is the Fe contamination shimmed of when fluxing? My plan for this lead is to make it 2-3-95 alloy for standard revolver loads. I have pewter and monotype of known hardness so if I can use the ingot this is no problem. Can I?

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those look like a old babbit bearing , is the fe reading from rust or the iron of a shaft rubbing off , did they scrape a clean area to take reading?

Seems to me that by the time FE melted the lead would have boiled away.

Like FF I think the gun may have been picking up some FE residue from the surface.

The XRF guns' are nowhere near as accurate as BNE's commercial precious metal XRF tester

They didn't scrape a clean area so it could be rust or another contamination but I'm sceptical because it feels and sounds a lot harder than 1.65 sb alloy. On the pic you can see where I scratched it with a flat screwdriver. It barely made a scratch.!

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Iron melt temp is over 1500C. Lead melt point is around 330C. I would be very skeptical of iron actually being a constituent of that alloy.

I’ll be a contrarian, race car weight cast with lots of crud in it. The iron isn’t in the alloy, it’s a composite and should just float out when you melt it.

I've had big bolts float to the surface when I melted down some sailboat keels.

It will all come out in the dross.

The iron is likely rust staining on the surface with roof sheet.

Thank you all for sharing! I'll use the ingot and treat it as 1.6%sb and the rest as pure lead.

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yup its pretty hard to actually flux iron into lead. It takes specific types of fluxes and very high temps. My guess is if you filled your pot and fluxed and then tested it it would be gone.

I'm with the others surface contamination. Doesn't take much for rust to rub off and throw the XRF off unless the sample is scraped to a clean surface.

I’ve had foundry lead X-ray 3% fe also. I’ve used this lead to sweeten pure lead and have had no problems