Use of Mercury instead of tin in bullet casting?

[I'll Make Mine]

Do I need to emphasize the need NOT (in any way) to heat metallic mercury?

An interesting, slightly off topic aside here -- Daguerreotype photography (and 1840-ish process that preceded the wet plates used during the Civil War) has seen a resurgence since about 1990, and the canonical method of developing an exposed Daguerreotype plate is to "fume" it over heated mercury metal (there's an alternate method involving very long exposure to red light, but it gives much lower sensitivity and takes, literally, a week to develop a plate, where fuming takes a few minutes). Modern Daguerreotypists, of course, would prefer to avoid exposure to the resulting mercury vapor and for environmental reasons would also like to avoid venting it to the atmosphere; they found that they can capture the vapor from the fuming dish well enough that their exhaust contains no detectable vapor, by running the air from the fuming box through a cold trap where dry ice or liquid nitrogen condenses 99.999% of the vapor (which is already a very tiny amount). The primary consideration, other than ensuring there's enough cold material available in the cold trap to keep the temperature well below -40º, is to ensure that there's a forced air flow out of the fuming box into the cold trap (an exhaust fan behind the trap is the standard method of doing this). A bonus for these primitive photographers is that they cut their mercury consumption (i.e. the amount of make-up metal they have to buy) to virtually nothing; each plate consumes only a few milligrams, the rest is recovered from the trap.

[303Guy]

I shouldn't read threads like this - makes me want to go play with the stuff!

But I won't. Really!

[mehavey]

makes me want to go play with the stuff! But I won't.

Smart move.

Otherwise you might wind up like us kids of the 40s ...the 40s ...the 40s ...the 40s ...the40s ...the40s

[troy_mclure]

Mercury has been ingested for centuries as a folk remedy by many cultures.
As a side note my dad has a box of 7.62x39 that is either copper or copper washed steel jacketed projectiles full of mercury. They are ruski and still in the original box. I know some of them are "light" as you can feel the mercury shift.

[Harter66]

Knock on wood,as a kid I swam for several years in a river,lakes and canals downstream of the Comstock lode area w/o being to poisoned from 1974-1994 I drank from shallow wells feed by same. In the 90s signage showed up stating more than 2 fish consumed from those waters per week might be bad for you.by 2000 you shouldn't eat them at all but a pound per month won't hurt you too bad.
The entire reserve is now in the state and in places could be "mined" today w/a garbage pump and several staged water bbl from the Carson river ,Lohonton(sp) res.,and probably several upper canals of the Truckee/Carson irrigation district.

Contents of a screw in CFL bulb........ well 10,000 bulbs will make 1 oral thermometer.,5,00 or so for the 4' tube floresents.

Mercury is bulk shipped in a plastic jar, inside a double "O"ring sealed steel jar inside a plastic lined cardboard buffered steel drum on galvanized steel pallets w/a plastic catch tray.

Beyond this I don't any insight on it beyond what has been stated.

I know a fellow that offered to do a cleanup for salvage rights to the metal, he was denied as his methods may have dislodged and allowed the migration down stream of mercury. The floods from several wet winters and warm springs and early rains took care of that a few years later.

Just as a footnote mercury is often found naturally in the company of lead,silver,and gold. Cyanide is now used by the US mining industry to separate rocks from gold and silver. Don't you feel safer already?

[JIMinPHX]

Cyanide is now used by the US mining industry to separate rocks from gold and silver. Don't you feel safer already?

I thought that I heard somewhere that borax was supposed to be the new rage in the mining industry for safely separating out the gold fines. I believe that cyanide was the standard material that was used back in the early 1940's, when the Vulture Mine was still in production up around wickenburg az. I don't know how long before or after that it was still in common use.

[I'll Make Mine]

Cyanide is/was used because it forms a soluble complex with gold, which is otherwise almost impossible to leach out of lower grade ores. I expect it's still used in a lot of places, because with proper handling it's not very hazardous (less hazardous in its usual usage than the sulfuric acid used to leach copper), degrades fairly rapidly in the environment, and will do something nothing else will: allow recovery of gold (and silver, and copper, but other things work for those) from ores that would otherwise be uneconomical to mine (a few grams per tonne).

[Shiloh]

I agree but the level of mercury that is toxic has never been established. Mercury is now the way the ecofascists may use to stampede the scientifically illiterate government educated masses into attacks on capitalism. Here in Puget Sound, it is used regularly by the greenies to get government grants to do useless cleanups or put capitalists out of business. What you never hear is that mercury is naturally occurring in volcanic soils and people have been living with it for thousands of years. You also never hear that the mineral cinnabar (mercuric sulfide if memory serves) is common around our local river drainages so greenies can stop any industry.
In any case, avoid any contact and use as few of those mercury lights as possible but don't to be part of the stampede either.

The Chinese make intricate ornamental boxes out of cinnabar.
Isn't mercury what cost GE in upstate N.Y. a boatload of money??

Shiloh

[mdi]

I'm in my 60s and mercury is not good for you, but I guarantee that about 2 of 3 people
my age have played with mercury more than once in their lives without apparent harm. The
danger is pretty over-rated. Anyone that had fillings prior to about 30 yrs ago had/still has
silver-mercury amalgam as the fillings in your mouth for the rest of your life.

Never heard of mixing it with lead, but if you rubbed it onto a silver coin (how many know that
our coins used to be real silver!?) it would mix on the surface quickly and make it super
shiny - a liquid surface, and super slippery, too. After a few hours the mercury would dissolve
into the coin leaving it a flat, clean silver color.

Bill

I think the lead poisoning/mercury poisoning scare is overblown. Today it seems to exaggerate about health/safety measures is ok, as long as it's "for the greater good" (thanks to scare tactics by polititions pushing their agenda/looking for votes. Remember CA's "no lead zone"? More tree-huggers than hunters spoke up and they don't need no steeenking facts)). I played with mercury as a kid and remember it could be purcased at drug stores. I played with it bare handed, don't remember if I put any in my mouth (mebbe that's why I have 3 thumbs), but I certainly didn't wear a respirator ot rubber gloves (mebbe I was supposed to drink some for ill effects). I started casting sinkers 50 years ago, and bullets about 15 years ago. Last blood test, just out of curiosity, I asked for "heavy metals" testing, because of some of the materials I've handled in the last 60+ years, and results were "lower than normal. Very good". On top of that I have never met anyone, read factual reports of anyone, or heard factual reports of anyone troubled by high lead/mercury levels from casting bullets, shooting indoors, or reloading/shooting lead bullets. I'm sure there are case studies in medical journels, but for us normal guys, it's exaggerated, IMO...