Please help identify this metal form

[Erico]

Hi All,

I have a 5 gallon bucket full of metal bits. They are much harder then lead, but nowhere near steel. Does anybody have an guess as to the material just from the form? Maybe they are linotype ingots? All of then have holes that go all the way through them.

I dont have any hardness tester at this time.

Thank you,
Eric O

[cabezaverde]

I am going to say those look like type spacers to me.

[williamwaco]

They are the wrong color for lino. Color looks more like spacers but I have never seen them with holes?

Can you melt them in your pot?

Spacers are harder than wheel weights but softer than lino.

They should make very good bullets. I have mixed them 50/50 with pure for softer bullets.

[cabezaverde]

I am sticking with my answer (worked in the printing industry for years). These didn't get remelted all the time and would therefore get oxidized and exposed to a lot of ink.

[lwknight]

Melt a sample and mix some lead with it to see what happens. If it looks good then test for hardness and cut as needed.
Never mix mystery metals in a pot of good alloy till you do a sample test.

[fryboy]

Oddly I've tested some spacer material ... Some came out hard as lino and some harder as well as some softer,I'm guessing that some of the known lino may have been a bit depleted, but those do indeed look like some spacers I have smelted

[runfiverun]

looks just like the spacers I had too.
I usually get the spacers from our local print shop cause they don't have the ink and junk to deal with.
I'm done with the spacers since I still have 13-14 pigs of lino kicking around from when I bought 20 of them for 65 cents a pound a few years back [and passed on the other 20 pigs that was available]

[retread]

Look exactly like the spacers I got with type pieces from a print shop that closed up.

[RogerDat]

I have a half bucket of those from a batch of lead from a print shop. I melted a few and had xray gunned. They came in at 24 Sb and 10 Sn. But there were more than one cross sectional shape. Some with the smaller holes and some that were more of a channel shape inside.

Spacer can vary a lot in alloy but I would start with melting some into ingots. See if you can get them tested. If not you will probably get a good indication of what you are dealing with. Alloy melts at lower temps than plain lead. Will be harder, shiny and smooth like butter.

Check out the sticky on hardness testing with a set of art pencils. Won't tell you exact alloy but give you an idea of what hardness you will get mixing it with plain or cow's.