A Tool Question

[lightman]

I have been thinking about permanently marking my lead ingots. Has anyone priced having a custom stamp made with the letters that a caster would use, like COWW, SOWW, ect? I have a set of stamps, both letter and number, but using 1 letter at a time, I could possibly be through in a couple of lifetimes! I've contacted a couple of companies and am waiting on a quote.

I know that marking ingots has been discussed before (just finished rereading an old thread), but was thinking about a tool holder that would hold 3 or 4 stamps. This led to the idea of a custom stamp. If I do this, I want it to be simple, no secret codes, numbers, ect. Just maybe soft, lino, coww, soww, ect. Your thoughts?

[country gent]

A custom made stamp or multiples can get expensive to have made die to time involved machining , hardening, cutting the designation letters is a slow fine proces with small tools. Try taping the designation together with your existing letter stamps use a good tough duct tape for this. A solid flat blow should ID in one blow easily.. A holder can be milled out to do this using your stamp set.

[borg]

I used a 4" turnbuckle, just wide enough to mount the stamps.
I don't have a camera, but the turnbuckle is a cast alum, used in guy wire tightening.

[lightman]

Thanks for the ideas. A shooting buddy is in the well business and has a decent machine shop. Borg, I'm thinking maybe a 3 bolt clamp is what you are talking about. They are used for securing guy wire to anchors. You also see them on catv or phone messenger cables.

Actually, I got a response from 2 companies that make stamps. One is about $110 per stamp. (ouch) The other is about $50 for a 4 letter stamp, and a few bucks more for additional letters. (still expensive)

I should have started marking these much sooner, I have 11 or 12 milk crates of ingots.! I could spend the whole winter stamping these guys!

[Mitch]

I have found that bigger ingots say 2.5 to 5 lb leave less marking to do.one letter at atime id not all that bad if you keep up.You can mark hundreds of ingots in a few hours.Give it a try you might be surprised how many you can get done a in an hour or 2.

[RogerDat]

If you use the 4 ingot molds such as Lee, Lyman or RCBS you might want to over fill mold by enough to keep the multiple small ingots together. Much easier to label one 4 ingot block than 4 individual ingots. I figure I can break off some ingots if I need to and just mark whatever is left over.

And yes if you have a place to spread out the ingots to be marked going through and stamping each one a single letter at a time can be done pretty rapidly. Stamp a "C" on 10 ingots, then a "O" on the same 10, then "W" twice on the same 10. Line the next 10 up and repeat.

[lightman]

I smelt with 6 of the Lyman style molds and sometimes a borrowed Lee mold, so they are all 1/2 or 1 pounders. I do have a work table with a 1/2 in steel plate for a top, maybe 24x48 in, so laying them out to work on is possible. My biggest problem is that I did not start marking these in the beginning. I'm just thinking, 7000+ ingots x 4 letters is a lot of stamping. I'll getter done, though! Not a bad problem to have, I guess!

I'm really thinking about spending an afternoon in my friends machine shop and making a holder for 4 stamps. Probably would not take a real machinist that long, but I'm not one. Thanks for the ideas, everyone!

[skeettx]

Sorry
Poor man's ways here
Pure lead has a 0, made from the end of a piece of pipe
Wheel weights have a - made from a regular screw driver
Linotype has a + made from a phillips screwdriver
Seems to work
Mike

[Rustyleee]

Before I'd spend that kind of money I'd use a center punch and write on them like a dot matrix printer.

[lightman]

Yeah Skeet, I know simple is usually best. I'm just thinking about all of the threads I've read about mystery lead that some old caster left behind. I think there is an active one going on now, guessing what a few letters might mean on an ingot. Everyone here would guess what SOFT, COWW, LINO, ect is. I'm not gone yet, but I have had ingots get mixed up due to moves or busted containers. Just thinking of a better way, and probably over thinking it.

[bangerjim]

I just simply bought some sizes of HF metal stamps. They will last forever in lead!

Pick out the 2 or 3 letter code you establish, hold (or tape) them together, and whack away.

PL = pure
COW = clip on's
SOW - stick on's
L = lino
HB = hardball
SN = Tin

etc, etc, etc..............

Simple. Easy. Inexpensive.

banger

[borg]

Lightman, this is what I use, only big enough to fit the stamps
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...rds=turnbuckle
You can find them at most hardware stores.

[scottfire1957]

You might try a c-clamp. You won't be doing any real pounding, and, you can use 2 letters instead of 4, Co instead of coww, etc.

[Bzcraig]

I just simply bought some sizes of HF metal stamps. They will last forever in lead!

Pick out the 2 or 3 letter code you establish, hold (or tape) them together, and whack away.

PL = pure
COW = clip on's
SOW - stick on's
L = lino
HB = hardball
SN = Tin

etc, etc, etc..............

Simple. Easy. Inexpensive.

banger

This is what I did as well but I didn't wait till I had all those ingots to do.

[sierra1911]

...or just label each of your 11 or 12 milk crates with a Sharpie and spend the rest of the day at the range popping caps....

[LAGS]

I use to use a simple Number Code stamped in the ingots with 1/2" number stamps
0 = Pure lead
1 = Semi Pure lead like SOWW
2 = COWW
3 = COWW with Tin added
4= Lyman #2 or equal
5 = Hardball
6 = Linotype
7 = Monotype

Now if I had time and made special mixed like 16 / 1 then I stamped them accordingly, or even the ratio like 96/2/6 for home made Hardball.
Zinc ingots get a Z or ZN
Tin just gets a T
Antimony smelted into lead gets an A with the percentage of Antimony to Lead for later smelting into alloys.
You cant really stamp Raw Antimony, it just cracks and breaks apart. But it is very distintive.

[Rottweiler]

I took skeettx's method 1 step further I made a set of "stamps" out of 6-8" long pieces of rebar. Just ground shapes into the one end with a cutoff wheel on the angle grinder. One is a triangle, one is an X, one is 3 lines. Other shapes are only imagination away. One stamp for each hardness. If I wear them out, more rebar is cheap

[bangerjim]

It totally depends on how you value your personal time, but making stamps sure is time-intensive compaired to these inexpensive stamps:

http://t.harborfreight.com/catalogse...esult?q=stamps

I have them all.

banger

[konsole]

Tape the "COW" or "SOW" stamps together with scotch tape?

Thats what I do. They stay together pretty well and I dont have much trouble with them being misaligned. Even when they do get misaligned, realigning them is easy by tapping on their ends. Eventually the tape will loosen and slide from the heat of the ingots warming up the stamps, so just reapply some tape or stamp the ingots when they're cold. If you have 3 letters taped together, just go down the line and hit each one like 5 times and that will be deep enough for lead. Zinc is a whole different story, its like trying to stamp diamonds and many times the stamp will bounce around and require stamping in another spot.

[RogerDat]

I'm doing sharpie. I can write, casters can read. Totally flexible. 10/90 40/60 2/3/95 WW, SO, Lym #2, P See how easy that is? And pretty fast too. Will I be 100% guaranteed that nothing will remove the labeling? No but between the container being labeled, the ingots being labeled, and the stuff being sort of stacked in different piles.... Now with 7000 ingots I might be thinking in terms of a rubber stamp and ink pad to speed things up!

Here is the pop quiz what do you think the ingots with the WW markings are? And SO ingots? (answers below) Did you get them both right? Now be honest!






COww or clip on wheel weights and SOww are stick on wheel weights.