Casting with tin babbit

[Blood Trail]

Buddy of mine gave me a couple hundred pounds of tin babbit. The composition of it is something like 84% tin, 3% copper, and 13% antimony (I have the data sheet somewhere). I’ve castes a few slugs and round balls with it. As to be expected, it’s a little lighter than lead. This could be my answer to that hog hunt I do every year that’s non-Tox only. I’m sure it will alloy with my lead for pistols and even for buckshot.

I don’t know much about it. Y’all played around with this stuff?


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[gpidaho]

I have about 30 lbs. of copper hard babbit I use in alloying bullets but it's a little over half lead so wouldn't work in your application. I'll follow with interest. Gp

[beagle]

Makes excellent rifle bullets. I've run it about 1:20 with WW mixture and you can drive .223 cast to about 2600 FPS with pretty good accuracy. The copper toughens the alloy and makes the bullet hold the rifling without stripping. Mine didn't have that high of a tin or antimony content. Definitely worth holding on to for trading purposes./beagle

[bikerbeans]

BT,

How did the babbitt cast? What temperature? Are your babbit slugs a different diameter than lead slugs from the same mold? A friend has some babbit for a RR car bearing and we have talked about casting with it but haven't tried.

BB

[LeroyvdH]

I would think that the slugs would come out very light in weight. Would bismuth work better? about 82% weight of lead if I remember correctly. Very interesting. Will follow along.

[Blood Trail]

BT,

How did the babbitt cast? What temperature? Are your babbit slugs a different diameter than lead slugs from the same mold? A friend has some babbit for a RR car bearing and we have talked about casting with it but haven't tried.

BB

BB, the temp I ran my pot at was around 500 degrees. I’ll measure the diameter of what I’ve cast and compare it to lead. I don’t think there was any shrinkage.


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[Blood Trail]

I would think that the slugs would come out very light in weight. Would bismuth work better? about 82% weight of lead if I remember correctly. Very interesting. Will follow along.

I’m sure it would if I had 200 free pounds if it.


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[justashooter]

that's a good friend.

certified bearing babbit ingots are about $15 per pound.

[Blood Trail]

Looks like the diameter is pretty much the same. There’s a difference in weight, but still enough to where you could really up the speed on those hammerhead slugs at 350 gr. I’m getting the lead slugs at 1650 fps now.








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[Blood Trail]

that's a good friend.

certified bearing babbit ingots are about $15 per pound.

Apparently, it runs closer to $50/lb. I found the data sheet on it.




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[gpidaho]

Wow! I'm going to have to buy a couple more beers for my friend that gave me 6 bars. He was going to make fishing sinkers out of it until I said I'd like some for bullet casting. Even with my babbit being just over 1/2 lead it still has a lot of tin. Gp