Linotype price

[Old colt]

I just received a package of linotype I purchased from a private seller. It turns out its 100% in type form not the ingots I was expecting. It was definitely cheaper than buying from rotometals or any other retailer. My question is should I melt it down or sell it as type. I've heard it was worth more in type form and dont want to miss an opportunity. Thank you.

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[reddog81]

It's probably worth more as is. I definitely wouldn't spend the time and resources to melt it down if you're intending to sell it. If you're going to cast with it than it doesn't really matter.

[JBinMN]

The way I understand it, they are worth more as "type", than as "ingot". I have only run across ingots, myself.
I am not usually a lucky guy when it comes to good deal, and have even worse luck with great deals. I am usually one of those, "Day late & dollar short" folks...


Great score for you, though! Congrats!


Likely melt down quicker as "type", anyway.

[Conditor22]

Many people prefer it in type form, in type form they're 100% sure what they are getting.

[Old colt]

I got for around 1.60 shipped. I was planning on casting with it. I was more or less wondering if it was worth more as type for a collector type person or was the fact that it's in type made it worth more jut to casters as they were 100% sure of what they had. Sorry if I asked a confusing question on the subject

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[scotner]

The real advantage to having it in that form, assuming that you are going to cast with it, is that it is easier to achieve an exact ratio when mixing. If your lead is in ingots and your linotype is in ingots it is harder to mix an exact ratio. In letter form you can weigh your lead and then weigh out the exact amount of linotype required for your desired alloy.

Before mixing a large amount of alloy using that metal check to be sure what it is. I have a 5 gallon bucket that looks just like that. I bought it from a printer who was going out of business after 35 years. He told me it was foundry type. I found out that if you mix it like I had been using linotype it would yield some extremely hard bullets. I ended up using much less of the foundry type with my wheel weights.

[jeepyj]

Many like it in the form it is in right now because they want to be sure there hasn't been ant spacers mixed in when converted to ingots. Just my .02

[Conditor22]

scotner has a point, single letters are not linotype, they are typically monotype

http://www.lasc.us/castbulletalloy.htm


monotype - single letters linotype strips of words

[Old colt]

I'm guessing its monotype I can break the pieces in half cleanly with no bend. The ant. Spacers that were mentioned what should I be looking for there?

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[454PB]

I took that picture. It's a sample of 2000 pounds of mixed type metal that I was given about 35 years ago.

Although I did "ingotize" a few hundred pounds of it, most was left in the original forms. I sold a bunch, gave away a bunch, and still have enough to last a long time.

[Conditor22]

Guilty as charged, I "borrowed that picture from an old post it was the first one I found with both alloys in it

[lightman]

If you plan to sell it leave it in its original form. Single letters are either mono type or foundry type. Foundry type has a groove on back like what is showing in the picture. You can often buy or sell linotype for $2 a pound. Mono and Foundry type will fetch at least that much and probably more. Some of the individual letters are often sold for much more but you have to decide how much time and effort that you want to invest it it.

Linotype spacers can be anything. The spacer normally does not get the pounding that the letters get during the printing process so they can be softer. But not always. If they break, call them lino. If they bend, call them lead.

[454PB]

Guilty as charged, I "borrowed that picture from an old post it was the first one I found with both alloys in it

Not a problem, any pictures I post here are public property as far as I'm concerned. I put that up because a lot of the younger casters have never seen type metal in it's native form.

[Lloyd Smale]

never heard of type collectors other then bullet casters.

[Wayne Smith]

I know the ODU art department has a letterpress that uses those type faces. I would imagine it is relatively common in art departments.

[Green Frog]

I've also seen type sold as decorative items to be used in shadow boxes, etc. Big monotype letters are the most popular. Then again, selling one or a few letters at a time, when compared to melting down a bunch and making some useful bullets out of them seems like inefficient use of my dwindling time. YMMV!

Froggie

[Hardcast416taylor]

I also was thinking it is monotype.Robert

[earlmck]

A couple of years ago I was given a bucket of type-faced metal looking just like Old Colt's stuff. I assumed it was linotype and cast up a bunch of my favorite 22 cal for my hornet. Ooops! bullet didn't shoot for poop. In fact not all bullets got to the target. So then I started paying attention and discovered that my new linotype boolits weighed only about 90% as much as my old linotype boolits. So what I had was "foundry type" which is apparently used to bring your linotype metal back up to speed as it gets depleted from repeated melting/type casting.

Foundry type is wonderful for alloying (look at those tin/antimony percentages!). It makes a horrible brittle boolit that can come apart in the air before getting to the target (at least at my 22 hornet velocities).

I love having the stuff in those little type thingys 'cause you can measure out ounces and fractions of ounces for adding along with wheelweight ingots for making fine hard boolit alloys. My go-to has been 2 oz of the foundry per pound of ww metal. Which is not linotype hard but works just as well as the lino for my purposes (fairly hard and casts wonderfully).

So just because it is cast into type faces does not mean it is linotype. Cast some up into bullets you can compare weights to known alloys and you'll find what you really have. Here's a snapshot of the spreadsheet I use for this purpose.

Edit -- Ooops --sorry folks, the spreadsheet gets all clumped together when I hit the "post" button. But I think you can figure it out -- linotype is about 93.5% as heavy as pure lead and foundry about 85% as heavy. I would post the actual spreadsheet with the equations but I'm not smart enough to figure out how to get it in a post here.


Alloy Tin % Sb % Pb % BHN % wt of Pb
Foundry 15 23 62 32 85.1927689594 0.00
Mono 9 19 72 28 88.9865961199 0.00
Stereo 6 14 80 23 92.1118165785 0.00
Lino 4 12 84 22 93.649382716 0.00
Lyman #2 5 5 90 15 96.1560846561 0.00
Electro 3 2.5 94.5 12 97.8983686067 0.00
1 to 10 9 0 91 11.5 96.7658730159 0.00
1 to 16 5.9 0 94.1 10.5 97.8798500882 0.00
1 to 20 4.8 0 95.2 10 98.2751322751 0.00
1 to 30 3.2 0 96.8 8 98.8500881834 0.00
1 to 40 2.44 0 97.56 6.5 99.1231922399 0.00
1 to 50 2 0 98 6 99.2813051146 0.00
Hard Ball 2 6 92 16 96.824691358 0.00
Clip-on ww0.7 2.8 96.5 12 98.602037037 0.00
Stick -on 0 0.5 99.5 6 99.7952821869 0.00
#8 Mg sht 0 2.5 97.5 8 98.9764109347 0.00
Plumbers 0 0 100 5 100 0.00
Lead 0 0 100 5 100 0.00

[lightman]

never heard of type collectors other then bullet casters.

I've seen people buy enough of the bigger letters to spell their names. I've also seen unique type such as dollar symbols, flags and nazi symbols sell for crazy prices.

[Lloyd Smale]

ive got a couple hundred lbs of mono and foundry maybe I ought to dig through it.