Organ pipes?

[Winger Ed.]

Where does one get muriatic acid?.

Home Depot, Lowe's or a big hardware store will have it.

It's used in swimming pools and also after doing brickwork,
ya use it to clean the extra cement off that smears around the surface after they build a wall or something.

Anyplace that sells mortar mix cement will have it.

[JBinMN]

Cement/concrete/stucco/block mason guys in the trade will usually give it to ya.

I have a gallon & I will never use it all in the rest of my life, most likely. Given to me by another tradesman. Cost me one vodka tonic. ( That drink cost about $3.00 around here a couple years ago. )

All I use is a couple of drops, once in a while, to test for zinc, as my own doins working with cement/concrete/mortar/stucco days ended about 10 years ago.)

If you were close, I would give ya the whole gallon & then borrow some when I needed a bit.


Ask around. Lots of times for a beer someone who works cement/concrete will give ya a bit for free.

( Used to clean cement/concrete/mortar tools, like shovels/trowels/mud buggies(<wheel barrows) etc, if the water spray doesn't get it all off after the pour, or some one is lax & did not clean up as well as they should have & the cement/concrete/mortar/stucco has dried a bit.)

G'Luck! & I hope ya get a great deal on some good stuff!

[richhodg66]

Yeah, gonna send a little piece to BNE, and I still have a little piece I may try the muriatic acid on.

I really don't think these are made of anything useful, I suspect zinc, but there's enough of it there and enough doubt that it's worth my while to try to figure it out. What the guy is asking would be a for price for pure lead and I'm pretty sure there's 200+ pounds there.

[Daver7]

I have coffee with a fella that retired from a local organ company. He told me that the company he worked for used pure lead for some of the pipes and what he called spotted pipes which are lead with tin that is not mixed together and thats why it looks spotted. If I remember right some of the reasons they used lead was it's easy to form and it didn't vibrate. He sold me around 400 lbs of lead pipes from a decommissioned organ dirt cheap. He delivered because he wanted to see my shop. I build acoustic guitars and he wanted to see my process and then I showed him my reloading and casting setup. Now we are trying to figure out when I can take him out to the gun club.

[kevin c]

If I remember right, bending a cylinder isn't easy until the cross section deforms so even one made of a very soft material may be much more rigid than a couple flat sheets of the same thickness.

I'd think that a zinc pipe wouldn't bend at all to hand pressure. Depending on thickness, it might be hard to cut with dykes too.

The references above described the pipes being welded up from flat sheets of cast lead alloy, so the construction looks right.

Maybe the pipe you saw is made with a high tin content, accounting for its apparent hardness. The Albany reference described pipes of 97% tin, 98% lead, and alloys of both with ratios all across the board. Too bad the pipes are painted: some high tin lead alloys have a spotted appearance when cast in sheets.

My impression is that different pipes in a given organ can be made of different alloys. If you're mainly in the hunt for lead, another pipe in the seller's stash may be more suitable. But even if not, there's a very good chance that the tin content of the batch makes it even more of a bargain. Even if it's not something you need yourself, it can be sold or traded for much, much more lead than $65 will buy out my way (and $65 for 200+ pounds of lead, less than 35 cents a pound is a real bargain in my book).

[dondiego]

I saw an episode of "How it's Made" and they made organ pipes out of pewter on that episode..

[slim1836]

Try taking your sample to the local junk yard and see if they will analyze it.

Slim

[richhodg66]

Just dropped a piece of it in some muriatic acid and it's bubbling like an alka seltzer tablet. Oh well, at least I know.

[lightman]

Thats disappointing! I was hoping that you had stumbled up on a great score.

[BNE]

That stinks. I was hoping you had a lifetime supply of Tin.

[richhodg66]

Yeah, me too. Wonder if anybody has a use for 200+ pounds of Zinc? I have some sinker molds, I was contemplating making some eco friendly sinkers.

This is the first time I ever did the muriatic acid thing, it was pretty cool. Comepletely dissolved the little sliver I put in it. I have a huge wheel weight I reached down out of the car and picked up at a stop sign thinking it was lead, but it's zinc. Might just drop that thing in a big jar of this stuff and watch.

[JBinMN]

Yeah, me too. Wonder if anybody has a use for 200+ pounds of Zinc? I have some sinker molds, I was contemplating making some eco friendly sinkers.

This is the first time I ever did the muriatic acid thing, it was pretty cool. Comepletely dissolved the little sliver I put in it. I have a huge wheel weight I reached down out of the car and picked up at a stop sign thinking it was lead, but it's zinc. Might just drop that thing in a big jar of this stuff and watch.

If you decide to do that little experiment, be sure to do it outside over some dirt or sand &not near concrete or anything you don't want to possibly be dissolved. That stuff eats away hardened concrete & I am not sure, but the fumes from the "bubbles" is not likely good for anything either.

Just be safe.


P.S> - If ya look around the forum, I think there is some folks who want zinc for making cannon balls or something like that... You could always make fishing sinkers & jigs, and decoy weights, if ya wanted with the zinc too.

[richhodg66]

Yeah, I'd do it outside, kind of a Tim Allen moment thing. Local hardware store sold me a quart bottle of it, I'll probably just save the rest in case I ever need to test something again.

I'm actually kind of not sorry. I was thinking it would have been irreverent to melt these down and they looked like they could be salvaged by someone who needed to rebuild an old organ.

I really had high hopes I had found a big lot of good alloy cheap. Easy come easy go I suppose.

[JBinMN]

There are certainly other sources for alloys.


G'Luck! whatever ya decide to do!

[kevin c]

That's disappointing to hear, but you didn't get burned, and we all learned something.

[Peregrine]

That stuff eats away hardened concrete & I am not sure, but the fumes from the "bubbles" is not likely good for anything either.

Those bubbles are pure hydrogen gas. Might make your voice squeaky if you inhaled a lung full, but unless you light up a smoke no harm done.

Now if you've already got gallons of HCl and a lot of zinc you won't miss, along with a certain sort of mind, you can really have some fun.

[richhodg66]

That's disappointing to hear, but you didn't get burned, and we all learned something.

No, I didn't. I kinda feel bad for the guy who's stuck with them, said his Dad had been an antique dealer and had gotten these from an old church being demolished out in some little western Kansas town. He had some other cool stuff too. Seemed like a good guy who was genuinely interested in what they were made of when I talked about what I knew. Gonna message him back and tell him what I learned.

Sure seems like someone could use them for something, but I really don't have the time or inclination to cast up 200 pounds of fishing sinkers or something like that.

[lightman]

When I use acid to test for Zinc I use a glass eye dropper. I'll brush a clean spot on the suspected piece and drop a drop or two of acid on it. Then I'll wash off the acid. I'll also wash the eye dropper. I think the glass eye dropper came from Walgreens but I expect Walmart would have them.

[RogerDat]

Hit it with a propane torch. Tin alloys and lead should melt a whole lot easier than zinc. I have a couple of 5 gallon buckets call it a bit over 30 pounds of that stuff. Have gotten it before. The different pipes have a different composition. Some are nearly pure tin, some have some lead, some I am pretty sure are zinc. Hard to melt and hard to bend in.

I think the materials chosen have to do with the tone desired from that pipe. Tin is a hard metal compared to lead, lead is very soft, Zinc is hard like tin but stronger for large pipes. I found in one batch the smaller pipes, and only a few of the larger pipes were tin, some pipes were lead, and the really big ones were zinc. tin probably gives a brighter note at the high end (small pipes) Lead probably give a more base sound with long big pipes being mostly spotted zinc alloy. Zinc pipes you won't be able to collapse the pipe with your thumb.

Sort them, melt them separated by look and feel (stiffness). And how they respond to a propane torch. If you have some pewter heat it to around 400* and snip off a piece of a sample from the pipe, dip it in the 400* pewter and if it is tin it should melt pretty easily. Neither lead nor zinc will melt at the low end of where pewter melts.

You can repeat this process after sorting out the tin pipes using a pot of molten lead at less than 700* where lead pipe would melt but not zinc.

Testing should go pretty fast. Snip, dip, toss pipe in stack or bucket as tin/not tin. Then take the not tin pipes and test the same way to see if they are lead.

Once you have a pipe samples confirmed in melted pewter or lead you will be able to melt them down in their individual batches based on your sort. As one big batch the yield I have gotten varied betweeb 35% tin and 52% tin mostly depending on the amount of lead or high lead pipes I included in the melt. Those two batches were from same source. Just depending on what pipes went into the pot.

With a whole big pile I would say keep the different types separated. With 20 or 30 pounds I tend to treat it like garage sale and scrap solder. Melt in a big batch, have tested, use as it turns out.

There may be some round lead stopper like things with holes in them. Those are lead.

PS. I missed where the sample flunked the acid test but unless all the pipes look the same... I would check some of each kind with acid. That 30# I have on hand is only a small part of an entire organ worth of pipes. Majority were zinc.

[richhodg66]

I didn't look that close at the pile, but they all looked like the one he had pulled out which was all made of the same stuff and muriatic acid ate the test piece I put in it completely, nothing left, didn't even make the acid cloudy.

I have sent a small sample to BNE mainly because I'm still curious, but I think this stuff is a loss. THe guy had one of these old walk behind tractors, antique one, which he had rebuilt the engine and put new tires and such on it. That is something I could use and am considering going back to deal on it if I can. If I do and have some day light, I'll look at those pipes again.