What do I have?

[Hook]

Would appreciate some best guesses as to what this is. A friend dropped it by yesterday. His relative had been using it to make sinkers with a long time ago. I have about a third of a 5 gallon bucket in chips, thin bars, and ingots. The thinnest of the bars bend easily by hand and snap in two just before doubling over. The thickest bars don't bend without great effort. The friend thinks its babbit…..who knows?

[Bad Ass Wallace]

The original formula for his bearing metal was 89.3% tin, 7.1% antimony and 3.6% copper. This formula is still used by some manufacturers today and marketed as 'Genuine Babbitt', or ASTM B-23 Grade 2 Babbitt. It is a soft, white non-ferrous alloy which is used to provide a bearing surface.

[rancher1913]

looks like lineotype spacers

[Cosmic_Charlie]

Linotype although I have never seen stereotype or monotype which have a much different composition.

[kevin c]

I agree with the impression that you have letterpress spacers there (I'm guessing there's no lettering along one long edge?). The long pieces look like Lino spacers. Some of those smaller rectangular pieces look like they're notched, typical of monotype.

Spacers are usually hard lead, up to and often the same as the alloy used for the actual letter impressions.

[Hook]

Thanks for the input. I think I'm going to melt it all into ingots and take one to the local salvage yard to let them check it with their XRF machine. They've done it for me a coupe of times but I don't want to wear out my welcome....

[Conditor22]

I would just smelt them all together, make your ingots then wait a couple of weeks and test the hardness (or test the hardness now) and go from there

spacers for typesetting. could be anywhere between 16 -- 30 bhn (I'm guessing on the lower side)

usually, the harder stuff has a letter(s) or image on it, being harder to last a longer time.

Makes nice alloy

[kmw1954]

I picked up a 15# lot of print type not so long ago and was here too looking to get advice on what I had. From the discussion here and from what I learned doing web searches there appears to be 4 basic types of print type. Linotype, Stereotype, mono-type and Foundry type and they are listed here in order of hardness. Also there appears to be no set formula or proportion amongst any of them and it is highly dependent on who the manufacture was. Many proprietary formulas.

With the hardness I found after melting some into ingots mine is either some sort of mono-type or foundry type as this is very hard material, then after it cooled the ingot has a very crystalized look to it, which I believe is the antimony, also it does not bend but snaps.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

These type alloys all have a good amount of antimony in them. As you smelt it a thick layer of silvery material will form on the surface. Keep heating and stirring until it melts in.

[lightman]

Nice Score!

I agree that they look like Linotype spacers. They could be anything from linotype to something softer. I think you have a good plan to melt them together and have it tested. It looks be nice and clean.

[Conditor22]

spacers