What is it ?

[James Wisner]

About 20 years ago I had an old friend give me some ? pipe.
It was about 1 inch OD x 3/4" ID, He had cut it up into sections.
They were HARD, you could not bend them, and very OLD and dirty.

I smelted them down 12 - 15 years ago into ( 9 ) 3 pound ingots, and had forgotten about them till the other day when I was finishing smelting the last of some old wheel weights

I pulled them out and ???, they have no oxidation on them, still shiney as the day I cast them years ago.
Bright silver/gold with a hint of blue to the color, and dang hard.

Any thoughts as to what the alloy may be.

I will be taking a bunch of copper wire and scrap steel to be recycled soon so may be they have a way to scan it

JW

[Winger Ed.]

Sounds like an alloy with a lot of Tin in it.

I've melted WW into ingots and some are 15 or so years old.
They're still pretty shiny like you describe, when pure Lead ingots the same age is dark gray.

I'd get it analized, or play around alloying some into pure Lead and see how it casts & shoots.

[GregLaROCHE]

A start would be to check the BHN if you can. Even if you don’t know the alloy, it will give you an idea of how much pure lead to add for the hardness you want.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

Nice dilemma to have nonetheless.

[James Wisner]

I have a friend who has another friend who has one of the super duper hand held test guns.
Alloy came back 67 % lead and 33 % tin

I have 27 pounds of it, YEAH.

J Wisner

[skeettx]

Yeeee Hawww
Well done !!
Thank you for the report
Mike

[Hanzy4200]

That's great man! Good for you. I would have never guess a pipe would have that much tin content. You never know.