Several hundred pounds of mixed bars. How to cast consistently?

[bangerjim]

I stamp all my ingots with a 1 or 2 letter code using steel stamps. Just select your letters, wrap tape around them and you have a nice letter punch you can label with using only one good whack with 3-4# hammer.

They are permanently ID'd. No magic markers fading or lost clipboards. Takes no longer than writing on the ingots with a marker.

I use :
P = pure
CW = COWWs
H = hard alloy I have tons of
R = range lead

etc....etc....etc.....

saves time and confusion a few years down the road when you end up with 2T or more of Pb!

banger

[jdgabbard]

Like mentioned above, you usually can pick up visual clues as to the content of the lead. COWW will be more silvery and possibly shiny if the ingot mold was fairly cold at poor. 99% PB and Range scrap (Antimony Lead) tend to, in my experience, turn color with a bluish hue. But the range scrap will be harder, say around 10-12 BHN.

So in a situation like that I would probably sort first by color, then test by hardness. That should help you sort out your COWW from #2 or Lino, and your Pure from Range/Antimony Lead. You may even get to a point that you can visually tell the difference between these alloys.

But whatever the case, it might benefit you to re-smelt the segmented ingots to thoroughly mix them. As said, consistency is what you’re looking for. Larger batches are more consistent.

One of these days I’m going to invest in a Dutch Oven and a Turkey Fryer. But for now a camp stove and a smallish cast iron skillet serve my needs. I was able to smelt 55lbs of ingots from COWW last night in about 2 hours. However my 12lbs batches might not be the most consistent. But considering they’re all COWW (or stick on when I do a batch of those) I’m not too concerned about the content differences.


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[Conditor22]

the cheapest/quickest way to test the lead is with pencils
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...-testing-trick

Visual inspection works if they are of similar age but will still help narrow down like kinds

you could drop them on concrete and sort by sound (you can get pretty close if you drop them the same way)

a lot of my lead is labeled by hardness {BHN} (except COWW, SOWW, LINOTYPE, MONOTYPE)

I smelt mystery lead into ingots, pile them up them wait several weeks, test their hardness, and label them.

I do a lot of my casting by different hardnesses for various loads and guns.