Question about wiped lead joints.

[CastingFool]

I read somewhere that these wiped joints are mostly tin, and they should be separated, using a small torch, keeping the heat low to melt the joint and not the lead pipe. I recently came across some lead pipe with joints and wasn't difficult to melt them apart. The resulting ingot is very shiny and much harder than the lead pipe. I can't scratch it with a fingernail. Would it be ok to add it to the pewter items I have? The melted joints came up to about 2-1/3 lbs. Thanks in advance for your comments.

[Pipefitter]

Lead pipe is nearly pure lead, which melts at a higher temperature than lead alloyed with tin.
The wiped joints are just that, lead pipe joined together and "wiped" with an alloy of lead/tin to permanently join the two pieces together without melting the lead pipe.
As to being mostly tin i think they would be more like 10% or less tin, only an xrf assay would be able to tell for sure.

[Dusty Bannister]

The sample I had tested was about 30% or a bit less. It would depend upon what the plumber favored at the time. It is possible that your recovered solder is 10% but that would seem harder to work with being much closer to the melting point of the pipes. I did get a small plumbers stash from a friend whose father and uncles were in the trade. Some of the bars were 50/50 so it is really anyone's guess what you really have.

If you did a site search, I am pretty sure this has come up before and maybe you can get a consensus by using the others results to get an average of their tests. Dusty

One thread of many..
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...66-Wipe-solder

[lightman]

I probably wouldn't mix it with my pewter. Mostly because its an unknown.

[CastingFool]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the input

[samari46]

I worked for a public utility company and we had a dump out back the splicing crews would empty out all the unwanted short bars of 60/40 solder and many of the spliced joint they had when doing new splices. Just about down to the dregs now but good while it lasted. Still have the shortie bars of solder which are at most 2" long. Most have the 60/40 markings on the bar and I steel stamped the same on the smooth faces. You folks that mine berms should melt any hard cast bullets separately as it's a good source of tin and antimony. Strech those dollars.Frank

[Bookworm]

I had a couple hundred pounds of plumbing lead, complete with joints. I took an axe and cut out the joints, rendered them separately.

I sent off a sample to BNE for testing, it came back 5% Sn. Now I have 35 pounds of 20-1.