Organ Pipes

[rtyler8140]

So I helped a buddy melt down a bunch of old organ pipes the other day. They were damaged and thrown in a dumpster when removed from the church, so no chance of resale and hence the melting down. We found that the biggest pipes and caps were zinc, so those were discarded. We melted the rest of it down and wound up with about 120lbs of somewhat unknown alloy. When cast in a 228g Lee mold this alloy produces around a 186g Boolit. Is my logic correct in assuming that it is probably close to 50/50 lead to tin?

Lead: 708lbs per cubic foot
Tin: 456lbs per cubic foot

Volume of test boolits should yield 228g, assuming 50% is lead, then 114g for 1/2 the volume of the mold. If the other 50% is tin, then (456/708)×(114)=73.4g of tin would comprise the remaining volume and yield a 187.4g Boolit.

Thoughts?

[USSR]

They had some organ pipes at my local scrap yard a couple weeks ago. Things just didn't look right, so I asked the guy in the yard about them and he said the large pipes were zinc, but some of the smaller pieces were lead. I wasn't about to take the chance that some of the smaller pieces had some zinc mixed in, so I passed. Plenty of lead pipe and sheets to be found in due time.

Don

[Winger Ed.]

I'd save it to mix in rather sparingly with pure Lead & other 'goodies'.

Tin is getting more & more expensive, and I wouldn't use any more of it than I really needed to for boolit alloys.

[Dsltech1]

Don’t know if this helps. I found it interesting though. I imagine the spotted pattern wouldn’t be visible on a old pipe though. http://www.hevanet.com/dibblee/pipe_metallurgy.pdf

[lightman]

Organ pipes can be a great score or a bust. It pays to approach them carefully.

[rtyler8140]

So there actually quite a few that were spotty like that. These pipes were not super old (1980's if I remember correctly).