Pipe organ lead???

[Blackhawk45hunter]

I came into possession of 100 lbs of melted down pipe organ lead. It's pretty soft, so I'm guessing it's nearly 'pure lead'. What alloy do I most likely have?

[RobS]

I think you are right with it being nearly straight lead. I remember another forum member who had a large amount of it he could attain and was asking the same question but can't remember the fine details.

[lcclower]

Should be part tin, percent depending on what note the pipes were built to play. See
http://www.hevanet.com/dibblee/pipe_metallurgy.pdf

[Ithaca1911]

I got ahold of quite a bit of organ pipe a while back. was in pipe form, so I was able to sort it by physical appearance. you're looking at somewhere between pure lead, and 50+ percent tin. depending on which pipes/what mixture of pipes was melted. my recommendation is to get a local scrapyard to shoot it with their "xrf??" gun. however, the guns only penetrate a few micro something or the others into the lead, so make sure you get a good, fluxed sample, and pour a small thin sheet to be read.

hope this helps at least a little.

[geargnasher]

I have several good friends in the business, and the short version was pretty much covered by Ithica1911, most of the lead/tin pipes average 50% tin when all melted together, but you could have anything, including a large percentage of ZINC, since a few organs had a few zinc pipes.

Odds are you can figure your alloy out by casting some boolits with it and comparing them to pure lead boolits cast from the same mould. If the organ lead will cast good boolits, it doesn't have any zinc in it. You can be fairly certain that there isn't any antimony or arsenic in there, either, since those metals represent technology developed since most organ pipes were made, plus it would make soldering the tubes an even more difficult task than it already is. You can use specific gravity (displacement of water volume) to determine the percentage of lead and tin once you prove the stuff isn't contaminated with zinc.

Gear

[sargenv]

I bought some lead here that was organ pipe lead.. Some of it was 9% tin, some was 18% tin. I think I picked up 50 # of each.

[Blackhawk45hunter]

So it's safe to assume it's probably over 6% tin?

[Ithaca1911]

So it's safe to assume it's probably over 6% tin?

depends on what pipes were melted down. you've got "pure", low tin, mid tin, high tin "pure tin", and PURE ZINC, the zinc pipes are very very easy to differentiate, I actually got about 1000 lbs of those too, and just scrapped them.according to the organ guy I got mine from, the zinc are interior type stuff. they're extremely thin and light. I doubt that made it into your mix. if it's a blend of pipes, you should be well over 6% tin, but if someone pulled the "pure" lead pipes, you'll be under that, or high tin you could be in the 50+% range. I'd either get it tested wit hthe gun. or do a density test (there's directions and formulas on this site somewhere). or, since the alloys are all NEARLY pure lead/tin combination, possibly could figger it out from bhn.

sorry I can't be more help, mine got professionally tested, then I sold most of it.

[Blackhawk45hunter]

Ok, so I cast a bunch of Lee 452-200-RF with it yesterday and they all weighed in at 211 grains.
They all look like they've been chromed, super shiny.

[wch]

The loads may get 'out-of-tune' pretty quickly!

[Blackhawk45hunter]

How so?

[a.squibload]

Blackhawk, you've been had! :>)

Actually the sound waves ruin the molecular bonds in the alloy,
and the boolits won't sound right,
so the best thing is to send all that pipe organ lead over here for disposal...

[Blackhawk45hunter]

Wow I can't believe I missed that, lol