Lead alloy find yesterday

[richhodg66]

I bought about 40 lbs from an older gentelman who had it for casting sinkers and decided to get out of it. A lot of it is type metal still in the type form which I'll put to good use. There were a few big ingots (I guess three pounds apiece or more) that had the word "Imperial" on them. These are bigger than typical bullet casting ingots and the stuff is real hard, not formal test, but seems harder than linotype. Anyone have idea what it may be? Could just be linotype, the man mentioned he had worked as a printer once and that's where he got some of it.

[runfiverun]

if he worked as a printer it could be linotype.
or it could be foundry type which was added into used linitype to refresh the tin and antimony used up by the continous casting.
you might wanna ask him if he has any of the flux they used to use still around,that was some awesome stuff.

[WKAYE]

It sounds like Imperial Babbitt to me.
Approx. 86% Tin, 7% Antimony, and 7% Copper.
Most of what I have found were in 4 lb. ingots.

[richhodg66]

These could be four pounds each and they say Imperial on them. Wow! 86% tin! I hate to think someone was making fishing sinkers out of that.

I'll see if I can ask him about the flux. What was so special about it?

[DukeInFlorida]

At $16 a pound for TIN...........................

Quite a find!!!

[richhodg66]

There's at least four of those big ingots marked Imperial. I should be set for alloying metal for a while. When Iwas stationed at Fort Sill, I had a print shop that would sell me linotype for $1 a pound, wish I had bought a pickup load of it then, but this will keep me going a while.