At the scrap yard yesterday, I found a 45 lb home cast ingot of what appeared to me to be perhaps melted 50/50 solder or something like that. That someone went through the trouble to cast it into an ingot was a positive indicator.
In my experience, high tin content gives off a very faint yellow tinge, and is very bright. This stuff was similar in that respect, but it had a distinctly yellowy surface. I thought it might have been just some grease or whatever. The yellowness was only on the surface.
This metal weighs about almost exactly 2/3 that of clip-on wheel weights. It melted at a little below 500 degrees.
I haven't yet casted bullets; I wanted first to melt it down into manageable chunks and see what I could learn about its behavior while doing that. When I've melted 50/50 solder and cast it into ingots, the ingots have very sharp edges, due to the low surface tension. Exactly the reason we use it to cast.
Most of the ingots from the new mystery metal didn't exhibit this, but some did.
Also, the yellow carried over. All the ingots I made from it have it, and it's only on the surface. Almost looks like gold.
Finally, this stuff is really hard and ringey. My Cabine Tree says .95, which nearly off the scale...tranlates to 30+ BH.
Obviously, it's content is mostly (or perhaps entirely) unknowable without an assay or XRF scan, neither of which I have access to.
Thoughts?
EDIT: I forgot to mention two other notable traits. First, it took a really long time to cool. Second, shrinkage was almost nil. Normally, I can drop the ingots from the 2x2 inch muffin trays within 10 minutes, usually less, and they normally drop out easily. These ones took a good 15 minutes sitting in front of a fan, and then I had to pry them out using a screwdriver because they shrunk so little.
Weird, huh?
Casting bullets should be interesting....