Just when I thought it was safe...

[crabo]

I did a big lead smelt on New Years eve and ended up with 15-1600 pounds of lead ingots. My wife had been wanting me to smelt the roofing lead to help clean up the garage. I didn't get to my WWs, but I got a lot of new floor space.

Today, when it was almost time to go home from school, I get an email from her, and she tells me she bought me some more lead. She and the neighbor who haunts garage and estate sales, went to look at some bee hive wooden ware. There was four boxes of ingots and lead bars. He talked them into throwing in about 4 pounds of solder. She said, "do you have one of your boys, with a strong back that will load this lead for me? You owe Mike $105."

I took one of my Shreck looking students, and he loaded the truck with the lead and wooden ware and I paid him $20 for about 20 minutes of work.

There were 10 bricks that measured 13x4.25x2", and 4 2x2x10.5" weights, that weighed out to 523 pounds. (.411 pounds per cubic inch)

There is probably another 300 pounds of small ingots. Not too bad for $105.

I asked about bullet molds and they told me that they had not seen any, but they probably took 300 guns out of the house. Whoever "they are".

Anyone in the D/FW area want to trade some WWs for pure lead?

[runfiverun]

if the 4" bricks are like the ones i stumbled across once, they are dead soft 5bhn.
weighed at 25 lbs each.

[crabo]

if the 4" bricks are like the ones i stumbled across once, they are dead soft 5bhn.
weighed at 25 lbs each.

I'll weigh one tomorrow.

[captaint]

Crabo - I'm taking that deal today, tomorrow and the day after. Good for you. And I was thrilled cause my son got me a big bucket of ww's. OK, I'm happy either way......enjoy Mike

[crabo]

Well, my math isn't as good as I thought it was. There is only about 550 pounds there.

runfiverun, the bricks weighed at 26+

I figured the bricks at 13x4.25x2 to get my cubic inches= 110.5x .411 and that comes up 45.41

What did I do wrong, math majors?

[geargnasher]

Crabo, Muddy Creek Sam is always looking to trade isotope alloy for pure lead, you might want to contact him, but he's on the East coast.

Gear

[theperfessor]

Your math looks fine to me. Either your measurement is wrong (no offense intended) or they're not lead.

[theperfessor]

After checking a materials property table the two closest metals with low melting points that I could find that are close to what you have are tin (.263 lb/cu. in) and antimony (.239 lb/cu. in). You may have something worth more than lead there!

110.5 x 0.263 = 29 lbs
110.5 x 0.239 = 26.4 lbs <--- Jackpot!

[crabo]

Prof, how do I find out? If I take it to a recycler, can they tell me?

[theperfessor]

Don't know if a recycler can tell you or not. I'd bet not, but its probably worth a phone call.

If it were me I might try to melt a 3 or 4 lb hunk of it and see what the melting point is. Pure antimony has a melting point of 1167F, pure tin is 449F. Of course this won't tell you if its an alloy of some sort, and many alloys have melting points below the melting point of one or all of the metals in the alloy, but it least it would give you a little more information without any real cost.

I just looked over my properties table and noticed that zinc has a density of .254 to .259 lb/cu in (110.5 x 0.254 = 28 lb) and a melting point of 788F. Could you have a zinc ingot intended for die casting?

Anyway, you have the information on the three most likely candidates I could come up with. Without a chemical test you won't know for sure but a melting point test might be worth a few minutes of your time. In any case I wouldn't alloy anything with it until I was sure it wasn't zinc.

Maybe one of the other members here can suggest a quick and dirty chemical test of some sort, I'm not very good at chemistry.

[Bloodman14]

Isn't there a muriatic acid test for zinc? Try that. What color are the ingots before smelting?

[runfiverun]

it could also be babbit, with mostly tin/lead and maybe copper or nickel.
i'd melt some, watch the temp, pour a boolit and weigh it against a known sample.
i have some nickel babbit, and some old 50/50 bars that look like old ww ingots.

the old ww's used to have more antimony in them.
in the 50's-60's they had 9%, then in the real early 70's they went to 7%, and later the late 70's early 80's 4%.
down to todays average of @3%.

anyways i'd bet they are pretty soft.
give them the thumbnail test, drop them on the cement floor, if you get a think,clink or klank, i'd investigate further.
if you get cla-tud and it scratches easily call it soft and use as such.
how's that for scientific? :lol:

[crabo]

I found a good site for the weight of materials.

http://www.reade.com/Particle_Briefings/spec_gra2.html#A

It says babbitt should weigh 454 pounds per cubic foot. Lead weighs 711

If the bricks are babbitt, they should weigh 31 pounds by the math. The were a little over 26. The material is easily scratched with the finger nail. I wonder if this is some form of babbitt? It has a blueish look like the lead does, and it shows bright silver when you scratch it.

[Mk42gunner]

Most of the recyclers around here would tell you that it is junk, and offer to take it off your hands for about a nickel a pound.

Do you have any way to do a hardness test? It is probably okay; but I remmeber one member that had a problem with mystery metal that turned out to be cadmium.

In any case, I would do a test melt in a scrap pot, then decide what to do.

Robert

[Cherokee]

Melt some down, staying under 700f to avoid melting zink, then cast some bullets and compare to some known alloy results. That is what I have done in the past.

[Tom W.]

If you can scratch it with your fingernail, it probably isn't zinc.

[crabo]

I found a place that will shoot it for free. I'll try to do it tomorrow.

[crabo]

I took it to the recyclers and they ground a spot. Dead soft. I had them shoot it and it was lead. I wonder if my scale is off? Oh well, it was still a great deal.