removing tin from my alloy

[craveman85]

ive got some super hard alloy that i got out of some wheelweights. my 45-70 doesnt like the super hard alloy very much. i could add some pure lead to it but id rather go a different route. i was thinking of removing a bunch of the tin for scrap since pure tin is getting pretty pricey right now. how would i go about separating the tin from the lead?

[bumpo628]

I think you'd be much better off 'watering' it down by mixing a bunch of pure lead in there.
I'm pretty sure it's not possible to get the tin out of there.

[craveman85]

by doing a weight comparison with pure lead i calculated that its approximately 70% lead

[GP100man]

Once an alloy is blended for all reasons for the casters use is not feasible to remove or seperate it from each other .

Adding to it to dilute it is the most economical or trading for softer alloys .

For these reasons most of us that have a WW source seperate the stik ons from the clip ons !

[HATCH]

can't you just turn up the heat and burn off the tin?

[lwknight]

can't you just turn up the heat and burn off the tin?

Not even with a kiln.

It would take a veery long time but you could keep it melted and come by and skim the top layer of oxides every 20 minutes for a whole day.
You would eventually get most of the tin out and would be taking a lot of lead out the same way too.

[GLL]

Since you have a lead/tin/antimony alloy of unknown composition it might be best to just trade it off and start over with one that is of known composition !

Jerry

[Jim]

My suggestion would be add lead, about ten percent of existing weight, at a time, mix well, cast a few and check for hardness until you get the BHN you desire.

[Doby45]

Are you trying to make money from selling tin or are you trying to get a softer lead for your shooting habit? That is the better question. If you are trying to make money by selling "scrap" tin, good luck. If you are trying to simply get a softer alloy add pure lead or trade what you have for pure or close to pure lead. I have a good bit of soft stick on lead ingots that I will trade 1 for 1 with you for your "tin rich" alloy.

[KYCaster]

ive got some super hard alloy that i got out of some wheelweights. my 45-70 doesnt like the super hard alloy very much. i could add some pure lead to it but id rather go a different route. i was thinking of removing a bunch of the tin for scrap since pure tin is getting pretty pricey right now. how would i go about separating the tin from the lead?


My first question is, what do you consider "super hard"? 15 BHN? 20? 30?

Have you measured the hardness or are you comparing it with another known softer alloy?

You say you got it out of some WW...I've never seen LEAD WW that I would call super hard. Are you sure you didn't get some Zinc in your alloy?




by doing a weight comparison with pure lead i calculated that its approximately 70% lead


You don't say, but you imply that the remaining 30% is Tin. What makes you think that?

60/40 solder is fairly common, but I wouldn't expect to find it in a bucket of WW, and it's quite a bit softer than WW....no where near "super hard".

Zinc WW are becoming very common and a little bit of Zn added to Pb, Sn, Sb alloy will increase the hardness substantially. If you're not careful with the temp when you melt the WW it's very easy to get some Zn contamination. Are you sure that's not what you have?

Jerry

[nanuk]

I have read on how the metals can separate at initial temperature rise. Lyman #3 handbook mentions it... but it would probably take some time.

as the tin melts at a lower temp, some gets suspended on top, but how much???

you might have to bring the temp up from the bottom many times so as to bring fresh tin to the top.....

probably way more effort than it is worth.

I think the above suggestions have merit. test it against known lead and get an average BHN, and then trade it off, or alloy it with lead.

How much do you have?

[fryboy]

ww's are known for having VERY little tin in them ..... in fact most of us have to "sweeten" the alloy by adding a lil tin to get good fill out on driving bands etc , antimony is what hardens them and is used by varying amounts ( thru the years and by different manufacturer's ) as noted zinc contamination will also make the ingots harder ( and about a pita for most casters to use