How pure is my lead?

[gwozdz]

New to this great forum. I have several ingots of lead from unknown mixtures or sources. I've searched, but could not find any tests to help me determine how pure my lead is. Do such tests exist that would allow me to say that my lead ingots are XX% pure lead? I also have some that I know are a mix of WW and lineotype. Is this unknown mix good for any type of bullet or is it just junk lead? It's been over 25 years since I did anything with boolit making and now that I am retired, I thought I would get back into it. TIA

[white eagle]

first off
WELCOME
now about your lead
some scrap yards do tests on metals to find their consistencies
if you have one near you you may want to venture over
pure lead is a good base for many alloys and can be used with ww @a 50/50 percentage
to make a fine alloy
can also be used str8 for black powder applications
as far as a test the thud test and fingernail test are all I am aware of
but maybe someone else will know better

[btroj]

I don't sweat this sort of thing. I mix it to what looks about right for hardness and go for it. I don't think most shooting is critical of a wide range of hardness.

If the gun is happy, I am happy.

[David2011]

It's easier to judge hardness than purity but there are some seat-of-the-pants methods that will give you an educated guess. If the ingots are REALLY bright and shiny they might be straight lead or close to it. If they've been sitting around for a long time in a bad environnment they will go dull gray so that's only a marginal way to judge. If they ring instead of thud when tapped together they probably have some antimony and are going to be harder. A lead hardness tester like the Lee or a more costly one like the Saeco will tell you how hard the lead is but you still won't know the alloy. If you have straight lead the boolits will weigh more than the mold's design weight. If there's a lot of tin the boolits will be lighter than the design weight. If only off by 1-3 grains that can be affected by the casting temperature but straight lead will be 10 grains heavier than the design in the 160-180 grain range. Little or no tin may cause the boolits to fill the mold poorly. Good flow probably means at least 2% tin. If dropping the hot boolits into water makes them considerably harder than air cooled boolits then there is probably a significant percentage of antimony. Boolits without antimony will not water harden. Lead or lead/tin alloys just don't respond to water dropping. You can run a search for testing lead hardness and come up with some home brewed hardness testing techniques.

If you have a small graduate cylinder you could figure the density of a boolit. Pure lead should measure about 11.34. It's easy enough to use an internet based converter to convert grains to grams.

As long as they cast well and are hard enough for your velocity, it shouldn't be a huge issue how pure the lead is. Good luck!

David

[gwozdz]

This is great info. Thanks guys.