Fair price for 60/40 solder drippings?

[dRok]

I found a radiator place that has a lot of solder drippings, the guy said hes willing to sell as much as I want but hes not sure what a fair price is. The solder he uses is 60/40 and the market price of tin is about $10/lb according to the exchange. What do you guys figure is a reasonable price to offer him?

[Ole]

Offer a buck a pound and see what he says.

[AndyC]

Case of beer

[dRok]

Im going to pick up a 5gal bucket and melt it down. This may be a stupid question, is 60/40 solder percentage based upon volume or weight? I figure if it looks like pretty much pure metal, $1/lb wouldnt be unreasonable.

[felix]

Expect 50 percent waste. ... felix

[Jailer]

Expect 50 percent waste. ... felix

Yup. Lots of dirt and garbage mixed in but it's worth it if you can get it cheap.

I got a half of a 5 gallon bucket of 60/40 from a local guy for $20 and ended up with 22lbs of ingots.

[bumpo628]

Im going to pick up a 5gal bucket and melt it down. This may be a stupid question, is 60/40 solder percentage based upon volume or weight? I figure if it looks like pretty much pure metal, $1/lb wouldnt be unreasonable.

By weight

[dRok]

Ok so I got a 5gal bucket today for $40, it weighed about 90lbs. Ended up with 30lbs of **** and 60lbs of metal. There were some battery clamps but mostly it was drippings. I have no idea what the percentage of actual tin is in it. Is there any way to get an idea what percentage I have in my final product? It was obvious that this metal is way runnier than straight lead, it poured like water and is also noticeably lighter.

[southpaw]

Is there any way to get an idea what percentage I have in my final product?

You could try a specific gravity test. Cast a few boolits out of it. Here is a link that should be usefull. http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=124483&highlight=gravity

Here is how to do the specific gravity test. Remember this only works with lead tin mixes.

SW= sample weight
DW= dry weight
WW= wet weight

Weigh one of your boolits. This is your SW. Suspend this boolit from a piece of string and weigh it. This is you DW. Bring a cup of room temp water up under the boolit and just submerge it. This is your WW.

The formula is as follows:

SW / (DW-WW) = SG

The SG of pure tin is 7.318
for 50/50 SN/PB it is 8.882
for pure pb it is 11.34

If you get a number that is less than 7.3 or higher than 11.34 there is a math or measuring error. Check your work.

To find the percentage of tin that you have use the following formula.

2049.06 / SG - 180.69= % tin

Of course this only works if there are only PB and SN in the mix.

Hope this helps some.

Jerry Jr.