MikeS
03-09-2012, 06:42 PM
Hi All.
I have 4 round ingots of Dutchboy solder that's marked 888. I've seen them mentioned here before, but have yet to see anywhere what the composition of the 888 solder is. As a comparison I took an automatic centerpunch, and punched a brick of pure lead, an ingot of linotype, one of the 888 ingots, and a boolit cast from my Lyman #2 alloy. The punches in the pure lead were much larger than any of the others, as was expected. The linotype was the smallest of all, again as expected. What surprised me was that both the #2 and the Dutchboy were the about same size. Is it possible that the solder is fairly close to Lyman #2 in composition? I don't have any need to hang on to these Dutchboy ingots, and if I can use them, I will without a second thought to their history. I have linotype as well as 50/50 (lead/tin) in 1lb ingot sized ingots, and they both look much different than the Dutchboy ingots, which look much more 'lead' like than either of the other 2 alloys. Normally I wouldn't bother with them, but at the moment I'm all out of my Lyman #2 alloy, and as my only source of pure lead is in 26# bricks I normally mix it up in a dutch oven over a turkey fryer base. I just last week had surgery on my right hand, and while the doc said I can use the hand for 'light use', I don't really think mixing up 50# of alloy, and pouring it into ingot moulds really qualifies as light use. So I'm either going to use these dutchboy ingots, or just cast from pure linotype, something I would rather not do. I only have 4 of these, so it's really only going to get me one pot's worth of lead, but I haven't cast any boolits in more than a week, and I think I'm starting to undergo withdrawal!
I have 4 round ingots of Dutchboy solder that's marked 888. I've seen them mentioned here before, but have yet to see anywhere what the composition of the 888 solder is. As a comparison I took an automatic centerpunch, and punched a brick of pure lead, an ingot of linotype, one of the 888 ingots, and a boolit cast from my Lyman #2 alloy. The punches in the pure lead were much larger than any of the others, as was expected. The linotype was the smallest of all, again as expected. What surprised me was that both the #2 and the Dutchboy were the about same size. Is it possible that the solder is fairly close to Lyman #2 in composition? I don't have any need to hang on to these Dutchboy ingots, and if I can use them, I will without a second thought to their history. I have linotype as well as 50/50 (lead/tin) in 1lb ingot sized ingots, and they both look much different than the Dutchboy ingots, which look much more 'lead' like than either of the other 2 alloys. Normally I wouldn't bother with them, but at the moment I'm all out of my Lyman #2 alloy, and as my only source of pure lead is in 26# bricks I normally mix it up in a dutch oven over a turkey fryer base. I just last week had surgery on my right hand, and while the doc said I can use the hand for 'light use', I don't really think mixing up 50# of alloy, and pouring it into ingot moulds really qualifies as light use. So I'm either going to use these dutchboy ingots, or just cast from pure linotype, something I would rather not do. I only have 4 of these, so it's really only going to get me one pot's worth of lead, but I haven't cast any boolits in more than a week, and I think I'm starting to undergo withdrawal!