Lead tin ratio question

[Mardee]

I have some plumbers lead..very soft.. and want to make a 20/1 (lead/tin) alloy. Is the 20/1 ratio by weight or by volume?
I am new to boolit casting and reloading. I enjoy lurking and reading on the forum and am learning a lot by doing so.
Thanks for any help.

[Sensai]

Weight. Depending on what you're doing with it you may want to consider other alloys like Linotype and wheel weights. Tin is expensive and hard to come by for a reasonable price. Solder is about the easiest way to get tin in my area. There are a myriad of topics on here about alloys, or just google bullet alloy.

[BubbaJon]

Plumbers lead is good stuff! 50/50 tin/lead. Use it as seasoning for WW's.

[BIGRED]

most of us use a little tin to help with mold fill out. usually 1-2%. tin is expensive and you use it sparingly. use clip on wheel weights and soft lead 50/50 equal parts of each. then add 1% tin it gives me a general bhn of about 10.5 and works great in my 380, 9mm,45acp. no leading and is allot cheaper. wheel weight purchased already cleaned and poured into ingots are about $1.25 per pound and tin is about $15-20 per pound.

[mto7464]

find a radiator repair shop and ask to clean out his tank. I got a couple of small buckets of 60/40 soldier scrap for a reasonable price.

[Defcon-One]

Mardee:

Plumbers lead is not 50/50 solder as someone stated above, it is nearly Pure Lead, as you said, very soft. The mix you want is by weight, 20 pounds of plumbers lead to 1 pound of Tin. Or as an example, 19 pounds of pure lead to 2 pounds of 50/50 Solder. Since the Solder is 1 pound of lead and 1 pound of Tin you still get 21 pounds total with 20 pounds of lead and 1 pound of Tin.

20:1 = 4.76% Tin (1/21) The amount of Tin/the Total Weight of the batch!
25:1 = 3.85% Tin (1/26) Great for Hollow Point bullets!
30:1 = 3.23% Tin (1/31)

I'd read what BIGRED said above about Antimonial Lead (Clip-on WWs) and Tin cost, he is right. Hope that helps!

DC-1

[runfiverun]

yes just as it says.
20 pounds of lead and 1 pound of tin.
or 19 pounds of lead and 2 pounds of 50-50.

[303Guy]

Scrap pewter ware is around 97% tin. Shouldn't cost too much.

[davegalesr]

Pewter picture frames at the local GoodWill store wind up costing me around .50 per pound - just need to watch out for zinc frames.

[Full Mold Jack]

Pewter picture frames at the local GoodWill store wind up costing me around .50 per pound - just need to watch out for zinc frames.

Wow that's cheap. I just got back from my first pewter scrounging trip at the local charity stores and came home with two pounds of pewter tankards that cost me $10.

I seen lots of other stuff but I'm still learning and was scared of buying zinc or some such other alloy and only grabbed the tankards that had the word pewter marked on their bases. A couple of them look pretty cool but I think they'll look better atop some powder than my mantle.