What did I bring home

[corvette8n]

A friend that works at a scrap yard got this for me in place of ww,
pieces are 24" long about 3/4" wide and 1/16" or 1/8" inches thick.
The piece of paper wrapped around some of it says Composition Corp.
I melted some in a pan over a propane burner it melted at between 400-450 degrees according to my Lyman thermometor. I bent the thicker stuff and near the end of the bend it broke. Could this be some type of linotype or addressograph stock. I think there are about 50lbs of the stuff. It melted really clean hardly any dross. I will try the Lee hardness tester on it when it cools.

[mtgrs737]

It looks like Linotype spacer strips and the melt temp suggests it may be linotype. Why not cast up a few bullets and test it? Good Friend, best to stay in his good graces.

[Lloyd Smale]

my guess too. If so there usually the same composition as lineotype.
It looks like Linotype spacer strips and the melt temp suggests it may be linotype. Why not cast up a few bullets and test it? Good Friend, best to stay in his good graces.

[Typecaster]

No guess from a typographer here—type spacers. The pattern in the photo makes it a certain match for me. I don't know how these were cast at the foundry, but it must have been in a continuous mold. They came in various thicknesses, from a few thousandths up, usually specified in "points" (approx. 1/72") and the printer cut them to match the width of the line of text (column). I just bought about 350 lb. of these...they should be "fresh" metal since they came from the foundry. The tin shouldn't be cooked out.

On the other hand, to space out a column vertically by an amount that was less than the thinnest commercial spacer, the printer used pieces of index card—and the technique was called "carding." I would never recommend paying a lot for those spacers—they don't make good boolets at all.

[corvette8n]

I melted this down today and ended up with 60 lbs. of ignots.

[hammerhead357]

Yes they are spacers and if memory serves me correctly they are called Elrod strips and were cast from a machine called an Elrod. It had a melting pot on it and the proper outlet was installed for the size of the strip being pulled. Yes the machine pulled the strips out a little at a time allowing them to cool in the mouth of the outlet.

I think if you will look closely at them you will be able to see the marks where the machine stopped to let the strip cool. If they came from a foundry they should be pure lino. However some of the old hot type shops had them and just resused linotype over and over in them and their linotype machines. If the shop was a good one they would send off samples of their metal for analysis and would add the proper enrichment metal to bring the metal back up to specs.

I hope this helps some. Wes