Sucess mixing tin and antimony to pure lead

[mdxdm]

Hey guys, I just wanted to post up my experience mixing these alloys together as I had a hard time doing it the way some others have done. On my first attempt I used sawdust as a flux and nothing seemed to smelt in correctly. I added 8oz of tin to 9lbs of lead first, then added the antimony in while stirring and fluxing the **** out of it. This did not work for me at all, I ended up getting frustrated after about an hour of this process and pulled that antimony out and heated it to its melting point and poured it in that way.

round#2

After scratching my head for a bit I decided to try again, this time using 5lbs of lead, 4oz tin, 4oz Antimony.
this time I only used a wax flux (Ney Vita-B-Flux). After adding the tin, I put a marble sized ball of the flux in the melt and got a nice black oil on the top the mix, then added the antimony. Stirring the living daylights out of the melt the antimony dissolved right in no issues in about 15 minutes. After testing I went from a BHN of about 8 up to a BHN of 16

In the coming weeks I plant to mix up 100lbs this way in the big pot and will take a video of it.

[Buzz64]

I'm no expert but seems like a LOT of tin for the amount of lead. With COWW in a twenty pound pot I get good fill with ONE oz of tin and hardness of around 11 or 12. Thought the tin only assisted in fill-out (which it has for me) but didn't add significant hardness - that's what the antimony does. Think the COWW already have the antimony in enough quantity to get me to that hardness. I've been slinging these boolits up to around 1100 (mostly in the 900 to 1000 fps) range with plain base without any leading. I do slug and size to .001 over.

[Garyshome]

Good info for when I get to that stage. Not quite there yet though.

[KYCaster]

Something you should try......

After adding the flux and Sb, reduce the temp of the melt to a slushy state. An easy way to do this is add some cold Pb ingots. Stir constantly and when the alloy reaches the set temp. the Sb will be completely dissolved.

Jerry

[mdxdm]

Something you should try......

After adding the flux and Sb, reduce the temp of the melt to a slushy state. An easy way to do this is add some cold Pb ingots. Stir constantly and when the alloy reaches the set temp. the Sb will be completely dissolved.

Jerry
I will try this next time see how it does. As it was I kept the melt at about 550-600*.

[mdxdm]

I'm no expert but seems like a LOT of tin for the amount of lead. With COWW in a twenty pound pot I get good fill with ONE oz of tin and hardness of around 11 or 12. Thought the tin only assisted in fill-out (which it has for me) but didn't add significant hardness - that's what the antimony does. Think the COWW already have the antimony in enough quantity to get me to that hardness. I've been slinging these boolits up to around 1100 (mostly in the 900 to 1000 fps) range with plain base without any leading. I do slug and size to .001 over.

I wanted to replicate lyman #2, which is 90% lead 5% tin 5% antimony. Starting with pure lead there is no tin or antimony in the mix so I needed to add quite a bit. Plus the tin is what gets the antimony to a lower melting point.

If I could find some coww id use those but in my area ive had 0 luck finding any

[GLL]

I mix pure lead, 63/37 solder (63% Sn) , and Rotometals Superhard (30% Sb) to make my various alloys.

Super easy and known compositions ! :)

Jerry

[lwknight]

So what you mixed up was 91-4.5-4.5 more less.
It does help to have a concentration of tin in the mix before adding antimony.
There is a way to use less tin and get the same results if you want.

You could mix 2 pounds tin , 6 pounds antimony and only 14 pounds lead. This will make 9-27-64 tin/antimony/lead. Here you cast smaller ingots of the basically a foundry type alloy.
Then you can add 1 pound of your custom hard alloy to every 3.5 pounds lead.
You will end up with 2-6-92 or aka "hardball" which will harden to about 16bnh after a few weeks.
This recipe makes 100 pounds total.
Also , the 9-27-63 is a beautiful smooth hard alloy.

[mdxdm]

So what you mixed up was 91-4.5-4.5 more less.
It does help to have a concentration of tin in the mix before adding antimony.
There is a way to use less tin and get the same results if you want.

You could mix 2 pounds tin , 6 pounds antimony and only 14 pounds lead. This will make 9-27-64 tin/antimony/lead. Here you cast smaller ingots of the basically a foundry type alloy.
Then you can add 1 pound of your custom hard alloy to every 3.5 pounds lead.
You will end up with 2-6-92 or aka "hardball" which will harden to about 16bnh after a few weeks.
This recipe makes 100 pounds total.
Also , the 9-27-63 is a beautiful smooth hard alloy.

Thanks for the idea, i have 600lbs of pure to play with so i plan to try a few mixes and see what i like best.

[Three44s]

If it's less lead initially to get the Antimony to alloy then I suggest a smaller percentage of lead and when the other metals are in solution, add more lead last?


Best regards

Three 44s

[lwknight]

If it's less lead initially to get the Antimony to alloy then I suggest a smaller percentage of lead and when the other metals are in solution, add more lead last?


Best regards

Three 44s

I thought that was what I described.