babbit for alloying?

[CHeatermk3]

Hi all--
been lurking here for a few months--lotsa good info here.

I'm pretty new to casting rifle boolits but useta cast minies for my zouave .58 30 or so yrs. ago. Along the way I got some ingots of #3 babbit. Tryed casting minies with it but it didn't work well at all. I put it in a corner and then piled yrs worth of stuff on/around it.

Then recently I came into a large quantity(may turn out to be a ton or so) of pure lead. While looking for something to alloy it with, I found the rotometals info here and got some antimonious lead and tin wire from them a few weeks ago.

Today I'm on their site and saw they have babbit metal for sale, and that grade 3 is mostly tin with antimony and copper.

Tin is $20/lb. I have several (14 I think) 3-pound ingots of this babbit. Can I use it to harden up my stash of pure?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[FLHTC]

I've used bearing babbott often to harden up pure lead and even used it to harden up wheel weights. I used to get cable sheathing which was pure and I had a steady supply of water pipe but only used it for pyramid sinkers for surf fishing. A friend told me about mixing it with the babbot and voila, instant bullet metal.

[bangerjim]

yes. just download the free excel spreadsheet on here for alloy calculations.

banger

[plainsman456]

I have mixing some for a while now.

Just be sure not to wait to long to size them they do get hard.

[cwheel]

3X has a little more lead content than the 4X ( which is more expensive to buy ) but still makes a great tool for mixing up boolits. I've used it for 30 years to lighten up, and harden the alloy. When smelting up batches to be used for boolit casting, find a boolit mold that has a listed weight in Lyman #2 alloy. Mix the batch until the weight of the boolit cast is within 1 gr. After you get the weight right, take a cast boolit over to a anvil and hit it with a 2 lb. hammer. Boolit should crush and not crack or fracture in any way. It takes very little babbit in the mix to get the desired weight and hardness. Babbit works well with any boolit I've cast, but makes the biggest difference in rifle boolits that get pushed a little faster. Also have noticed that boolits cast with babbit don't need as much oversize as softer leads. Example is my 30:30 boolits cast from babbit alloy only needs to be sized to .309 VS .310 with softer alloy. Might be engaging the rifling a little better. Ran a fresh batch through the chrono this weekend, 150gr. Lee with a gc, and 27gr. of 3031 shouldn't be running as 2060 fps, but they are in my 20" barrel Winchester. My reloading manuals have this load running more than 100 fps slower. Could the harder boolit be running faster, nothing to compare with as my chrono is fairly new. My stash of melted out used babbit is running low, but I'm getting old as well, should have enough to finish up my lifetime.
Chris

[454PB]

Tin is great stuff for adding "fluidity" to boolit alloy, but what is needed for adding hardness is antimony. Tin is also the most expensive component in an alloy, and if I had a bunch of it, I either sell or trade it for an alloy with high antimony content. Any of the type metals are high in antimony content and work well for raising hardness.

[badgeredd]

This will help with your question.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?172475-High-Copper-Alloys-Lets-discuss-this-further

If you can't get some COWW lead I'd pick up some SuperHard bullet lead from Rotometals and alloy the pure with the SuperHard and the Babbit. Using Bumpo's alloy calculator will make the job a lot easier. Since your babbit has practically no lead but also contains a fair amount of copper and antimony along with over 80% tin, you'd be better off using something like COWW or SuperHard to raise the antimony levels in conjunction with babbit metal to get a good alloy.

Edd

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Babbit can be almost anything, some is 90% tin and some is as little as 1% tin
see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_(metal)

I stumbled into 120 lbs of babbit, some different shape ingots.
I smelted it all together and then had it tested,
the whole lot is now 10% tin and 90% Lead.

You can probably figure out what you have by finding the melt temp
and casting a few boolits and comparing it to other known alloys
you have.

[Old School Big Bore]

I had a big factory ingot of Babbitt but read that the copper in it would increase the surface tension and ruin a batch of alloy. In fact I've been searching for ways to free up & remove the copper, but if you folks are using it I'll hunt that ingot up & try to utilize it. This ingot has no specific ID stamped on it, but it rings like a bell when struck.

[badgeredd]

I had a big factory ingot of Babbitt but read that the copper in it would increase the surface tension and ruin a batch of alloy. In fact I've been searching for ways to free up & remove the copper, but if you folks are using it I'll hunt that ingot up & try to utilize it. This ingot has no specific ID stamped on it, but it rings like a bell when struck.

Get Bumpo's alloy calculator and use the babbit as a "sweetener", using a small amount will suffice. I use type #2 babbit at a rate of 4 oz. to 10 pounds COWW and then cut it with stick-on WW or purish lead. If you keep your copper content in the area of 1/4% you'll have few problems but will NEED to keep your melt at or above 725 degrees.

I have an alloy calculaor I use with my Linux system that I wrote 4 years ago and find it invaluable to at least get an educated guess of what my alloy actually is. Too much tin will cause you problems in hardening your alloy. I have mentioned a balanced alloy several time in different threads. With a "balanced" alloy your results will be more consistent which I believe most of us are after.

To figure out what base your babbit is you can cast a know bullet weigh with straight babbit. If the weight is significantly lighter out of babbit, your babbit is a tin based alloy. if it is nearly the same as a casting from COWW you have a lead based alloy...at least that information will put you on track to getting good results.

Edd

[WALLNUTT]

You can "freeze"the excess copper out of an alloy.

[CHeatermk3]

Hey thanks for the replies--the ingots are stamped with some numbers(casting lot# maybe?) and are also stamped "GR-3 BABB" on the bottom and the top has "FEDERATED-FRY METALS" in raised letters, obviously cast-in by the ingot mould. These are some nice looking ingots that came out of the blacksmith shop of the papermill I worked in. We useta cast and machine bearings for papermachine cylinder dryers in-house then they downsized and the housings were sent out to be relined w/babbit and the rough-cast pillow blocks stored in our warehouse for finish machining as needed.

I guess the best way to find out would be to melt up a potful of pure lead and add some of this stuff then try casting the resulting melt and see if I get usable boolits.

[bobthenailer]

There are at least 13 grades of bearing babbit all containing different ratios of lead, tin, and antimony and other trace elements .
most of the bearing babbit ive run across over the years has a BHN of 30 and alloys well.

[bumpo628]

I guess the best way to find out would be to melt up a potful of pure lead and add some of this stuff then try casting the resulting melt and see if I get usable boolits.

Here are a couple alloy recipes using your babbitt, pure lead, and superhard.

Hardball:
6 lbs superhard + 24 lbs pure lead + 0.75 lbs #3 Babbitt = alloy with 2% tin, 6% antimony, and 0.2% copper

Lyman #2:
5 lbs superhard + 26 lbs pure lead + 2 lbs #3 Babbitt = alloy with 5% tin, 5% antimony, and 0.5% copper

Hopefully that helps you out.

from Rotometals:
Super Tough Grade 3 Babbitt: 83-85% tin, 7.5-8.5% antimony, 7.5-8.5% copper
Super Hard: 70% lead, 30% antimony