Latest range scrap smelt

[Alan in Vermont]

I was finally able to smelt the boolit ore I took out of the indoor range last fall.

Ended up with 435# of ingots.

First impression is that it is harder than I expected. Cannot mark it but just a tiny bit with a thumbnail.

I've still got a similar quantity of ore from the outdoor range, mined last summer. That will also get smelted sometime soon.

I'm going to try casting some of both batches, if it fills out decent I will probably mix it all together, probably with just a bit of extra tin and have it analyzed. Would be nice to have a large quantity of one alloy of known composition.

[lightman]

Good Job! Sounds like it should cast really well.

[depoloni]

The range lead stuff I received from you was not only super-clean and well packaged, it was definitely dang near as hard as COWW according to my Lee and LBT testers at least. Ingots had a distinctive ring to them that was far from the "almost pure thud" expected. I cast some of it and the boolits I got were WD'd from the mold and tested a week later... read about 14-15 BHN.

Good stuff.

Wife might kill me, but hey... holler at me if you put more on the market. [smilie=s:

[Alan in Vermont]

Well, I got a nasty surprise. Check out http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?276504-Latest-Range-Scrap-Smelt-FAIL! for the now-ongoing saga of good metal going bad.

[depoloni]

Well, I'm glad it doesn't appear that I got any of that batch.
My guess is that you got number of "frangible" sintered copper-zinc (or copper-tin, or copper-polymer) bullets in the indoor range batch, thus the oatmeal and the crust. Keep it separate from your outdoor-mining batch - which I suspect (hope?) would have little to none of them.