A Tool Question

[lightman]

I have been thinking about permanently marking my lead ingots. Has anyone priced having a custom stamp made with the letters that a caster would use, like COWW, SOWW, ect? I have a set of stamps, both letter and number, but using 1 letter at a time, I could possibly be through in a couple of lifetimes! I've contacted a couple of companies and am waiting on a quote.

I know that marking ingots has been discussed before (just finished rereading an old thread), but was thinking about a tool holder that would hold 3 or 4 stamps. This led to the idea of a custom stamp. If I do this, I want it to be simple, no secret codes, numbers, ect. Just maybe soft, lino, coww, soww, ect. Your thoughts?

[country gent]

A custom made stamp or multiples can get expensive to have made die to time involved machining , hardening, cutting the designation letters is a slow fine proces with small tools. Try taping the designation together with your existing letter stamps use a good tough duct tape for this. A solid flat blow should ID in one blow easily.. A holder can be milled out to do this using your stamp set.

[borg]

I used a 4" turnbuckle, just wide enough to mount the stamps.
I don't have a camera, but the turnbuckle is a cast alum, used in guy wire tightening.

[lightman]

Thanks for the ideas. A shooting buddy is in the well business and has a decent machine shop. Borg, I'm thinking maybe a 3 bolt clamp is what you are talking about. They are used for securing guy wire to anchors. You also see them on catv or phone messenger cables.

Actually, I got a response from 2 companies that make stamps. One is about $110 per stamp. (ouch) The other is about $50 for a 4 letter stamp, and a few bucks more for additional letters. (still expensive)

I should have started marking these much sooner, I have 11 or 12 milk crates of ingots.! I could spend the whole winter stamping these guys!

[Mitch]

I have found that bigger ingots say 2.5 to 5 lb leave less marking to do.one letter at atime id not all that bad if you keep up.You can mark hundreds of ingots in a few hours.Give it a try you might be surprised how many you can get done a in an hour or 2.

[RogerDat]

If you use the 4 ingot molds such as Lee, Lyman or RCBS you might want to over fill mold by enough to keep the multiple small ingots together. Much easier to label one 4 ingot block than 4 individual ingots. I figure I can break off some ingots if I need to and just mark whatever is left over.

And yes if you have a place to spread out the ingots to be marked going through and stamping each one a single letter at a time can be done pretty rapidly. Stamp a "C" on 10 ingots, then a "O" on the same 10, then "W" twice on the same 10. Line the next 10 up and repeat.

[lightman]

I smelt with 6 of the Lyman style molds and sometimes a borrowed Lee mold, so they are all 1/2 or 1 pounders. I do have a work table with a 1/2 in steel plate for a top, maybe 24x48 in, so laying them out to work on is possible. My biggest problem is that I did not start marking these in the beginning. I'm just thinking, 7000+ ingots x 4 letters is a lot of stamping. I'll getter done, though! Not a bad problem to have, I guess!

I'm really thinking about spending an afternoon in my friends machine shop and making a holder for 4 stamps. Probably would not take a real machinist that long, but I'm not one. Thanks for the ideas, everyone!

[skeettx]

Sorry
Poor man's ways here
Pure lead has a 0, made from the end of a piece of pipe
Wheel weights have a - made from a regular screw driver
Linotype has a + made from a phillips screwdriver
Seems to work :)
Mike

[Rustyleee]

Before I'd spend that kind of money I'd use a center punch and write on them like a dot matrix printer.

[lightman]

Yeah Skeet, I know simple is usually best. I'm just thinking about all of the threads I've read about mystery lead that some old caster left behind. I think there is an active one going on now, guessing what a few letters might mean on an ingot. Everyone here would guess what SOFT, COWW, LINO, ect is. I'm not gone yet, but I have had ingots get mixed up due to moves or busted containers. Just thinking of a better way, and probably over thinking it.

[bangerjim]

I just simply bought some sizes of HF metal stamps. They will last forever in lead!

Pick out the 2 or 3 letter code you establish, hold (or tape) them together, and whack away.

PL = pure
COW = clip on's
SOW - stick on's
L = lino
HB = hardball
SN = Tin

etc, etc, etc..............

Simple. Easy. Inexpensive.

banger

[borg]

Lightman, this is what I use, only big enough to fit the stamps
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=turnbuckle
You can find them at most hardware stores.

[scottfire1957]

You might try a c-clamp. You won't be doing any real pounding, and, you can use 2 letters instead of 4, Co instead of coww, etc.

[Bzcraig]

I just simply bought some sizes of HF metal stamps. They will last forever in lead!

Pick out the 2 or 3 letter code you establish, hold (or tape) them together, and whack away.

PL = pure
COW = clip on's
SOW - stick on's
L = lino
HB = hardball
SN = Tin

etc, etc, etc..............

Simple. Easy. Inexpensive.

banger

This is what I did as well but I didn't wait till I had all those ingots to do.

[sierra1911]

...or just label each of your 11 or 12 milk crates with a Sharpie and spend the rest of the day at the range popping caps....

[LAGS]

I use to use a simple Number Code stamped in the ingots with 1/2" number stamps
0 = Pure lead
1 = Semi Pure lead like SOWW
2 = COWW
3 = COWW with Tin added
4= Lyman #2 or equal
5 = Hardball
6 = Linotype
7 = Monotype

Now if I had time and made special mixed like 16 / 1 then I stamped them accordingly, or even the ratio like 96/2/6 for home made Hardball.
Zinc ingots get a Z or ZN
Tin just gets a T
Antimony smelted into lead gets an A with the percentage of Antimony to Lead for later smelting into alloys.
You cant really stamp Raw Antimony, it just cracks and breaks apart. But it is very distintive.

[Rottweiler]

I took skeettx's method 1 step further I made a set of "stamps" out of 6-8" long pieces of rebar. Just ground shapes into the one end with a cutoff wheel on the angle grinder. One is a triangle, one is an X, one is 3 lines. Other shapes are only imagination away. One stamp for each hardness. If I wear them out, more rebar is cheap

[bangerjim]

It totally depends on how you value your personal time, but making stamps sure is time-intensive compaired to these inexpensive stamps:

http://t.harborfreight.com/catalogsearch/result?q=stamps

I have them all.

banger

[konsole]

Tape the "COW" or "SOW" stamps together with scotch tape?

Thats what I do. They stay together pretty well and I dont have much trouble with them being misaligned. Even when they do get misaligned, realigning them is easy by tapping on their ends. Eventually the tape will loosen and slide from the heat of the ingots warming up the stamps, so just reapply some tape or stamp the ingots when they're cold. If you have 3 letters taped together, just go down the line and hit each one like 5 times and that will be deep enough for lead. Zinc is a whole different story, its like trying to stamp diamonds and many times the stamp will bounce around and require stamping in another spot.

[RogerDat]

I'm doing sharpie. I can write, casters can read. Totally flexible. 10/90 40/60 2/3/95 WW, SO, Lym #2, P See how easy that is? And pretty fast too. Will I be 100% guaranteed that nothing will remove the labeling? No but between the container being labeled, the ingots being labeled, and the stuff being sort of stacked in different piles.... Now with 7000 ingots I might be thinking in terms of a rubber stamp and ink pad to speed things up!

Here is the pop quiz what do you think the ingots with the WW markings are? And SO ingots? (answers below) Did you get them both right? Now be honest!






COww or clip on wheel weights and SOww are stick on wheel weights.

[bangerjim]

I tried the marker route but found the ink fades after a short time here in the desert heat.

2 whacks of a 1.5# hammer on my HF steel stamps and the ingots are permanently marked until I melt them down.

I do use a tinted lacquer (from my antique finishing hobby) to spray the ends of the ingots by type for easy visual recognition. That stuff lasts a long time also.

I used to write the weight in oz on each ingot with a marker but do not waste my time anymore. Too many of the darned things and they are all around the same weight for the alloy they are made of.

bangerjim

ps How about RF? RF = roof flashing lead
Or XL = x-ray shielding lead
Or RL = range lead

2 letters (taped together with black electrical tape) are extremely easy to stamp with just 1 or 2 good whacks.

The combinations are only limited by your imagination. Just as long as YOU remember what the blasted letters stand for!!!!!! :killingpc

[country gent]

I have taped 4 - 5 letters together with heavy duct tape with very good results. If the stamps get wider than hammer face then a piece of key stock accross the top helps alot. Also taped in place. I use a 4lb cross peen on a very solid block of wood ( Piece of red maple tree trunk 30+" in dia and 2 ft tall) One good solid hit marks most leads right off. Takes longer to move ingots around than stamp them.

[lightman]

Thanks for the ideas, everyone. To be honest, I did not try very many things before posting this thread, as I was looking for ideas. I have used a sharpie and found that they fade pretty fast. I have used 5 gallon buckets with a note card inside and found that the plastic bucket splits open and the note card gets lost. My milk crates seem to be holding up ok, and I use one of those material tags made of heavy brown paper with a wire tie to mark them with. A milk crate full of lead is pretty heavy, though!

I have a heavy steel work table to use as a work surface and will try taping a few stamps together. And I'm pretty good with a hammer! I'm also going to look into making a holder that will work with 3 or maybe 4 stamps. I want something permanent like a stamped letter and I want the letters to be logical enough that another caster will know what they are.

This little job would have been easier if I had started stamping this stuff much sooner! I'll try a few things and post up some pics in a few days. Thanks for the ideas.

[D Crockett]

seeing how I make a lot of my casting things from melting pots to ingot molds I just use different molds for different lead my lino goes into a lee 1/2 ingot ww go into a v shaped ingot mold soft goes into a lyman 4 lb mold the whole idea is different shape different kind of lead I have been doing this for over 30 years now and it work good for me D Crockett

[RogerDat]

I also use something of the same approach as D Crockett. Raw materials are in angle iron ingots about 1.5 lbs. each, individually marked PB or WW. These go in SFRB's also labeled in small print as to coww or pb. Assorted solder goes into muffin tins to make thin "coins" that get gunned and the whole batch is individually labeled with percent & "Sn". These are then put together in zip lock baggies with a label slip. Which are in coffee cans or my plastic bin solder containers.

The odd stuff goes in muffin tin ingots if it has a decent Sn or Sb content, labeled individually with sharpie and kept together until use. This handles the 15 lbs. of 4% Sn or 24 lbs. of 3.5/3.8/92.7 batches of scrap. I have both regular sized muffin tins, mini muffin, and candy size. All garage sale or thrift store.

Bigger batches such as bunch of "soft" or "harder" unknown ingots get dumped in bread loaf pan ingots of about 16 lbs. labeled with a letter to identify batch and "?" until they are gunned and labeled with actual alloy which may warrant melting into some other mold. Or they may stay that way. Have about 100 - 175 lbs. in these flat slabs that are 0.3 and 0.5 percent Sn. Not plain but nothing much. Will use as plain with COWW mixes. Or plug them into the alloy calculator as custom item.

Small mold with "P" cast in it for pewter. Those are in zip lock baggies of 5# each with label slip in baggie, stored in labeled coffee can. Printers lead stays in raw form. As do stick on WW's. Form identifies them.

So between shape - angle iron, loaf pan, large and small muffin tins filled full depth or coin, Lee mold, and "P" mold. Sharpie on items, label on and or in container I'm pretty sure I'm good short of a fire or flood. If even a few ingots in a box have a readable label the contents are known.

If I was going to use a stamping set up it would be for the mixed ready to cast alloys. Not the raw materials. Might have hundreds or thousands of pounds of raw material, only a fraction of which is mixed into ready to cast alloy (Lym #2, Hardball, 2/3/95 or a tin binary) Might also consider it for the solder coins. But thousands of WW or plain lead ingots? Seems over kill to my uses.

BTW - A SFRB of lead weighs around 20# so I can easily move it, finish taping and ship for swapping and selling purposes. For the record even back when I could move a milk crate of lead I was too smart to try ;-) And the bottoms will blow out if stacked.... don't ask.

[NavyVet1959]

I only have 3 choices when I'm stamping:

WW -- Wheelweight
PB -- Pure lead
50 -- 50:50 Wheelweight:Pure Lead

Linotype, I leave in the original type castings.

[Horseman1]

The only (meager amount) lead I have is scrap from my own range and I used the HF punches to mark them RS (Range Scrap).
Looking forward to someday being able to use the other letters!

[skeet1]

I just write on them with a magic marker.

Ken

[Reddirt204]

Where I was working at one stage we made aluminium fishing gauges and had to stamp the size in them, the boss bought a couple of sets of the cheap number/letter punch sets (harbour freight style) and once we had the correct stamp sorted we simply tack welded them together, ok we used a press to do the stamping...
But this might be a simple way sort out the problem, as others have said how many times do you hear of unknown ingots and either nobody wanting them or picking up a bargain....

I know some here have literally tons of lead stashed away, personally I would try to make it identifiable as if at some stage it needs to be sold off ( illness, or passing away and so the family can use the proceeds etc) or easy to swap and sell on here��

cheers

Reddirt204

[bigjake]

I cant believe someone hasn't suggested it. I don't think so anyway.
How about welding any stamp configuration you want together? just clamp together and run a few beads across the stamps. if the stamps are too hard, heat the area of the stamp you want to weld bright red and let cool naturally, this will anneal the steal enough to weld.

[lightman]

Jake, tacking them together was mentioned in the post above. I never thought of it, myself. I"m probably going to try taping a few together, then making a clamp that will hold 3 or 4 and then the welding route. If I was a new caster vs an old caster I would pay the $50 for some custom stamps, but I'm not.

[NavyVet1959]

Considering how soft lead is, I suspect that you could make your own stamp out of brass or zinc without too much difficulty. Start with piece of it the size of the stamp you need, draw whatever you want the stamp to say in mirror image with a Sharpie permanent marker, and then use a Dremel-type tool to remove everything on the face other than the marker image.

It might even be possible to make a mold out of clay with the design that you want and then pour molten zinc into the mold.

[borg]

How do I post pics from my computer? Or do I have to use a pic host?

[62chevy]

How do I post pics from my computer? Or do I have to use a pic host?

Either way works.

See that little picture frame that looks like a tree in it. Click it and all will be explained.

[borg]

141642
141643

I was on the quick reply, won't work with pics
This is the way I do the stamps, cheep and sleazy

[kentuckyshooter]

Just my 2cents but i use a sharpy or paint marker i pick up from work. Both have worked great for my little stock pile of range scrap. Anouther idea would be to make ur identifing marks out of a peice of steek or something similar and weld it into the bottom of your mold. This would be a little time consuming and u would have to make a difrent mold for each type of raw material but once done the ingots would fall out premarked and u only have to set up to do it once.

[jeepyj]

Lightman, this is what I use, only big enough to fit the stamps
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=turnbuckle
You can find them at most hardware stores.
Ingenious, That would make a perfect holder.
Jeepyj

[louism]

https://www.tandyleather.com/en-usd/home/department/4909-00.aspx

Why not this

[borg]

https://www.tandyleather.com/en-usd/home/department/4909-00.aspx

Why not this
One at a time?

[spokeshave]

you could use an electric engraver,then you could write a whole story on the ingot if needed. it would look like a CAI imported rifle reciver.

[lightman]

Ingenious, That would make a perfect holder.
Jeepyj

Yeah, thats what I'm thinking. I have a few in the shop, but they are way too large. Looks like a trip to the hardware store is in the cards. The engraver is an idea too! And I have one! Thanks for the ideas, everyone!

[borg]

Make sure you take the stamps with you so you can fit them, some of the centers are different sizes

[cabezaverde]

I use spray paint and color code. Just line up a bunch of ingots and spray a stripe across the whole line.

Unpainted is ww. Black is range scrap. Red is coww. Green is lino, etc.

[montana_charlie]

I have been thinking about permanently marking my lead ingots. Has anyone priced having a custom stamp made with the letters that a caster would use, like COWW, SOWW, ect? I have a set of stamps, both letter and number, but using 1 letter at a time, I could possibly be through in a couple of lifetimes!
You need a permanent mark, but it doesn't really have to have multiple characters.
'C' for coww and 'S' for soww is a start. Then 'P' for pure' and go on from there.

No need to make things any more difficult, or more expensive, than necessary.

CM

[NavyVet1959]

You need a permanent mark, but it doesn't really have to have multiple characters.
'C' for coww and 'S' for soww is a start. Then 'P' for pure' and go on from there.

No need to make things any more difficult, or more expensive, than necessary.


Well, he said he didn't want any "secret codes"... But then again, one could argue that if he posted the codes here, they wouldn't be *secret* anymore. :)

I'm not included to use more than 2 characters in my codes. But then again, I just hold the two stamps together between my fingers without a holder of some sort, and more than two stamps at a time would be difficult to do that way and I would have to use a holder like was mentioned above.

[lightman]

Thanks for the replys and ideas, everyone. I know I over think things sometimes, and this may be one of those times. I'm going to try a few things over the weekend. Yeah, two letters should be ok and I bet most of you guys would guess most of them. I'm also going to try using a turn buckle as a holder for more than two stamps.

I going over in my head just how many alloys I have that need marking. So far, I have clip on wheel weights, stick on wheel weights, soft lead from sheets, flashings and roof jacks, cable sheathing and splices, and isotope lead. All of the different type metals are in original form. Thinking about combining the soww and the other soft lead. Hm, more thinking and over thinking! Until then, I do have a tag on each crate! Thanks again!

[NavyVet1959]

I going over in my head just how many alloys I have that need marking. So far, I have clip on wheel weights, stick on wheel weights, soft lead from sheets, flashings and roof jacks, cable sheathing and splices, and isotope lead. All of the different type metals are in original form. Thinking about combining the soww and the other soft lead. Hm, more thinking and over thinking! Until then, I do have a tag on each crate! Thanks again!

If you recover your lead, eventually, you just have a single alloy anyway... :)

Used to be, wheelweights were the only source of lead that I had, so I just alloyed the clip-on and stick-on together and figured that I just got what I got and should deal with it. There really weren't that many stick-on wheelweights in my sources anyway, so I could rationalize it by saying that it didn't make enough of a difference compared to the time it took to sort them. I just dumped everything that I got from the 5g buckets of the tire store into the smelting pot and settled for whatever alloy that resulted. And since I can't really shoot at long range due to brush density (and eyesight), it really didn't make a difference for me. For some of you with long open areas, it might make a difference. These days, since I've acquired quite a bit of pure lead from shielding and such, I use a 50:50 alloy of wheelweight to pure lead. I have a few 5g buckets of linotype, but I haven't seen a need yet to start using it up. Eventually, my bullet trap will be too heavy to move around and I'll have to filter the lead out of it. Once I do that, I'll have some random alloy and just start using it instead. :)

[ProfGAB101]

I just engrave the ingot mold.

(Place Pic here after dealling with SOB's at GoDaddy for blocking my DNS...) http://www.skullworks.net/include/DSCF0014.JPG

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Yes, marked moulds seem like the perfect solution. With a Dremel tool and burr it could be done freehand, but if you stamp them, reading reversed writing isn't an impossible intellectual exercise. You could even have someone with a pantograph engraving machine do it. With thin sheet metal muffin moulds, I think doing it from the outside, while they are full of lead, would do it without denting or tearing.

[lightman]

Well Guys, I was going to try borg's idea with the turnbuckle but the local hardware store did not have that style. I got back home and dug around in the shop and decided to try a few things. The pics are of a ground clamp and the front and back of a test ingot.

http://i788.photobucket.com/albums/yy164/PTheodo/IMG_0222.jpg (http://s788.photobucket.com/user/PTheodo/media/IMG_0222.jpg.html)

This was only two letters and seemed to work well. I replaced the brass bolt in the clamp with a longer bolt, and I probably can get a 3rd letter in there if I wanted. Thanks for the ideas, everyone.

[LAGS]

I was given an ingot of WW lead that someone had melted the Zinc weights in with the CO a SO weights.
I had sone Sulpher Powder from back in my Pyrotechnic days, so I melted the ingot and fluxed it with the Sulpher.
It made the Zinc float to the top where I could skim it off.
After Acid testing the new ingots and no chemical reaction I stamped them for reuse.
The lead was a light white frosty color on top.
So I stamped them , "Z & R WTL" for ZincFree and Roy White Tiger Lead

[lightman]

Ha Ha! :grin:

[retread]

I clamp them together using a hose clamp. Cheap and easy.

[kevin c]

Thread resurrection:

Trying the stamp approach. Got three sets of the 3/8th inch Harbor Freight stamps and some turn buckles.

The grouped stamps in the turn buckles gave me fits until I realized that I couldn't mix and match stamps from different sets (in all fairness they were bought at different times over two to three months) - if one stamp was shorter than the others it wouldn't mark the ingot. And the buckles were too loose - I'll need to shim them.

Still, even using one stamp at a time and using a three or four letter code ("SOFT", "PURE", "BERM", etc.) and also numerical content ("015SN040SB for 1.5% tin and 4% antimony, lead assumed to be the balance) I can do a three pound ingot in a bit more than minute. That's doing one ingot at a time which means picking up, aligning, striking and putting down each stamp. I'm sure it'll be much faster when I can strike multiple letters/numbers together in groups, and doing batches of ingots in a row with the same stamp in hand, as described above. (It better be, I have 400 ingots to mark).

[ChuckO]

I stamp my ingots with one letter or number only. The markings refer to a cheat sheet that I put on the wall.

C = clip on wheel weights
R = range scrap
S = stick on wheel weights
U = unknown

and similar.

[lightman]

Since I started this thread in 2015 I have tried several ideas. And like a lot of you, I have a tendency to use or adapt things that I already have. Sometimes they even work!

I settled on using a ground rod clamp to hold 2 stamps. I replaced the 3/8 inch set screw in a one piece direct buried clamp with a bolt long enough to use as a handle. This works fine with 2 stamps and ok with 3. The stamps need to match in order to work. I use the letters WW, PB, LT, MT, etc. Most of you could guess what those letters stand for. Especially if you hit a few ingots with a hardness tester.

I did find a company that would make custom 2,3 or 4 letter stamps. At $50 per stamp I was tempted but finally passed on the idea. This would have been better at the beginning of my casting career, if I could have afforded them back then.

[kevin c]

Second stamping session went a lot faster: three letter description, percent content Sn and/or Sb. Held the stamps together with duct tape which is easier and faster than the turnbuckles. Three together seemed to work, and could usually be done with one strike from the ball peen hammer I used. I'd miss one end using four, and restriking would sometimes make the previously made letters too deep to read. I may cut some key stock to cap each set (provided all are the same length).

As mentioned by a previous poster in this thread, it took more time to move the ingots around than it took to stamp them. Three hundred to go 8^p

[Ballistics in Scotland]

You could take a piece of mild steel bar and stamp the end with inexpensive single-letter punches. The result will stamp a small cartouche in the lead with the lettering raised. Printers can read mirror-image writing at normal speed, and up to four letters should be easy. But you could hold them to a mirror if that bother you.

[skeettx]

for ProfGAB101, above

http://www.skullworks.net/include/DSCF0014.JPG