possible zinc melt

[bigjake]

I got this old huge home built melting pot from work that had what I thought was a fair amount of lead in it. so, I lugged the darn thing home, busted my rump, and built a huge hot fire under/around it, After awhile the stuff started to flow, I let it flow like a river into the sand, it was a cool sight to see that metal flowing, it looked like a silver river. Well, once it cooled and I picked up some of it and went to bend it, It wouldn't bend, it just snapped.

I'm thinking I got a bunch a friggin zinc. its too heavy to be aluminum, and too hard/brittle to be babbit or some other hard lead. What could they have used this zinc for? If it is in fact zinc. It is/was a large machine shop. I read that some are casting boolits here, im not quite sold on this idea. what could I do with the stuff?

[P Flados]

Some lead alloys a quite brittle, but zinc is also possible.

There is an acid test. Look it up & use it if you want to.

Another choice would be to ladle cast a few bullets & compare weight. If it is not too far from normal, it may not be zinc.

If they are close to normal, mix a 1/2 pound 50/50 with lead.

If the mix acts like a hard lead alloy, smile.

If not you probably do have zinc. I have a couple of gallons of zinc wheel weights. I may eventually try to use them for something.

[Dusty Bannister]

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?288520-WTT-XrF-analysis-for-Pb

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I got this old huge home built melting pot from work that had what I thought was a fair amount of lead in it. so, I lugged the darn thing home, busted my rump, and built a huge hot fire under/around it, After awhile the stuff started to flow, I let it flow like a river into the sand, it was a cool sight to see that metal flowing, it looked like a silver river. Well, once it cooled and I picked up some of it and went to bend it, It wouldn't bend, it just snapped.

I'm thinking I got a bunch a friggin zinc. its too heavy to be aluminum, and too hard/brittle to be babbit or some other hard lead. What could they have used this zinc for? If it is in fact zinc. It is/was a large machine shop. I read that some are casting boolits here, im not quite sold on this idea. what could I do with the stuff?
Galvanizing ?

[LAGS]

I saved the Zinc WW and smelted them down into Ingots.
I am using that stuff to cast different things like specilized machining Jigs for holding parts, and I even cast some Lapping Cherries for honing out or Truing / Polishing some of my casting Molds.
I also intend to Cast up a new frame for a 22 short revolver that cracked.
The original frame was made out of a High Zinc Content alloy, so why not just make a new frame.
There are a million things you can do with Zinc.
But most of you are only looking for using it in Bullet casting.
Think outside the box like I do , ( and it is a Very Big Box in my world. )
You ever thought about casting Vise Jaw Blocks out of it ? They are a lot less marring than steel, harder than lead, and cheaper than Brass or copper.
What about soft anvals for pounding against.
Heck , Make Paper weights or fishing sinkers out of the zinc.
I just make molds for what i want to cast out of Plaster of Paris, cast over a carved waxed wood form.
Bake the plaster mold before you try and cast in it to get out any trapped moisture.

[scottfire1957]

Once again, the only way to know what your mystery metal is, and therefore what you can do with it, is for you to get some kind of analysis done.

[toallmy]

The crab fishermen on the Chesapeake bay use zink bars on their crab traps to protect the pots from gettin eat up in the saltwater.I use zink on the hull of my aluminum work boat. The bars I use on my boat run around 10-15 pound and I use 2-3 a year, and the cost is much more than lead. The crabers probley spend 1000.00 a year on zink bars with a length of wire in the middle to twist on to their pots.

[bigjake]

I melted the mystery alloy. it melted easily, it fills out molds nice and sharp. A 200 grain, 44 mag mold cast 202-208 gr. WW lead. the mystery alloy cast 184-186 gr. It is really hard, I never thought lead alloy could get this hard. the boolits are nice and shiny.
Any ideas what this could be? hard babbit bearing alloy?

[Budzilla 19]

Go find your local NDT company,( non destructive testing), ask them to PMI it, ( positive material identification) if no report needed,may not charge you anything, BUT, you will know!mthen you can go from there to mix your alloys. Just my .02 cents.

[runfiverun]

if it melts at 780-f or so it's zinc.
if it melts at 450-f it's lino-type.
it could be mono-type, or just Tin.
did it creak when you bent and broke it?
did the inside look all crystalline?
did it melt all at once or was there a mushy, slushy stage?
those are all clues to give you a much better idea of what you have, weight is just one of them.

[Lloyd Smale]

be careful if it came from a machine shop it could be something like cadmium that's nasty stuff to fool with. It can get you really sick

[Nose Dive]

Buddy:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?63082-Zinc-Removal-with-Sulfur-Report

Here is our stick on this issue. Pretty lengthy, but, there are three or four ways to solve the zinc problem

Nose Dive.

Cheap, Fast, Good. Kindly pick two.

[bigjake]

I'm sending some samples to BNE to analyze. In the meantime, I took two, 2 lb muffin ingots, one WW alloy and one "mystery hard alloy" I started melting each separately in a cold pot. both melted in little over 4 min. This might be telling me that it may not be zinc or a zinc alloy. Zinc has a hotter melting point. Im guessing it would have taken longer to melt down if it had zinc in it.

[RogerDat]

Poor man testing. Melt temp and characteristics. Acid reaction. Weight for a known bullet mold. Hardness.
All fairly straight forward. Weight, hardness, and ability to cast accurate bullets are what really matters. After that it is mostly about using "found" alloy in an efficient manner. Not using high tin alloy of the same hardness as WW's as if it was just WW lead.

Acid test can eliminate zinc. Lead is heavier than what gets alloyed with it. Lighter bullet = more of some alloy. Melt characteristics is a bit subjective to assess, temp taken every minute while cooling will plateau at a certain temperature for a bit. That can correspond to some known alloys.

Getting it tested is the only way to know, but if it makes good bullets just a little lite on weight but good on hardness then add some lead to get the weight up while not dropping the hardness too far.

[Retumbo]

maybe you'll get lucky and it ends up being pewter

[bigjake]

I sure hope its something good. I weighed the 2 half buckets, 215 lbs.

Thanks everybody for your help

[bigjake]

Well, I received the results of the tests. It was good news for sure! what I thought was crappy zinc turned out to be;

PB - 82.3%

SB - 7.8%

SN - 9.9%

Thanks to BNE.

[Retumbo]

Excellent!!

[bigjake]

Does anyone have a good recipe for this alloy to be mixed with pure lead for 7.62x39 bullets?
or, should I use it pure with gas checks?

[Retumbo]

I think typical answer is mix it 50/50 with pure.

I pretty much gas check everything

[garrisonjoe]

Does anyone have a good recipe for this alloy to be mixed with pure lead for 7.62x39 bullets?
or, should I use it pure with gas checks?

Use the fine lead alloy calculator. What you have now should be about 19 Brinell hardness, air cooled.

If you mixed that 50-50 with pure lead, you'd get the hardness down to about 14, but if you heat treated the bullets, it would harden to about 24 Brinell, I would guess. For rifle bullets at 2400 FPS, if you wanted it easy, use your alloy as is, air cooled and gas checked. Or cut it with lead 50-50 and heat treat the bullets.

Actually, with as much tin as you have in that alloy, it just begs to be mixed with wheelweights, which usually are short of tin. If you wanted a reasonable alloy to water quench, maybe 2/3 wheel weights and 1/3 your mystery metal. Air cooled, the Bumpo calculator would estimate that at 3.6% Sn and 4.6% SB, Brinell 14, and water quenching might get it to Brinell 24 or so pretty easy.