drfroglegs
10-26-2015, 01:55 PM
Ok.. I haven't posted on here for a while, but I finally did some tests on my reclaimed/smelted bullets from an indoor range.
I smelted about 100lbs of indoor range scrap and had no idea what the composition of the lead was. So I took 2 large pots of lead and made two piles of ingots. So now, the composition between the two piles may be different, but each pile of ingots will have the same composition.
Here is the analysis:
Pile 1 - about 55 1lb bars:
http://i1303.photobucket.com/albums/ag158/drfroglegs/EDS_zpsecrjamdh.jpg (http://s1303.photobucket.com/user/drfroglegs/media/EDS_zpsecrjamdh.jpg.html)
Pile 2 - about 45 1lb bars:
http://i1303.photobucket.com/albums/ag158/drfroglegs/EDS2_zpstso2jqgn.jpg (http://s1303.photobucket.com/user/drfroglegs/media/EDS2_zpstso2jqgn.jpg.html)
So it looks like from this analysis that if you smelt down a large pile of reclaimed indoor bullets (mostly pistol) you will have a 3-5% antimony alloy.
The composition is pretty similar between the two piles, so I'm confident that I can just mix them all together and assume from now on that any range bullets I smelt down will be 3-5% antimony.
You can buy this exact lead from rotometals (http://www.rotometals.com/product-p/antimoniallead.htm) so I'm inclined to believe it is pretty common.
Anyways, maybe there is someone else that has smelted down a bunch of indoor bullets and is curious what their alloy is. My money is on 4-5% antimony lead!
If anyone has a standard from Rotometals (linotype, lyman #2,etc) I would love to test it to verify that my analysis is correct. I only need a very small amount (half the size of a dime). Shoot me an email if anyone is interested.
I smelted about 100lbs of indoor range scrap and had no idea what the composition of the lead was. So I took 2 large pots of lead and made two piles of ingots. So now, the composition between the two piles may be different, but each pile of ingots will have the same composition.
Here is the analysis:
Pile 1 - about 55 1lb bars:
http://i1303.photobucket.com/albums/ag158/drfroglegs/EDS_zpsecrjamdh.jpg (http://s1303.photobucket.com/user/drfroglegs/media/EDS_zpsecrjamdh.jpg.html)
Pile 2 - about 45 1lb bars:
http://i1303.photobucket.com/albums/ag158/drfroglegs/EDS2_zpstso2jqgn.jpg (http://s1303.photobucket.com/user/drfroglegs/media/EDS2_zpstso2jqgn.jpg.html)
So it looks like from this analysis that if you smelt down a large pile of reclaimed indoor bullets (mostly pistol) you will have a 3-5% antimony alloy.
The composition is pretty similar between the two piles, so I'm confident that I can just mix them all together and assume from now on that any range bullets I smelt down will be 3-5% antimony.
You can buy this exact lead from rotometals (http://www.rotometals.com/product-p/antimoniallead.htm) so I'm inclined to believe it is pretty common.
Anyways, maybe there is someone else that has smelted down a bunch of indoor bullets and is curious what their alloy is. My money is on 4-5% antimony lead!
If anyone has a standard from Rotometals (linotype, lyman #2,etc) I would love to test it to verify that my analysis is correct. I only need a very small amount (half the size of a dime). Shoot me an email if anyone is interested.