I am thinking of converting my INGOTS to something smaller- like SHOT...

[Stilly]

I was just thinking the other night, I have these huge TIN ingots but in order for me to use them I have to shave or drill or dip or SOMETHING to take some of it off and drop into the melt.

But if I had my TIN and LINO all stored as SHOT, how easy it would be to just get a scoop of this, a scoop of that and drop it in the melt... plus I can add a little at a time here and there instead of dropping in half a pot when it gets low or dropping in an ingot or two and then the temperature goes low and solidifies/ locks up everything for a few minutes...

On top of that all of the wasted space between my ingots would be reduced because now I would have only a small amount of space between them and they would be much smaller and make better use of the container.

Am I wrong? Is there a way to quickly make shot or would it just mean a LOT of casting with a buck shot mold or what?

I am not thrilled about seeing the $400+ machines that will dribble the shot out but if I were to use my bottom pour to make ingots and then from the ingots into the shot dribbler I think I could live with that. The shot does not have to be perfectly round either, but I think that it might also help to keep everything mixed up and a tad more uniform because some of my lead ingots are from ww, some from range scrap, some from pure lead. I am thinking it might be nice to just have several containers that will contain each of them and just take out what I need for that casting session.

Clearly SHOT is what I think of at first, but I think as long as the ingots are smaller or squared off or smaller balls that is a plus. I am just kinda sick of all of the wasted space in my ingot storage container.

Thoughts? Been there and done that?

[JSnover]

I have a .54 maxi ball mold that drops babbitt or tin at just about exactly one ounce. Makes the math easy when all I have to do is calculate ounces per pound for a given batch. I don't have anything in that caliber or any other molds of that type so the 'pot sweeteners' are easy to identify.

[Yodogsandman]

Have you compared the space needed for a forty pound bag of shot compared to ingots? Much less space needed for ingots. If you need tin or linotype in a smaller, more user friendly form, why not just cast them in a sinker mold or a boolit mold of a convenient size? How about getting a blank mold from Lee and making your own special cavity?

[country gent]

For what you want to do a cast iron frying pan or dutch oven with some small holes drilled in a section of the bottom radious ( small meaning .020-.030 dia 6-10 of them) with a small sheet metal ledge to roll down Might do what you want. put ingots in on a heat source and let dribble down the sheet metal ledge into a bucket of water.Idealy you would want it to be at an angle towards the holes and as the lead melts it would flow and dribble thru the holes forming shot. If you want to get real fancy a pot could be welded up out of 1/4" flat stock to do this with the lip built into it. 1/4" X6" x 12" bottom. 1/4" X 2" X 6" for sides and ends. this leaves a 4" lip for shot to roll down. Drill holes in end close to ledge and spaced 1/8"-3/16" apart. set on gas burner with ingots in it and as lead melts it dribbles thru holes into bucket. Make the spacing wide enough so if you want toopen holes up for larger size you have room. A bullet mould that cast a 437 grn bullet would be 1 ounce each and easy to work with. A lee blank mould or one of smaller dia could be drilled to dia and depth making 1 ounce cylinders also. And a bigger dia shorter cylinder could be used for one or the other so visual identification could be made or a li and t could be stamped in the end to cast id in place also.

[RogerDat]

Lot less work than shot to go from "huge ingots" you mentioned to any number of other ingot shapes at assorted sizes. Small bar duck decoy weight molds would be easy to work with and readily available. Or any number of other molds.

I bought one of these for pewter and have been happy with it, takes about a sandwich bag full to make 5# so each bar is just a few ounces, small enough it is easy to cut one into 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/4 to get a generally known small amount. Seller was prompt also. The "P" cast into the ingot is nice too. :-)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ingot-mold-Pewter-lead-duck-decoy-keel-weight-mold-/272080560403

There are also molds like this available. Again you have the thin bar which is easy to cut into sizes appropriate to the mix you are making.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/do-it-decoy-anchor-ingot-mold-1885/151894711456

Or my personal all around favorite the angle iron mold, can easily cast thin triangle rods that stack snug and are too thin to be mistaken for "regular" angle iron ingots of lead in the rest of the stash.

Cheap to make or even have made by a welder. Small ladle such as used for salad dressing in restaurant salad bars gives thin bars, bigger ladle gives bigger bars. The molds are toward the back, next to the welding gloves.
156147

156148

Round balls such as shot waste lot of space, they only touch each other at single points, all the rest of the curved space is empty.

[bangerjim]

I store Sn in ingots made in my Lee 1/2# molds filled up 1/2 way. Perfect amount to add and easy to store in plastic tubs, since Sn is not nearly as heavy as Pb.

I used roundballs in the past, but too hard to store and handle. Some use boolit molds, but they you may accidentally shoot you entire wad of Sn by mistake!!!!!!!!!

banger

[Smoke4320]

Lee 1/2 lb ingot mold make approx 4 oz tin mini ingots.
I made up a chart to get 2% tin to x amount lead
Works real well and the 4oz ingots are very easy to store
Or as bangerjim said 1/2 filled Lee mold gets you approx 2oz ingots

[LAGS]

A Scoop of this and Two Scoops of that is not a very good way to Alloy metal.
You have to go by Weight, unless you know what a scoop weight is for every alloy or base metal.
And to spend $400 on a machine to make shot, and then have a Bag of shot or a scoop drop on the floor , it just doesn't make sense.
Plus, every time you melt metals, there is some kind of loss to oxidation, that is what Slag usually is.

I cast plenty of Ingots, but then I cast a bunch of boolits and mark their weight, and alloy content , But do not size , lube or GC them.
If I dont use them up, i just resmelt them into another weight of boolit.
But I always have plenty of boolits that I can lube and size as the need comes about.

[richhodg66]

I have been accumulating thrift shop pewter for a couple of years or so. Here's what I did.

Assuming pewter is almost pure tine, I took some 95/5 wire solder, maesured out 1.6 ounces (1% of a ten pound pot, easy to do the aloy) then melted that in a mini muffin pan. It made a coin like slug about a quater inch thick. I then took that slug and put it in each of the muffin cups in that pan and scribed a line around the top of it, Now I melt pewter and pour to the line in each of those mini muffin cups to get my ingots for alloying. They don't take up much space and stack well.

[Stilly]

Yall got some good ideas. I just really want to be able to fit more lead into the container I got and I know I have a lot of wasted space. Just different ingots is really all I need. Smaller squared off ones or even the angle iron does not look too bad. But these full size bars that I have now are too large to fit properly in my storage. My TIn are three large ingots so it would be easier for that to be in smaller ingots but yeah anyways. Okay I will have to read some more and hunt down some different ingot molds I think.

[RogerDat]

I hear you. A few times I have ended up with some odd sized hard to store chunk(s) of lead or alloys. Faintly annoying. I have a single full lino pig plus a few pieces of partial pigs. Stuff just doesn't stack or store worth a darn. Too big to add to a casting pot in small quantities. Glad to have it because it is a nice alloy but.... Best bet is I mix it into a big batch of Lyman #2 in my more storable ingots.

[lightman]

I think that shot would be problematic in both making it and storing it. I've seen the mess that a hopper full of shot makes on the floor of a loading room! Don't ask! I like an ingot with flat surfaces so that it stacks easy and tight. I also like them light enough that you can add one to your pot without causing a major change in temp. I smelt using several of the Lyman style molds that I bought for a bargain years ago. My type metal stays in the original letter form, and is stored in buckets. I have thought about making several molds from small channel, say 1-1/2 or 2 inch. If I ever run across any stainless or aluminum channel for a bargain, I probably will make several. I'll probably make them to fit either a small or medium flat rate box, just because. Right now, all of my tin is solder, either bars or rolls. A smaller, different looking mold for tin makes a lot of sense.

There is an old thread on here someplace showing members stashes and the methods used for storing them. Very interesting, if you can find it.

[Stilly]

Yes. After thinking of it, Shot will be a bit expensive to make but I was just thinking of making #8 shot and filling the container. Yeah the space between the balls increases due to the large amount of balls now, but I think that it would still be better than what I have (weird trapezoid shapes from the Lee ingot molds) that just do not fit the ammo can as nicely as I would like to see. I will look for that stash thread. Thanks.

[LenH]

I just bought some printers lead from Rogerdat. Those little triangle ingots fit nicely into a small flat rate box. Since the postal workers treat heavy items
so roughly (I think they see how much they can drop them) and the end was split open but the contents of the box were in tact.

I had some similar ingot molds made when I melted down some isotope cores (the ones that are about 30+ pounds ea. It do pay to work for a fab shop and be friendly with
some of the fitter/welders.

[michiganmike]

A Scoop of this and Two Scoops of that is not a very good way to Alloy metal.
You have to go by Weight, unless you know what a scoop weight is for every alloy or base metal.

And to spend $400 on a machine to make shot, and then have a Bag of shot or a scoop drop on the floor , it just doesn't make sense.
Plus, every time you melt metals, there is some kind of loss to oxidation, that is what Slag usually is.

I heartily agree with the statements in bold above. I bought a relatively inexpensive electronic postage meter at OfficeMaX. Weighing your component metals results in a much more accurate and repeatable alloy.

[41mag]

I use my tin for only a couple of different alloys, and when I make a batch it is usually around 70#'s worth at a time. As such the tin is always pre smelted and weighed out before hand similar to what richhodg66 posted above. It just makes the whole process easy and smooth. You heat up 68'ish pounds of lead then drop in a weighed out chunk of tin and your done.

I had the sweetie pick me up some of the SS condiment cups from Wallyworld. I think they come 6 to a pack for a couple of bucks. I set a 3" square 1/4" piece of plywood as an insulator, then one of the cups and on top of my digital postal scale and zeroed for tare. Then I held up one of the bars and melted it until I got the amount by weight I needed in the cup and allowed it to cool.

Once cooled I marked the top of the tin using a sharpie then popped it out and set it into the rest of the cups and repeated. I used a Forstner drill bit I had to drill an inset into another scrap piece of plywood to use as a holder. Then I loaded up the Lee bottom pour and went to town. It was real easy to slide the board under the spout and pour up to the lines in the cups. Once they cooled I repeated this until I had a bunch of little pre measured blocks. These fit real well into a tupperware or similar type tub, but they do have an unusual shape to them, so there is "some' wasted space. That said though it isn't nearly as much as the full lenght bars were taking up, and it is ready for me whenever I need to blend up another batch of alloy.



I used a 6 cavity Lee 452300RF mold to do up a bunch for a friend who only does around 10# at a time when he blends his alloy. He said it works out great with his range lead blend. He put them all into some old 45 ACP ammo boxes he picked up at the range and stacked them on his shelf like that.

Those angle iron ingots are great as well. They stack about as close as your going to get as well. If you measure off a length, say 3", and then melt it off the end of one and weigh the resulting "pig" so to speak, then you only need to adjust for what your needs are by increasing or decreasing the lenght to match the weight in Oz you need for your blend. Then just line them up and use a tri-square to draw a line across multiple sticks at a time at the desired length. Then you only need to either dip to the line or cut or break them off there to get your premeasured amount.

[RogerDat]

Those condiment cups mentioned by 41mag with a wood base looked like they would work very well in the pictures of that set up that I have seen.

The "coins" made in muffin tins richhoda66 mentions are another good approach to storing special alloys in small form factor for easy identification and use in small amounts. The tendency for tin to get a gold surface sheen when cast can make those coins look like gold. Sort of neat. My assorted solder from garage sales or scrap yard gets melted into those. I don't take the care rich does to control the weight. I just use a small ladle, from salad bar salad dressing, about half the size of a golf ball.

Both small and medium flat rate box have one dimension in common, 8 inches. Long way in small, crosswise in medium. Molds I made were just under 8 inches. One downside is if you use thin plywood to make a liner for medium box then they won't fit. Member I swapped some lead with essentially puts a plywood box inside the MFRB. Nice set up but uses up 1/2 inch of width inside the cardboard so 8 inch bars I was sending back no longer have a snug fit to a box dimension. No problem, just ran them other way with a block of wood to use up space as I recall. SMFRB will fit snug inside a MFRB with about 3 small packed with lead getting close to 70 lb. limit and you have to pack the rest of the empty space with something to keep the box from crushing. SFRB of wadded plastic bag or newspaper or just wadded plastic or newspaper. Or scrap wood.

If you decide to cast tin as any sort of projectile try to pick something you don't shoot to avoid the "oh carp" moment when you realize you just loaded a bunch of pure tin. Which brings up a funny story, well as long as it was someone else, and a long time ago it is funny. Member here was making ingots with his dear wife helping, working with a big batch and really cranking them out. Suddenly noticed they were pouring really smooth and shiny. Looking at what wife was feeding into the pot realized she had run out of one stack of lead so moved to next pile. You guessed it, next pile of ingots was pure pewter, she fed a huge pile of it into the pot. So different shape, easy to identify is good, really good.

BTW - guy was a good sport about it, easy to see why. Wife helping cast ingots is pretty good partner and partners are allowed mistakes. He set those ingots aside to get tested so nothing really lost. Pewter just became a rich solder of some sort.

[richhodg66]

"The tendency for tin to get a gold surface sheen when cast can make those coins look like gold. Sort of neat."

I had noticed that with some of my pewter ingots, kinda wondered why.

Neat story, I was at a small town gun show and an older gentleman had a stack of Lyman ingots, selling for $1 apiece, I quickly made an offer if I took all of it and we struck a deal. Some of the ingots were spray painted gold which seemed strange so I asked why, expecting some system for marking alloys. Seems the grandson wanted to play pirate treasure. I'm gonna be kind of sad when I melt them someday.

[GhostHawk]

I recently bought some lino ingots and melted 2.5 bars down and poured some .430 bullets. In lead it is a .310 grain bullet. Should let me harden up a batch of range lead as needed. They sure look pretty!

[MaryB]

I use the stainless condiment cups also. Just screwed them down on a piece of scrap red oak for a handle. Pours a 1 pound ingot when not quite full, or little coins when barely any added to them for pewter/solder/foundry type I use for blending

http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd248/maryalanab/2013-07-01_16-39-39_358_zps860ebc5a.jpg

1 pounders

http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd248/maryalanab/2013-07-23_02-45-30_845_zps56fee234.jpg