Found some ingots today at the scrap yard but need help using them

[corbinace]

OK, so I went to the scrap yard today and was surprised to see they had a bunch (nearly 150 lbs) of ingots cast in Lyman, RCBS and Saeco pans. There was also about 28 lbs of cast bullets, most lubrasized and some checked. In my exuberance in finding something that looked familiar, I bought all of it.

I am pretty new to casting and after getting it home I realized I did not know the composition of this stuff. Previously I had only melted wheel weights and pure plumbing lead for different types of projectiles.

I do not have a hardness tester. Does this mean that I now need one to test the hardness of this stuff? Or, is the hardness only part of the equation and I now have nearly 175 lbs of unusable lead?

It appears the guy maybe used the different pans to ID the lead because the different molds appear to be different alloy based on color and shine.

A couple of different looking/sounding ingots have "TC" hand stamped in the back side. ???

The Lymans appear to maybe be two different alloys and one of the groups each have one wheel weight clip partly embedded into the back side. Kind of like he dropped a marker in each WW ingot. Those are likely safe to use, I guess.

I originally thought that I could use the cast bullets but after getting them home I see that they are dirty. I cannot see running them through my barrels with all that abrasive on/in them, so they need melted down too.

So...Where do I go from here??? What would you do with this unidentified alloy?

[lightman]

You did ok. Without knowing what it is or having a hardness tester, I would separate it out as best you can into batches and cast a bullet with it. Hardness won't tell you the exact alloy but it will give you an idea. Knowing the alloy is nice, but if it works thats about all you need. Can the scrap yard scan it for you?

[randyrat]

You can do the drop test to separate the lead into 2-3 groups, it will give you some idea and separation.

Drop the the ingots on a concrete floor and listen (providing you still have good hearing)
- High ring or a ting means it is a harder alloy
- ding or lower pitch is a medium hardness
- thud or no ring will be close to pure soft lead
This is not perfect, but with out getting into extensive testing it will give you and idea of what you have. The other way to test is by weight. Cast a few bullets out a known allow, then cast some out of the unknown allow and measure. Harder alloys, for the most part will weight less.
Keep your eyes open for a silverish alloy with some colors in it, it could be Tin (Sn)

This will get you in the ball park without any testing equipment and you can use it exclusively once you get enough experience, it works.

[John Boy]

I do not have a hardness tester.Make one ...
* http://mountainmolds.com/bhn.htm
* The Pencil Test ... http://www.texas-mac.com/Evaluations_and_Recommendations_for_Lead-Alloy_Hardness_Testers.html

[corbinace]

Thank you for your replies.

The yard is a shoestring operation and the service is not available.

I did do a bit of drop testing and my uneducated ear thinks that they are fairly hard. The drop test, along with appearance, was one of the things that made me think that he had used the different pans for different alloys.

I had not previously seen the mountain molds tester. I could use that to get a quick and dirty check of all of the different ingots in my haul for separation purposes.

Great guidance, now I have my days work lined out.

[typz2slo]

I can do XRF analysis on samples if you need it done. PM me for more info if you decide to go that route.

[edp2k]

on the dirty cast boolits, boil them clean with a tablespoon of laundry detergent and a teaspoon of lemishine.
20 min should do.
they will come out squeaky clean and then the can relube them or powder coat.

use an old stainless pot.

[mold maker]

A french fry basket to hold the boolits, allows the grit to settle in the pot.

[corbinace]

I thought that some of the dirt might have gotten embedded into the lead from rumbling around in the bucket. I will try the boiling trick and see what they look like under a magnifying glass.

Thanks for the idea.

[corbinace]

Oh, and I did get some of the ingots remelted and amalgamated.

I checked to make sure it did not contain any zinc and then took all of them that seemed to be the same by appearance and fingernail testing and melted them together.

So I have two batches, one of 99 ingots and another of 52 ingots.

While I was Muriatic acid testing, I checked some old lead that I had been saving for 15 years, from the days of a small cannon that I used to have.

This lead turned slightly dark with the application of 31% acid, not fizzy, but darkened. Is this an indication of something that I should not use for bullets? It came from the truck shop where I worked at the time. Likely some babbitt and anything else that would melt on a hotplate. Should I just get rid of it since it is of questionable origin? Probably only 75 lbs or so.

[RogerDat]

Won't be wasted because whatever the alloy it was of enough interest to a caster who made bullets to make ingots out of it. The pencil test with art pencils sticky is useful as a guideline, some alloy may get harder with age.

You might use the art pencil to find an approx. hardness which you can compare to stuff you already use. At the least it will tell you if any are especially soft or especially hard. This spring loaded center punch from Harbor Freight will apply fairly consistent "punch" and by comparing the punch dimple made in know good lead or lead of known hardness you can decide if the mystery lead needs to be harder or softer for your use.

Typz2slo only need a tiny chip of each kind to test and will tell you exactly what you have. Worth following up on his offer since you have fairly decent amount of each type of material a few tests will set your mind at ease. Don't know if the going rate is the same still but before it was running 1# of any lead for each sample tested. So you could send WW or soft lead as payment and get printers lead tested. You did not have to send payment that was exactly the same type as tested. Good deal if you ask me.

You may be new but you are correct that how hard is only one aspect, but as long as your not wasting bunch of expensive tin to harden lead for plinking you have a fair amount of wiggle room. Cautionary tale on labeling! If people don't understand your secret codes stamped into the ingots then it is useless to others! NO CLUE what "TC" in lead would be. But then I use TM for type metal.... and here I am calling the casting pot dirty :-) I would bet the ones with clips are WW lead.

http://www.harborfreight.com/spring-loaded-center-punch-621.html

All safe to use as long as it melts at lead temps, don't fizz from zinc with a drop of drain cleaner and casts decent. I would possibly melt in an extra or smelting pot before dropping in a casting pot, just to find out if the lead was well cleaned when poured into ingots. Probably was but easier to test a few in a pot where any dross and crud won't matter than to clean it out of the casting pot.

[RogerDat]

Oh yes get rid of that 75# of lead, you can PM me for my address to send it to for disposal, I'll take it off your hands no problem ;-) :kidding:

[runfiverun]

here is how I would deal with it.
I would melt a portion of each batch in my casting pot and get out a mold.
then I would make about 6 good well filled out 200-250gr boolits from each batch.
and weigh them and compare them to each other.
if they all weighed within 2-3 grs of each other I would blend everything together into one big batch of alloy and use that to make a whole bunch of boolits to shoot.
if I had one batch that weighed 10-15 grs lighter I would then investigate that batch, since it would be something like lino-type or a high tin content. [the melt temp of the batch would be an indicator too]

we all do the same thing with different batches of ww's some of us just go through the trouble to re-blend different batches of ww alloy into one big homogenous batch of alloy.
I couldn't tell you exactly what is in my pile of lead under the bench but I can tell you how much lino-type I add to it for my 9mm boolits and how much softer stuff I add to it for my hunting boolits.
this will go on for the rest of the 3-k lbs down there, then I will start over with whatever I scrounge up between now and then.

[corbinace]

That sounds plausible to me. I do not have any in that range but several in the 4-500gr range that would work just fine.

Thanks

[RogerDat]

Nice idea on how to test lead content. Learn something new.... well not everyday because I sort of veg out some days but today I certainly did. Known mold weight for heavy bullet will tell you what might be a more valuable alloy or something to just use as is. Neat trick.

[bangerjim]

You never know what will show up in yards. People die, divorce, move....and get rid of their "staches"!

I found a metal drum with over 200# of SAECO ingots in it someone had sold to them. Had the yard analyze one and............they were Sn! ( I knew they were nice & shiny and lighter in weight!) Charged me $1/# because it was in the "lead" section.

"Some days are diamonds, some days are stones. Some daze you wish you were stoned!"


Good find.

banger

[typz2slo]

Wish I had seen this earlier. I just boiled with nothing else added. I dont think I got all the lube off because the powder coat didnt cover as good as fresh cast boolits. I will keep this in mind the next time I de lube boolits. Thanks for the good information.


on the dirty cast boolits, boil them clean with a tablespoon of laundry detergent and a teaspoon of lemishine.
20 min should do.
they will come out squeaky clean and then the can relube them or powder coat.

use an old stainless pot.

[corbinace]

So, I smelted the final batch of ingots and ladle cast a few NOE 460-405 RF while I was making the ingots. I weighed them on my old balance scale at 362-364.5gr. This is a new to me mold and I had not used it before.

They were cast at about 660 degrees according to my theromcouple on the PID

Not the test you recommended but...Can they really be this light?

The lead seems pretty hard using the fingernail test, and the drop/ring test.

I will try to cast some more in the morning with the WW that I usually use.

[Geezer in NH]

LOTS of Tin, I would get an analyst done on them

[RogerDat]

Yep that light means lot of alloy which is lighter by volume than lead. Bullet is same size so if it weighs that much less the metal you poured in has something other than plain lead. Alloys that make lead hard are good to have, can add them to plain soft lead to make good bullets. Since plain lead tends to be cheaper than lead with tin or antimony it sounds like you have a really good score.

I would totally consider sending a tiny sample in to have tested by the members that have access to the test machines. I mean you send them 1# of any lead and a BB sized piece and they test the sample. typz2slo said to PM him, and I have seen offers in swapping and selling. Post in wanted to buy that you need a sample tested and in a short time you will know exactly what you have.

[RogerDat]

Wish I had seen this earlier. I just boiled with nothing else added. I dont think I got all the lube off because the powder coat didnt cover as good as fresh cast boolits. I will keep this in mind the next time I de lube boolits. Thanks for the good information.

I would be a little leary of using the lemishine as it is sort of a polishing coating type cleaner I thought. Never used it but it is a common ingredient for cleaning / polishing brass in a wet tumbler. Powder coat does not like contaminants on the lead. Detergent you can rinse off, don't know about lemishine.

[corbinace]

I was able to have the samples analyzed. The results are;

Sample #1
Pb = 97.2%
Sb = 2.8%
Sn = 0%

Sample #2
Pb = 95.2%
Sb = 4.8%
Sn = 0%

Sample #3
Pb = 95.3%
Sb = 4.7%
Sn = 0%

The first sample may have had a bit of the antimony skimmed off during smelting, due to my inexperience. I did take some oatmeal stuff off of it. Where would it have originated with the antimony and no tin? Not that it matters at this point, but inquiring minds...

Would I be correct in adding about 5% tin into this mix to make them fill out more effectively? I think this would nearly make a Lyman #2 alloy. Is there a more effective way to utilize this current alloy?

I mostly do plain base, less than 1400 fps at this time, mostly 45-70, 500 S&W, and 44. I also do some GC 7x57 that creeps up to 1500. Paper is easy to kill with proper shot placement.

Thank you for your continued support.

Tim

[bangerjim]

Do not waste your money. Add only a max of 2% Sn. Try it out and keep adding Sn until you get the fill-out you are saatisfied with......up to 2%. Your mold temp is far more critical! Pre heat to full casting temp B4 even starting. Also lead pot temp is very important for fill-out.

I melt down and keep my Sn in 1/4# ingots so it is easy to add. My 120+# of lead-free solder is the easiest to add...just clip off a length and stuff it in!

A little Ssn goes a long way toward what you are after.

bangerjim

[corbinace]

That sounds great, bangerjim. Doing nothing comes naturally to me. I will see if I can get some of it used up this morning.

[RogerDat]

A good rule of thumb is not over 2% EXCEPT for when making high end alloy such as Lyman #2 then keep the tin equal to or slightly less than the antimony. Sn & Sb will alloy with each other but more Sn than Sb is totally wasted.

You might want to get sample #1 up to not more than 2% but those other 2 you may find you want to take some of that and add tin to get near to Lyman #2 for possible use at your more powerful loads or just to see if any of your firearms really like the harder lead. I'm 100% sure you won't find it unpleasant to cast with 3/4.5/92 made using solder at 1# to 19# or if you can get some pewter same ratio yields real close to Lyman #2 at 4.6/4.8/90.5 with expected BHN of 14.4 and I don't always cast with Lyman #2 but man I always enjoy it when I do.

BTW - I tumble lube most stuff so lead hardness is of more concern than it would be for powder coating. Banger does a lot of PC boolits and that is something I'm just starting to use for rifle. He can use softer lead to better effect.

[edp2k]

Lemishine is just citric acid and surfactants (detergents).
I have cleaned the lube off of bullets by boiling in water + lemishine + laundry detegent (gets grease stains out of clothes).
After the boil they were squeekly clean.
I then powder coated and the PC stuck on like white on rice :-)