Here is how I collet tin to sweeten my mix....

[Harry O]

My wife likes to visit estate sales on Saturday mornings. I have trained her to look for solder (or when I am with her, I look for it myself). If it is cheap enough ($1 to $2 per pound) I buy it and put it in a bucket. The picture with solder in the bucket has about 9-1/2lbs in it. The stuff that is not on a roll is usually dirt cheap.

When I am low on tin (or have about 20lbs to process), I melt it and cast it into 0.690"OD solder balls. Nothing magic about that size. It was the largest I could get cheaply (from Lee). The picture with the balls in a bucket was immediately after I processed it the last time. There are about 20lbs there. I know it was a hotter mix than necessary, but I was going for speed rather than looks when casting these.

I can calculate the exact amount of tin in the mixture with algebra (simultaneous equations). It generally comes out about 0.43 to 0.47 ounces of tin per each ball. Even though I am putting in random amounts and concentrations of solder in the pot, the average doesn't change much from melt to melt. I can easily calculate how much tin I need to add to what I have in the pot and how many balls that is.

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[petroid]

Very nice. But really shouldn't you put your tin balls in a tin cup?:groner:

[308Jeff]

Great idea! I'll have to start keeping an eye out.


Very nice. But really shouldn't you put your tin balls in a tin cup?:groner:

What do you do with the brass ones?

[jim147]

Great idea! I'll have to start keeping an eye out.



What do you do with the brass ones?

Mine bounce off my knees. :p

[labradigger1]

Mine bounce off my knees. :p

I sat on mine the other day��

[LeonCarr]

Everything in the first post was great until I saw the word algebra [smilie=b:.

I buddy of mine recently brought me a box of solder rolls, he said go through it and see if you can use any of it. I said, "What do I owe you?" He said, "Lunch". :drinks: That box had 19 rolls of solder in it, probably about 15 pounds worth.

Great job on the haul of solder, plus the "solder balls" and a great way to add it to your alloy.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

[Harry O]

I also turned up about 15lbs of antique 50-50 solder in bars at an estate sale several years ago. Was supposed to be used by plumbers (in large quantities). They were a buck a bar (at a little more than a pound per bar). I have not touched them yet. Won't do that until I run out of rolled solder.

BTW, I smelt it outside in the summer with a long extension cord to get it away from the house. The solder with acid core flux is nasty stuff. When I started about 10-12 years ago, there was more available. There is less found now. It looks like the home-handyman type is a dying breed.

[308Jeff]

I sat on mine the other day��

Done that a time or two. Have a feeling it's just gonna get worse...

[RKJ]

Mine bounce off my knees. :p

My wife has mine in a cup on top of the fridge so I don't have that worry, :)

[MyFlatline]

Teach the wife to look for Pewter. I do it pretty much the same was.

[jsizemore]

If the solder isn't on a roll, how do you know it's composition if it's not tested?

[runfiverun]

you guess at it.
sometimes even if it is on a roll it ain't marked for percentage.
so you make some known samples of a certain volume [boolit mold] and weigh them.
tin weighs [I forget now] something like 30% less than lead so you use the weight difference to get fairly close to the tin percentage.
the worst that happens is you get .92% tin in the alloy instead of 1.0%

[Hardcast416taylor]

I also turned up about 15lbs of antique 50-50 solder in bars at an estate sale several years ago. Was supposed to be used by plumbers (in large quantities). They were a buck a bar (at a little more than a pound per bar). I have not touched them yet. Won't do that until I run out of rolled solder.

BTW, I smelt it outside in the summer with a long extension cord to get it away from the house. The solder with acid core flux is nasty stuff. When I started about 10-12 years ago, there was more available. There is less found now. It looks like the home-handyman type is a dying breed.

No, the home handy man is still out there with us. The reason for the growing scarcity of lead solder types was changes in plumbing and health codes on what would be allowed for solder work in the future for pipe soldering. Leadless solder was put on the market to replace the lead type and was eventually mandated to be used in all new constructions in place of lead solders. On top of this change there is PVC and other plastic piping that is glued together making it almost mistake proof for those unable to read a tape measure. Copper fittings that `SNAP` together is fast becoming the best way to go for the home handy man. After carrying a pipe wrench as a trade for over 35 years I have enough partial rolls of all types of solder to use for the rest of my lifetime in lead alloy sweetening.Robert

[jsizemore]

you guess at it.
sometimes even if it is on a roll it ain't marked for percentage.
so you make some known samples of a certain volume [boolit mold] and weigh them.
tin weighs [I forget now] something like 30% less than lead so you use the weight difference to get fairly close to the tin percentage.
the worst that happens is you get .92% tin in the alloy instead of 1.0%

I've gotten use to close enough is good enough.

[Harry O]

If the solder isn't on a roll, how do you know it's composition if it's not tested?

You don't have to test it. You can calculate it. Besides, the rolls are all over the map, from 40% tin to 95% tin.
The weight of a pure tin 0.690" OD sphere = 317gr = T
The weight of a pure lead 0.690"OD sphere = 492gr = L
The actual weight of the ball will be somewhere between 317gr and 492gr. Weigh it with your scale to find out. You then calculate the percent of the tin and the percent lead that will give you that weight. Remember that the percent tin and percent lead must equal 100%. The closer the actual weight is to 317gr means the higher the percentage of tin. The closer the actual weight is to 492gr, the higher the percentage of lead.

[RogerDat]

I make large batches to "average" the solder scrap collected into a single batch at the same percentage. I personally use mini muffin tins to pour thick "coins" of solder. Larger I think than the .690 balls. I get a couple of coins gunned at the scrap yard an write the denomination of Sn on each one.

Based on that experience I find 23% to 43% is the range I end up with, more often than not I get 23% and 33% tin. Don't know why but that just tends to be what random piles of solder seems to yield. You could easily spit ball it at 28% and come out with a fairly close idea of the mix. Exception would be if you saw rolls of lead free in the mix, those are really high tin. I think I had a batch hit 63% one time because of that lead free solder.

[6622729]

Now that process I like! I'm not afraid of math. Lol. But, the unmarked stuff, how do you ID it to know if it's tin/antimony instead of tin/lead?




You don't have to test it. You can calculate it. Besides, the rolls are all over the map, from 40% tin to 95% tin.
The weight of a pure tin 0.690" OD sphere = 317gr = T
The weight of a pure lead 0.690"OD sphere = 492gr = L
The actual weight of the ball will be somewhere between 317gr and 492gr. Weigh it with your scale to find out. You then calculate the percent of the tin and the percent lead that will give you that weight. Remember that the percent tin and percent lead must equal 100%. The closer the actual weight is to 317gr means the higher the percentage of tin. The closer the actual weight is to 492gr, the higher the percentage of lead.

[Harry O]

Now that process I like! I'm not afraid of math. Lol. But, the unmarked stuff, how do you ID it to know if it's tin/antimony instead of tin/lead?

I get so few lead-free rolls (95% tin and 5% antimony) that I ignore the antimony. By the time it is melted in with the rest of the rolls, the antimony would be a tiny fraction of 1%. The older lead-tin rolls don't have antimony in them.

The most common rolls I get are 50-50 lead-tin (when marked) but 60-40 or 63-37 are not too far behind. 40-60 and 95-5 are pretty rare.

[kevin c]

As a rough approximation, is it fair to guess that the high tin electrical solders are silver and the high lead solders are gray?

[Harry O]

As a rough approximation, is it fair to guess that the high tin electrical solders are silver and the high lead solders are gray?

That has been my experience, but it is a really rough approximation.

I don't know what is going into the mix for roughly half of my solder. It is either loose (not on a roll) or the roll has rusted enough so that whatever it was is no longer readable. By casting it into the 0.690" ball, I can find out exactly how much tin is in each ball after the fact with math. I mark it on the side of the bowel it is in and use that to to calculate how many balls I need for the % tin I need.

I generally don't go over 2%, unless it is a hollow-base or the mix has a lot of antimony in it. In those cases, I use up to 4% in a hollow-base (depending on how thin the skirt is) and a % of tin equal to the % of the antimony already in the mix.