another pure antimony question

[deepdarkwaters]

hello all my buy it now got the best of me and I got 10#s of pure antimony chunks and 10 #s of tin that will be here tomorrow shooting for a 90-5-5 alloy 100# batches whats the best approach to mixing it? slowly adding it to the mix or to melt the antimony first then add the lead and tin. I have read it will melt in slowly at a lower temp .its a pain .its easy but haven't found any step by step on the process besides what I have seen in the forums for fluxing I have lyman bullet lube and homemade bulletlube .sawdust and a lot of candle wax if it will help it I can through in the wifes cats and dogs in if it will speed up the process any tips and tricks are appreciated just playing on the cats and dogs im saving them for the zombie apocalypse

[lwknight]

You should not have to melt the antimony. The tin will dissolve it like water does salt. It is hard to melt antimony.
Now for the question that I cannot answer: How much antimony will the tin hold before it quits dissolving it? Also I know that lead with a high tin content will dissolve antimony but will tin do it without lead?
I would like to follow your endeavors so keep notes on your experiments.

In all the printing mixes the ratio of tin to antimony is 1:3 so 1 part tin will keep 3 parts antimony in solution. Antimony in lead without tin will slush up and try to float out. When you add tin , it becomes a thing of beauty.

[deepdarkwaters]

I have over a 1000# of mostly pure lead some tin from solder joints i used the rotometal superhard on my last batch at 60# pure 10# superhard and 4# tin and its putting out a bullet at 20bhn waterd dropped into 80deg water didn't have any ice and the 20bhn reading was taken about 8 minutes after it was dropped so i need to see what it has age hardened to now after a week

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I recall R5R mentioned using Marvelux to alloy the antimony. maybe try searching those keywords.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Yep...
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?37734-How-to-melt-antimony

[lwknight]

You are coming up with about 4% antimony and 5.4% tin. You might be able to spare some tin and still get the same results unless you are using more tin to make the bullets tougher so they won't fragment so bad.

[sparkeyu]

I have done it add your tin first , brake antimony into pea size chunks and just stir until they are desolved. i think i fluxed with candle wax. worked for me

[deepdarkwaters]

After ordering the antimony i have been stressing over after reading all the headaches people had with it and i wasn't a problem at all would have went faster if i broke it up but all i did was crank my burner up add a wind block melted 50# of pure down dropped 5# antimony in set my heavy spoon on the big chunks used toilet bowl wax ring (new) for flux once it dissolved i added my tin and my other 40# of lead mixed and fluxed 2 more times the poured my ingots took me 2 1/2 hours to pour 270# of ingots after making a batch with my 10# of superhard alloy i got to i cast a few bullets from the first 2 batches water dropped and checked a few minutes later and had a bhn of 24-27 hard to hold that lee scope steady so all on all it went good besides it being 89 degs outside befor i had to work around the burner thanks everyone for the replys to my post

[lwknight]

Are you saying that the antimony did dissolve in the lead before you added any tin? Or were you talking about the superhard?

[deepdarkwaters]

It was 80% dissolved befor i add the first 2 # of tin but there was a small amount of tin in the lead pipe solder joints so that may have played apart in it

[TexasGrunt]

Do yourself a huge favor and stay away from the toilet rings. Those used to be beeswax, but that ended 30 years ago. Now they use really cheap wax and some of those are not good for ya. Some of the will even flash/explode at the temp you melt lead.

[deepdarkwaters]

It went up in flamesabout 3'tall but i was out in the open and my stainless spoon is about 3' long so i just stir it in let it flash and burn off the wax ring fluxed alot better then the candles i been using but i wouldn't try it in my shop