Ridge Pin Composition

[hawkenhunter50]

Ridge pin for high voltage insulators. Top where threads are is a soft metal that can be melted of with propane torch. When dropped on concrete it does just thud does not make a ringing metal sound.

Can anyone verify what these are made of or had one XRF scanned?

[lightman]

I have salvaged lead off of a lot of these. It test to be real close to clip-on wheelweights. That was a surprise, I expected it to be softer. I have several test run over a few years time.

[hawkenhunter50]

I have salvaged lead off of a lot of these. It test to be real close to clip-on wheelweights. That was a surprise, I expected it to be softer. I have several test run over a few years time.

Have you cast and used this metal then? How did it cast and perform? Thanks for the info.

[lightman]

It cast just fine. The bullets weighed almost exactly what the same bullet cast from wheelweights weighed. By my estimates there is about 4oz of lead on a pin. Thats not much but if they are free and even better if you are making Journeymans wages for fishing them out of the dumpster then thats hard to beat!

They are slow to melt because the way they are shaped keeps them from making full contact with the sides of the melting pot. The last bunch that we did we started with about half of a pot of melted lead and just stuck the leaded threads down into the molten lead and swish them around. You can easily do two in each hand. Now thats a BIG NO NO but my buddy wore a leather welders jacket over a leather aporn with gloves and a face shield. We never had so much as a bubble. But adding material to molten lead is not recommended so get suited up if you decide to do this. You could also cut that end of the pin off and not have the whole pin in the pot.

[hawkenhunter50]

It cast just fine. The bullets weighed almost exactly what the same bullet cast from wheelweights weighed. By my estimates there is about 4oz of lead on a pin. Thats not much but if they are free and even better if you are making Journeymans wages for fishing them out of the dumpster then thats hard to beat!

They are slow to melt because the way they are shaped keeps them from making full contact with the sides of the melting pot. The last bunch that we did we started with about half of a pot of melted lead and just stuck the leaded threads down into the molten lead and swish them around. You can easily do two in each hand. Now thats a BIG NO NO but my buddy wore a leather welders jacket over a leather aporn with gloves and a face shield. We never has so much as a bubble. But adding material to molten lead is not recommended so get suited up if you decide to do this. You could also cut that end of the pin off and not have the whole pin in the pot.

Great info thanks a lot.

[bowfin]

I have two different power companies saving these for me and I have collected hundreds of pounds of lead from them.

I second the notion that this lead seems to cast and shoot like wheelweight lead.

I have a post on how I recover the lead from these pins that is easy and cheap: http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?359645-Lead-head-insulator-pins

[hawkenhunter50]

I have two different power companies saving these for me and I have collected hundreds of pounds of lead from them.

I second the notion that this lead seems to cast and shoot like wheelweight lead.

I have a post on how I recover the lead from these pins that is easy and cheap: http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?359645-Lead-head-insulator-pins

Thanks for the info and the link. Very helpful.