squeeze tubes made of tin?

[higgins]

Wasn't there a time when most squeeze tubes (toothpaste, grease, etc.) were made of tin, or mostly tin? How old would such tubes have to be? What are newer tubes made of?

[mto7464]

years ago, my dad made stuff back in the 40's with them.

[leadeye]

I have two ammo cans full of tin bars from melting down old artist paint tubes that I got a sale. There were several water damaged cases of them going for a dollar each. Wet moldy cardboard sure did not hurt the tubes.

[OLPDon]

Seals on better Wine Bottles and Gray Goose Vodka are sealed with tin Wrapers the makeup of them is mostly tin. I work as a bartender part time have several friends that tend bar and don't reload so they save them for me I tell them I use them for weighted wet fly's which I do use them for also. To test if the wine seals are of the right stuff I just hold them to the gas flame of stove if it melts quickly they are the right stuff if the heat transfers quickly to the fingers not of the right stuff. I have added it to test ingots water droped and air cooled water droped ingots are harder then air cooled ones. I have also looked online the make up of them don't recall the complete makeup of them but mostly tin with antimony.
Don

[454PB]

I recall reading that Elmer Keith used empty toothpaste tubes for their tin content.

[Shiloh]

Although I don't know and can only assume, I would think that the days of metal tube ointments, unguents, salves, and toothpaste would be made of something other than tin.

Yesterdays price of tin is about $5.26 per lb. if I looked it up right. The price of the tin plus the manufacturing cost and the necessary profit, would cause items packaged in them to be exhorbitant. I've been wrong before though.

Shiloh

[trooperdan]

I was using t-paste tubes for tin back in the 60's... must have been the end of an era.

[Firebird]

Tin was used because it didn't corrode and contaminate whatever was inside, was soft and bendable unlike zinc and didn't work harden and crack like aluminum. I'm sure they would have liked to use something cheaper, and once polymers got figured out in the 1970's they did.

[jimkim]

If I remember right Colgate and Pepsodent were the last ones to switch to plastic. I still use Colgate because I liked the metal tubes better when I was little. Weird huh?

[docone31]

When I worked in the cosmetics and health and beauty field, we had aluminum tubes. This was after the folded base tubes, and before the molten base plastic tubes.
We ultrasonically welded the tube after filling it. I remember the sound when it would have an empty slot when the welder fired.
I am not sure what metal they used before. Since it was folded, tin made sense. I suspect it was an alloy, not pure tin. Any creases would open up fairly fast. they were fairly thin also.

[AZ-Stew]

Yes, the old toothpaste tubes were tin back in the 60s. Then they went to plastic coated aluminum and are now using just plastic. Good wine has tin cork seals, cheaper varieties use aluminum and have recently gone to plastic.

Regards,

Stew

[yondering]

We traveled through Europe in the mid-80's, and I remember using mayonnaise in a metal tube, like toothpaste. Don't know if it was tin or ??

[Gunslinger]

This remind me of a very bad thing that happend recently. My father is a music teacher, retired, and thus still has a lot of instruments and such. He and my mom moved about a year ago. I just found out he had 2 organ pipes laying around, which my mother forced him to throw out do to less storage space in the new house. I didn't cast back then. They were about 20lbs each and made out of solid tin! How could you mom :confused:??

[Bret4207]

Sometimes it's just easier to buy a bar of tin. I bought 1 from Midway 6-7 years ago and I still have 75% of it. Turn up the heat and cast faster and most times you don't need the tin for fill out.

[fourarmed]

A friend of mine came into a large supply of empty artist's pigment tubes and melted some down. I measured the specific gravity of it, and got 11.3, which is the SG of lead. If there was tin in them, it wasn't very much.

[Shiloh]

A friend of mine came into a large supply of empty artist's pigment tubes and melted some down. I measured the specific gravity of it, and got 11.3, which is the SG of lead. If there was tin in them, it wasn't very much.

Good Job!!

I'm not surprised. I applaud your initiative!!

Shiloh

[whisler]

I used to work in the art material field in the 70's and most of the tubes we used for oil color were lead.

[jack19512]

Turn up the heat and cast faster and most times you don't need the tin for fill out.







I don't know if I am just lucky or what but I keep reading posts about people needing tin for fill out, I haven't had any problems with fill out using wheel weights or pure lead.