Babbit anyone?

[DocMayham]

Hi everyone. Newby here. Question. Got a lead on some babbit metal. Anyone ever used this stuff? Gonna use it to cast 9mm and 44 mag. Is it too hard for my 45s?

[454PB]

Welcome to the silver stream!

There are dozens of babbitt recipes, it depends on which one you have. If you got lucky, you might have tin based babbitt, which is a great source for tin. Straight babbitt is usually not a good boolit alloy, and is used for enrichening other alloys with antimony and tin.

[3006guns]

Depends.......there must be as many different babbit formulas as there are lead recipies. Some low grade, low speed babbits have lead as the primary ingrediant while other more "exotic" babbits use copper or even silver for high speed bearings and are tougher. In any case I don't think it will hurt your bore.....after all, it's designed to be a sacrifice metal. On another note though, if it has a high percentage of copper it's excellent material and it would crush old engine fanatics (like me) to see it made into bullets!:veryconfu

[Matt_G]

Welcome! :drinks:

Do you know its composition? Is there a number on it from the foundry?
Hard to answer your question without that information.

[Tom W.]

The stuff I used for years was Nickle Babbitt, It didn't have any lead as per OSHA regs. Cast straight it made extremely hard and light boolits. I got wise ( with the help of the guys here on the board) and started to use it to blend with my w/w metal, and the pure PB ingots that I somehow acquired....

[mag_01]

I have used babbit found like 10 to 15% of it added to ww or a mix of ww and range scrap made a good boolit. Strait babbit was too hard and would be brittle and found it to jam up sizing dies and spoiled one die. As stated there are many varied compositions of babbit. I found that some of the properties would come to the top of the mix and I would simply remove them. Sometimes reinserting the babbit slag to a new mix just in case I was wasting some valuable composition such as tin.:cbpour:

[kawalekm]

I've purchased pre-melted down babbit from a scrap yard years ago and it made nicely enriched bullets. When I ran out of that source, I tried picking up crankshaft bearings and melting them myself. Couldn't melt them, even with a torch, so I assumed they were not tin. My favorate source of tin these days is flea market pewter and lead-free plumbing solder. Check the label. If it says 95/5, then it is 95% tin, 5% antimony. Don't use plumbing solder that says it's a silver alloy.
Michael

[DocMayham]

The company says it 10% tin 14% antimony and 76% lead. Numbers sound good. The bullet I cast was beautiful but my Ruger Superblackhawk didnt like it till I cut it with ww's. The 9mm didnt seem to care what I fired thru it. Worked great.

[jdgabbard]

Sounds like tin enriched Stereotype, or a antimony deprived Monotype to me. Here is some info if you don't already have it. Should be able to smelt this into any alloy you'd like with a little bit of math.

Stereotype 80% lead 6% tin and 14% antimony

Monotype 72% lead 9% tin 19% antimony

[DocMayham]

Thanks for the intel. Looked around my work area and found about 300 pounds of pure lead in 50 pound blocks. Company wanted to get rid of it so I took. Will mix the babbit eith this stuff this week end. Keep you posted.

[DocMayham]

Any members from the San Francisco Bay area? Contact me off forum. thefit2001@gmail.com
got a proposition for ya.