Arsenic- To add to alloy- Where to buy Arsenic?

[243winxb]

Why buy & add, when its already there? Arsenic comes with the mined ore?
Ore is extracted from the earth through mining and treated or refined, often via smelting, to extract the valuable metals or minerals.
Mined lead ore contains arsenic?
https://mineralseducationcoalition.org/minerals-database/arsenic/
Google thinks Arsenic is a component part of lead. Any scrap alloy will contain Arsenic, i think.

Earth's Crust
Arsenic ranks twentieth among the elements in abundance in the earth's crust. The abundance of arsenic in the continental crust of the earth is generally given as 1.5–2 ppm. Thus, it is relatively scarce. Nevertheless, it is a major constituent of no fewer than 245 mineral species. Arsenic is found in high concentration in sulfide deposits, where it is present as the native element

Correct me if wrong.

Seen many times on this forum, "add some Arsenic"

Amazon, of course- https://www.amazon.com/Arsenic-99-9999-Crystalline-Metalloid-Collection/dp/B071JR5SP5

[RickinTN]

Adding some lead shot is your answer. Too dangerous to fool with in pure form.

Rick

[243winxb]

Looks like pure lead will not contain Arcenic? From first link-
Environmental laws require that arsenic be removed from ores, so that it does not enter the environment in effluent gases, fluids, or solids.

In 50 years, never added any Arsenic to my alloy. :veryconfu

[5Shot]

Pure will not.. if it does it isn't pure. Bird shot, as stated, is where you will find d it. You also need the antimony in the shot to be able to successfully heat yreat the alloy.

[30calflash]

Wheelweights also. Don't know the percentage needed to make it happen, a trace is what I've heard.

[MT Gianni]

I believe that you only need a trace. It existed in old formula WW and magnum shot. Standard shot is pure PB. I think Antimony is hard to alloy with lead from my 35 + year old conversations with Bill Ferguson. Arsenic is in the same class of hard to alloy, plus you don'e want to get it to vaporization stage.

Are you water dropping for hardness and not getting there? Neither of the two elements listed above are necessary for air cooled bullets.

[Land Owner]

Careful there...the authorities will think you just watched Jack Lemmon and Virna Lisi in the 1965 classic movie "How to Murder Your Wife".

[wwmartin]

Careful there...the authorities will think you just watched Jack Lemmon and Virna Lisi in the 1965 classic movie "How to Murder Your Wife".

Need to find a glopata-glopata machine!

Bill

[243winxb]

Careful there...the authorities will think you just watched Jack Lemmon and Virna Lisi in the 1965 classic movie "How to Murder Your Wife".

I though Big Brother may be watching when i posted it. No knock on the door, so far.[smilie=l:

[fredj338]

People make bullet casting too difficult. I have actually never seen anyone say “add arsenic”. I have seen people say you need some arsenic to heat treat, but things like clip ww have the small amount needed.
Most of my pistol bullets are cast of range scrap, pc & water dropped from the oven. Sometimes its sheet lead mixed wit with clip ww or lino. I dont fret much over exact composition, its just over thinking.

[Baltimoreed]

Molten lead is not dangerous enough? Remember The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Ouch. I’m not playing with arsenic too.

[mdi]

The only time I wanted arsenic in my alloy was when I was experimenting with alloying. I didn't want to buy plain arsenic so I went to Roto Metals and purchased "arsenic lead". Already alloyed, can't remember percentage. I still have about 2 lbs.

[M-Tecs]

Arsenic aids in dropping round shot. That is the only time I've wanted more.

[Kosh75287]

Adding some lead shot is your answer. Too dangerous to fool with in pure form. Rick

Arsenic is certainly not as safe to handle as confectioners sugar (which ALSO has its hazards), but it's well short of being as hazardous as some other metals and metalloids. Almost all metals are fairly safe to handle (nitrile gloves, covid masks) in their metallic (uncombined) forms, and are usually are only truly dangerous when combined with organics (tetraethyl lead, hexavalent chromium). Ironically, this also confers certain therapeutic properties to the metals for disease states not better handled by other less noxious pharmaceuticals. Stibogluconate Sodium (an antimony-based anti-parasitic) is still the drug of choice for leishmaniasis. Melarsomine is still used as a "last resort" treatment for certain strains of African Trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). Cisplatin (organo-platinum) is an anti-cancer drug still widely used. Gold salts (aurothioglucose) were state-of-the-art treatments for severe Rheumatoid arthritis, until the biologicals (drugs with generic names ending in -mab) got good enough to market widely. SO let's not paint metallic arsenic with the same "toxicity brush" as we would Botulin C, cyanide, Sarin, or ricin.

Use reasonable precautions (wear masks and nitrile gloves, add it to molten lead alloys at a distance with ventilation, don't inhale it, don't EAT it), and you should be fine.
The symptoms of acute arsenic poisoning are well known and easily differentiated (especially if you tell your physician you've been handling arsenic). When treatment is initiated within hours of exposure, the prognoses and outcomes are usually excellent.

As was pointed out by one gentleman, you may not NEED to add arsenic to your alloy to heat-treat the projectiles cast from it. Unless you are combining 99.9% pure lead to tin and antimony of the same purity, it is likely that there is enough arsenic in the melt (especially from birds hot or Clip-On Wheel Weights) to help all you need with heat-treating. I don't think I've ever heard of combining more than 1% by weight with any alloy, no matter how involved the heat-treating process. Most often, the weight-percent of As is under 0.5%.

DUE CAUTION is essential when handling arsenic, especially when combining it with molten metals/metalloids. Overstating the hazards is nothing but hysteria, which is ALWAYS misplaced when handling potentially toxic materials or mechanisms. Deep, slow breaths, everyone...

[405grain]

A trace of arsenic in casting alloys does two things. First, it lowers surface tension in the melted alloy, allowing a better mold fill in the same way that tin does. Second, and more important, it acts as a grain refiner when heat treating casting alloys. It only takes a very small amount of arsenic to accomplish these things : typically less than one half of one percent. The best source I've found for arsenic is magnum shot. This usually contains a trace amount of arsenic to reduce surface tension and aid the shot in becoming round as it falls inside a shot tower. Magnum shot also usually contains around 2% antimony as well.

Shot is usually coated in graphite, which is "dirty", and it isn't always easy to melt. Even after up to melting temperature lots of "BB's" will float on top of the melt and need to be pressed against the side of the melting pot to get them to give up their liquid cores. Because of this I recommend that shot that's going to be used in casting alloys be melted, cleaned, fluxed, and cast into clean ingots. Pouring shot straight into the alloy in your casting pot is just going to make a mess. It's always better to use clean ingots when casting because crud in the melt will cause inclusions in the boolits and can make the melting pot drip.

My "go to" alloy is 93.5% lead, 2.5% tin, 3.95% antimony, and 0.05% arsenic. This casts air cooled at 13 bhn, cut 50/50 with lead it air cools at 11.5 bhn. I don't know the hardness when water quenched, but the boolits will "ring" when they clank against each other. It's a good general purpose alloy that works for lots of applications.

[243winxb]

So far, have not needed to add any Arsenic.

I have bought "plumbers lead" for muzzle loaders. Is it pure? No Arsenic? Google didnt find info.

[Kosh75287]

<slapping forehead> 0.05%, NOT the 0.5% that I used! Some days, the memory just SLIPS!

[bangerjim]

while you are adding arsenic, why not add some cyanide in there also. That way your boolits will be really HOT lethally!

[smilie=w: