Stained Glass Came

[Kraschenbirn]

Recently came into an almost full roll of stained glass came. This is an old product no longer listed in the Canfield catalogue...all of their current came is 'lead free'. What I have is dead soft but shows no oxidation so I assume it's not actually pure lead. Anyone have an idea of what the alloy composition might be?

Bill

[725]

Don't have an answer to your exact question, but I can tell you it makes beautiful hunting bullets. Until he fell ill and left the business, I would buy scraps from a local stained glass window guy. Made wonderful ML bullets. Taken much game with them.

[jsizemore]

Most of the new H track that was still lead was about 99% Pb and the other 1% could be a mixture of antimony, copper and bismuth. It was very malleable. That was about 10 years ago. The stained glass repair folks went to zinc for the U track and eventually the H track too. I quit messing with it since they mixed the zinc and old lead came together in their scrap bin. It was a mess to deal with.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I always thought the vintage stuff was pure Lead. I bought a box of tangled up came, it felt very soft, but I never melted any to test BHN. It's still in a box out there somewhere?
A recent discussion in another thread pointed out there are several possibilities of Lead-Antimony alloys. So, you are just gonna have to cast a few boolits and test hardness, and wage a guess at the alloy.

[fredj338]

Most of the new H track that was still lead was about 99% Pb and the other 1% could be a mixture of antimony, copper and bismuth. It was very malleable. That was about 10 years ago. The stained glass repair folks went to zinc for the U track and eventually the H track too. I quit messing with it since they mixed the zinc and old lead came together in their scrap bin. It was a mess to deal with.
Not sure that would bend well. The stiff my wife had from a few years ago, pretty much pure though i suspect a tiny bit of tin for sharp edges.

[Handloader109]

Yep, new stuff is zinc.....

[jsizemore]

Not sure that would bend well. The stiff my wife had from a few years ago, pretty much pure though i suspect a tiny bit of tin for sharp edges.

The new zinc stuff doesn't bend well either but it's much stronger structurally. Heat it to around 200degF, or a little over, and it's malleable. The 1% antimony/99% lead is around 9 BHN.

[Apple Man]

This morning I melted a full 5 gallon pail of stained glass window caming. Appears to be dead soft lead, nice stuff. Melted with a bunch of recovered lead from water pipes.321937321938321939

[jsizemore]

Did you keep the window came separate from the water pipe?

[gwpercle]

My wife and daughter took Stained Glass making classes about 12 years ago and I was introduced to "came" ... I treated it as soft lead ... it probably has a little something in it ... but not much and it's not hard at all.
I got a few 5 gallon buckets of scrap came from the shop that was teaching the classes ... use it 50-50 with COWW for my standard handgun & rifle boolit alloy.
If you can get some it is a good clean soft lead alloy if not pure , it is close enough to use as pure.
Gary

[Apple Man]

Did you keep the window came separate from the water pipe?

No, the pot on my lead melter is 80#s, it was all mixed, poured into ingots. Scratch test on all the batches came up to BNH 5 and each ingot was marked with a sharpie as to what it is.322005322006

[Rickf1985]

Sharpie marks wear off in short order, better to stamp them. I have a couple tons of ingots and if I did not stamp them I would have no idea what they were. I did mark a lot of them with sharpies in addition to stamping thinking it would make identifying them faster. Sure glad I stamped them because the sharpie marks are long gone.

[Hossfly]

Sharpie marks wear off in short order, better to stamp them. I have a couple tons of ingots and if I did not stamp them I would have no idea what they were. I did mark a lot of them with sharpies in addition to stamping thinking it would make identifying them faster. Sure glad I stamped them because the sharpie marks are long gone.


Agree totally about stamping, never marked with sharpy, just stamped. Wish I had larger letters, last week trying to find SOWW to separate from COWW some stamped with small (L) hard to find but was still there.

[Apple Man]

Sharpie marks wear off in short order, better to stamp them. I have a couple tons of ingots and if I did not stamp them I would have no idea what they were. I did mark a lot of them with sharpies in addition to stamping thinking it would make identifying them faster. Sure glad I stamped them because the sharpie marks are long gone.


Agree totally about stamping, never marked with sharpy, just stamped. Wish I had larger letters, last week trying to find SOWW to separate from COWW some stamped with small (L) hard to find but was still there.

Thanks guys, that is certainly good to know. I have stamps and will stamp them.

[nannyhammer]

I treat it as pure when I find it. If you get pieces that have a lot of soldered joints it has enough tin to work well in the 50/50 mix for bullets or as is for sinkers.

[Rickf1985]

Agree totally about stamping, never marked with sharpy, just stamped. Wish I had larger letters, last week trying to find SOWW to separate from COWW some stamped with small (L) hard to find but was still there.

Harbor Freight has large letter stamps. Not real good for hard steel but perfect for lead.

[RogerDat]

I had some came that was dead soft and xrf gunned as nearly pure PB. I save that aside in ingots for muzzle loader bullets.

+1 on stamping rather than sharpie. I use Harbor Freight stamps for ingots but still use sharpie on "coins" of scrap solder I cast using a mini muffin tin since those end up in labeled coffee can so any one coin becoming hard to read isn't an issue as long as the can label or any of the coins still has the tin percentage on it.

For simplicity I stamp "Pb" on all soft "plain" lead ingots. Pipe, xray shielding, flashing. Might have a touch of something else in it but when I used to get it xrf gunned it was generally 99% lead which is close enough to count as Pb when mixing up an alloy. I just put WW on COWW ingots since I sort stick on WW's out as Pb, with a possible SOWW added to the ingot in sharpie.

I'm so bloody organized that every time I look at all that stuff I get annoyed I'm not out there using it to cast with :-)

[kevin c]

The HF stamp sets are cheap enough to get two or three. That lets me tape a couple or three together for more information. Mind you, I can only reliably hit two stamps at once, so I use the ball peen end to tap three in a row, one after another.

[lightman]

I bought a couple of sets of the 3/8" letter size a few years ago and tack welded a few together. PB for soft lead, WW for wheelweights, ect!