Help a new smelter!

[Brother_Love]

I need some sage advice from some of you experienced smelters. I have some pure lead (or very close to pure) and some 62/36/2 solder. I want to end up with a 20/1 alloy. I am figuring about a 1 1/2 lbs of solder to 20 lbs of lead. How far off am I or am I even in the ballpark?

I smelted some of the counterweights I got recently from willbird and I am casting bullets from that "as-is". It makes some pretty bullets too.



Thanks, malcolm

[garandsrus]

Malcolm,

The 20:1 is just a ratio, 20 parts of lead and one part of tin. With what you have you would need about 3 lbs of solder to get one pound of tin. The other two pounds are lead, so you can add those two pounds to the "pure" category:

18lbs lead
3 lbs solder (1 lb tin, 2 lb lead)

Total = 21 lbs, 20:1.

If you do a search on "alloy calculator" there are several that have been created using Excel or similar tools.

John

[Echo]

Or is the solder 62% tin? Solder is usually stated tin first, so I would say his solder is 62% tin, 36% lead, 2% Something else (Cu? Sb?).

[jnovotny]

Garand hit it on the head. This will be 20:1. Enjoy and shoot striaght.

[runfiverun]

tin is the first number. it/ they are 62% tin

[Echo]

+1 for r5r, so BL, you are right - 1 1/2 pounds of that solder should give 1 pound of tin, so you would need 19.5 pounds of lead to develop 20:1 alloy.

[Slow Elk 45/70]

ECHO has it right, this is a good mix, I like 16:1 for my mag pistols, just my preference, I use 15# pure and 2 # of 50/50 solder=16:1:drinks: