Alloying Antimony/Tin/Lead?

[daboone]

I've got 400lbs of x-ray sheathing from a hospital remodel, 6 lbs each of antimony shot and tin.

I heard that smelting antimony in lead is a PIA. I searched and searched this and other sites for alloying methods. Can someone point me in the right direction or just tell me the secrets :-) or tell me to forget it:-(


I ordered Lets flux and have plenty of sawdust.

[ANeat]

Well Daboone I guess it depends on what your desire is for the final alloy.


If I had the pure I would just leave it as is. If you need harder stuff you can cut in some WW or lino. If you dont have either I would try to find someone local to swap/buy from or search here for someone to buy some from

From what Ive read about adding antimony you need to get the lead up to a pretty high temp and be real particular about getting the antimony "cut in" to where everything is evenly mixed

[ANeat]

I should add that pure lead can be hard to come by for some folks so if You need a harder mix for your needs you may be able to track down someone to swap with that needs the pure.

[UweJ]

you need higher temps to melt antimony so melt it seperatly in a pot with a blowtorch and then add it to the molten lead.Check the lasc site for the right mixture.
Uwe

[KYCaster]

Go to advanced search and put in antimony and posts by 44man. You'll find detailed decriptions of the method recommedned by Bill Ferguson, which 44man uses and my method which is a little different.

Adding Sb is no big deal and can be done at normal casting temps.

Jerry

[msw]

Wow--Don't you love hospital remodels--I got 100 lbs of the same kind of lead sheeting. I was bummed I couldn't get more--so I got 100lbs of wheel weights yesterday. It's a start.

I bought pure antimony BEFORE I did research. I used RotoMetals. After learning that to melt antimony requires 1100F --which makes steel glow red--I contacted RotoMetals and asked if I could return my pure antimony for a 30/70 Antimony/lead ally that melts at about 700F. They graciously did and paid shipping on my final order. Pretty sweet!

So-my recommendation for how to use that soft, pure lead--melt it and turn it into ingots--there was paste, paper & drywall crap on mine. I did this outside--it was REALLY smokey!

Then, choose a dealer in high antimony/lead alloy & buy some. I bought 30lbs for starters. Then, do the math to calculate how much alloy to pure lead for your desired alloy boolit mix.

As already mention--you could add it to wheel weights--but you're going to need several hundred pounds of wheel weights for that much lead--unless you want pure lead bullets, of course.

Cheers!

[Shiloh]

Good advice on LASC http://www.lasc.us/

IIRC, antimony alloys readily with tin. Not a big soncern to heat tin that temp. Then the tin/antimony alloy gets added to the lead.

You'll have to do some math to get the proper percentages to what alloy yo want to end up with.

Shiloh

Shiloh

[daboone]

Thanks everyone for the good information, pointers and directions.

Adam I just want ya to know I only plan on trying this out on maybe 40 lbs. I've got plenty of use for 20 to1 lead/tin, 44/40, 45/70 trapdoor. I also cast a lot of RB for my BP addiction. So no I ain't trading a drop of this gray gold!
BTW the pool balls I got from you are GREAT. My palms owe you a debt of gratitude!

I also really want to give a big thank you to kenjuudo for his help in this project.

[Echo]

I heard somewhere that one should use about 2-3 times as much antimony as tin. Hence lino @ 4/12 and 'magnum' @ 2/6.

[daboone]

Yesterday I did it!

I measured the antimony, tin and lead on a digital kitchen scale. Got the 18lbs of lead up to melt, fluxed, added the 1lbs of tin, fluxed, at that point the temp was about 630. Added 1/2lbs of antimony and more saw dust in. About 10 minutes I noticed a little of the antimony was mixing in!!!!! Added bees wax and things really got moving, fluxing saw dust, beeswax every few minutes. When the first half of antimony disappeared checked the temp, it was at 630. Added the rest of the antimony (1/2lbs) and repeated the fluxing. All was incorporated or alloyed in about 15 more minutes!!!!!

I took my mold off the hot plate poured and dropped 6 beautiful boolits! Took one inside to filed off a flat and did the Lee hardness test. The indent was .052 = 19.2 BHN less than 10 minutes out of the mold. YES that was WAY easier than anything I had read or heard!!!

No doubt I'll save a couple of ingots for lapping. I'll be adding some pure lead to the rest of the mix to try to to get some ingots at 16BHN and 18BHN. I want to do some load work ups and see what happens with leading and the targets!

Glad I had a respirator mask because it seemed like I had more fumes than usual, but then again I've never fluxed as much or a frequently as I did with this.
kenjuudo was my mentor for this project. His suggestion to add wood ash as a flux was an excellent suggestion. I didn't have ash to add but as I said I did have sawdust so left it's ash floating on top. I was stirring the pot almost the whole time. I didn't get as much dross as I expected, if fact very very little. But I did leave the ash from the sawdust fluxing in till all the antimony was alloyed in before skimming it off. Dang I've never work with such clean stuff!

Excuse my rambling here but I was sure alloying antimony was going to be very difficult with out high temps and special fluxes. Total time was about 1 hour from start to first cast boolit!

Thanks for all you suggestions and helpful comments. Special thanks to kenjuudo for being my email mentor!

[ANeat]

That sounds great, I guess you were using the powdered antimony??

[daboone]

That sounds great, I guess you were using the powdered antimony??


Rotometals calls it antimony shot. It's not powdered. Mostly rangeing in the buckshot sizes.

[geargnasher]

I'll have to investigate this! I tried alloying with antimony bars once, trying to make Lino with WW and tin. Took over a day, a shovelful each of kitty litter and sawdust, and just about burned the liner out of my furnace.

Gear