make up of material-

[RugerBob]

Hi all, I have some possible lead but think it may have heavy tin content. I was wondering if there is a place you can ship a small piece to for testing. For a small fee of course. I work in some old mills , some are 150+ years old and you'd be suprised what you run accross. Working maint gives me free run of 12 differnt buildings built between 1850-1916. So, without doing a melt test to see what it melts at, is there a place I could send. some pieces too. Thanks, Bob

[lylejb]

Rotometals can do it, but wants $80:-(

http://www.rotometals.com/category-s/59.htm

[sagacious]

You can do a basic test yourself.

If it's a simple binary alloy, and there is a tin content of a few percent or more, the lead will not melt smoothly. As it approaches the melting point of the tin/lead eutectic, small silvery droplets will "sweat" from the surface of the lead ingot. Continued heat increase will then cause these silvery droplets to do one of two things: either they will soon shrink and appear to be reabsorbed into the still solid lead, or they will begin to dissolve the solid tin/lead alloy surrounding them and form small "blisters" of molten tin/lead. Shortly thereafter, the ingot will melt.

Often, if you take an ingot of lead/tin, and simply heat it with a propane torch, you can easily and quickly see the formation of these small tin shperical droplets on the surface of the ingot. That ingot will then have a couple percent tin or more.

If you wish to know the exact tin percentage in a simple binary tin/lead alloy, then you can do this computation at home: First you need to determine the volume of a cast bullet in cubic centimeters, and it's weight in grams. From there you can determine it's density, and then calculate the percentage of tin and lead in a volume that weighs that much.

One of these days I'll do a short writeup on how to do this, but getting past the volume measurement is a hurdle for those folks without a way to measure it.

Anyway, that's a basic qualitative test for presence of tin above about 2 percent, and also a quanititative test for any tin percentage that will give exact results at home... and for free! :)

Hope this helps, good luck.

[Johnch]

Ask at the local scrap yard

I have 1 place that will zap a sample with a tester and tell me the alloy if they are not bussey

Normaly I give the guy a 6 pack of beer every other time I ask him to test stuff

And the good part is
If you get to know the people
Sometimes they will set goodies aside for you and give you a call

John

[arcticbreeze]

You can do a basic test yourself.

If it's a simple binary alloy, and there is a tin content of a few percent or more, the lead will not melt smoothly. As it approaches the melting point of the tin/lead eutectic, small silvery droplets will "sweat" from the surface of the lead ingot. Continued heat increase will then cause these silvery droplets to do one of two things: either they will soon shrink and appear to be reabsorbed into the still solid lead, or they will begin to dissolve the solid tin/lead alloy surrounding them and form small "blisters" of molten tin/lead. Shortly thereafter, the ingot will melt.

Often, if you take an ingot of lead/tin, and simply heat it with a propane torch, you can easily and quickly see the formation of these small tin shperical droplets on the surface of the ingot. That ingot will then have a couple percent tin or more.

If you wish to know the exact tin percentage in a simple binary tin/lead alloy, then you can do this computation at home: First you need to determine the volume of a cast bullet in cubic centimeters, and it's weight in grams. From there you can determine it's density, and then calculate the percentage of tin and lead in a volume that weighs that much.

One of these days I'll do a short writeup on how to do this, but getting past the volume measurement is a hurdle for those folks without a way to measure it.

Anyway, that's a basic qualitative test for presence of tin above about 2 percent, and also a quanititative test for any tin percentage that will give exact results at home... and for free! :)

Hope this helps, good luck.

The problem with this formula is you would have to know that it is a simple binary alloy. Most scrap lead will not be.

[sagacious]

The problem with this formula is you would have to know that it is a simple binary alloy. Most scrap lead will not be.

This is quite true. This formula is not intended for, nor was suggested for the identification of alloy composition in "scrap" lead. The poster asked only for a test of the presence of tin in lead. This it will do.

The formulas are a separate concern. They will tell you how much-- in advance-- your bullets will weigh if cast from various lead alloys with known alloy percentages. That calculation is not limited to binary lead alloys.

It will also tell you the percentages of lead alloys known to contain only two alloy constituents.

But scrap lead is a whole 'nother animal, and the above calculations of course require at least some known attributes of the alloy.

[jsizemore]

Go to http://www.theantimonyman.com/testingmetals.htm and he has a very good description of various alloys.

[runfiverun]

even if it is an antimony/tn alloy it would give you an idea of the total non lead content.
tin will sweat as the alloy comes to temp and if you see it enough you can almost tell how much is in the alloy.

[sagacious]

Exactly. Antimony content can be guessed at by hardness, and tin will sweat out if it's of any significant percentage.

Within certain paramaters, the caster can often determine reasonably closely what he has with a few simple techniques/observations at home. No need to pay for testing unless exact analytical results are required.

[RugerBob]

Hey all, Thanks alot for the info. Will contact my local scrap yard and see what they may offer for testing. Bob

[jacpot]

Hey Ya'll,
I'm new to this site and having fun with a little research and experimentation.

I came up with a simple & easy way to determine the volume of a boolit to determine it's density.

1. Take a syringe that's a little larger than the bullet caliber and remove the plunger
2. heat the tip until the plastic liquefies and then smash it onto the workbench to seal it off.
3. use a second syringe and fill the first one to the 4cc mark
4. drop in your boolit making sure none of the water splashes out
5. shake it a little to release any trapped air
6. read the water level and then subtracting 4cc will give you the volume of the bullet in cubic centimeters

Now find the Density!
1. dump the boolit out of the syringe, dry it and then weight it on a Gram scale
2. divide the Mass (weight in grains) by volume (CC from syringe step) will give you the Density (Grams per CC)

Lead has a density of 11.37 g/cc and Tin has a density of 7.31 g/cc

I found a website that will give you a fair idea of the Tin/Lead content by inserting these values.
http://www.handymath.com/cgi-bin/alloy4.cgi?submit=Entry

You enter the weight of the boolit, then the volume. then the density values for tin and lead and hit calculate. it gives you a pretty good idea of the % Lead to Tin of unknown scrap.

I cast a .36 cal round ball with a volume of 0.454 cc with two different alloys
sample #1 weight 5.054 g and showed 96.08% lead
Sample #2 weight 4.95 g and it showed 92.21 % lead

I then performed the same experiment with a .45 cal using the same alloys (1.6cc volume). The results were very close to the first test (96.21% and 92.33% respectively). I can only speculate the difference was the accuracy of the syringe measurements.

I hope this is usefull

[sagacious]

...
You enter the weight of the boolit, then the volume. then the density values for tin and lead and hit calculate. it gives you a pretty good idea of the % Lead to Tin of unknown scrap.
...
I hope this is usefull

That methodology works very well for a binary lead/tin alloy, or a binary lead/antimony alloy. It won't work for a ternary lead/tin/antimony alloy, or provide a confident assay for a lead alloy of unknown compositon.

Not trying to throw a wrench into the works, just clarifying. :drinks:

[runfiverun]

thats where the hardness tester comes for instance,his 96% lead alloy would be25-1 in regular terms and be quite soft @ 9 bhn ,or [my guess] its ww's and is on the order of 11-12 bhn.
the other [i bet] is 2/6 alloy and would be on the order of 15-16 bhn and would be much harder than the 12-1 tin lead alloy.
the melting points would also give a very good clue as to which it was.

[lathesmith]

To go at this at a slightly different angle, 1lb of tin dispaces more fluid than 1lb of lead--in other words, the tin ingot is a larger size. In the past I have used this simple principle to get a rough idea of tin (and non-lead) content of an unknown alloy. Once again, this is kinda crude, but was good enough for my purposes.

lathesmith

[lwknight]

I posted a Specific Gravity calculator in another thread
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=71012
maybe it will help something or somone.

[Cap'n Morgan]

A simple way of calculating the volume of a bullet or ingot is to use an electronic scale:

Place a plastic cup with enough water in it to submerge the object completely.

Zero the scale and submerge the object into the cup by hanging it by a thread (the object must not rest on the bottom)

The scale will show the weight of the mass of water the object has displaced -as to Archimedes's law(*) - and you can now calculate the density of the object by dividing its weight with the weight of the water displaced.


(*) Archimedes's law: When a body is submerged into water... the phone rings :wink:

[randyrat]

Hi all, I have some possible lead but think it may have heavy tin content. I was wondering if there is a place you can ship a small piece to for testing. For a small fee of course. I work in some old mills , some are 150+ years old and you'd be suprised what you run accross. Working maint gives me free run of 12 differnt buildings built between 1850-1916. So, without doing a melt test to see what it melts at, is there a place I could send. some pieces too. Thanks, Bob Sorry i'm not much help with any place to send your metal for testing.

But, I do have several bullets made specificaly out of WWs, pure lead, #2 alloy,,, i use as a base measurment. Then i compare weight from an unknown allow, this gives me some idea of content. Then of course, i use a Lee tester for hardness to give me a better idea. (still no idea of the content of alloy)

A high Tin alloy- After using tin you see how it pours, the charactiristics of the surface tension is compleatly different. I'm short on words, but if you add tin or use a lot of it you'll see the difference between low tin alloy and high tin alloy.

It reminds me of a "Serfactant" or the opposite.