evan price
10-06-2009, 03:16 AM
"Sure I got some hard lead, it's long strips with words on it. I busted it into smaller pieces. Got oh, I dunno, mebbe 20 pound of it?" said the guy on the phone. "Plus I got some scuba weights n' stuff thats too big to fit in my Lee pot."
What the heck, I thought, roll the dice. My father-in-law had turned me on to this guy he knew who shot muzzle-loaders (like my F-I-L does- that's where all my stickon WW have gone lately...). He had a lot of lead. He didn't want the "hard" lead, he needed soft lead for his muzzleloaders. He had a box of miscellaneous lead that he had gathered through the years and it sat under his bench, sometimes used to prop the garage door open. All too hard for him to use.
"Whatcha gimme fer it all?" the fellow asked me.
After hemming and hawing in my head, I offered fifty cents a pound- shipped. I figured, heck, sounds like linotype lead to me. Lino for half a buck a pound would be a sweet deal.
So the deal was done, and after about a week a USPS flat-rate box was hauled to my porch by a sweating mail carrier. I cut the tape and beheld my latest purchases.
There were some 6# scuba weights- obviously soft lead. There were a few odd ingots and shapes of hard lead, about WW alloy I guessed. Then there were some odd ingot-chunks, obviously broken from a three-part bar. They were lighter than pure lead, but not much, silvery, and gave a pleasant "TING" when tapped on the concrete porch.
Crap, I thought. Zinc anodes! 20# of them. Wasted my money.
I put the box on the back of my porch and took one of the "zinc" bars to work with me.
After Googling the name moulded into the bar- "Syracuse Smelting Works" with a picture of an Indian head, and some wording about Government Genuine Standard or something. I discovered that maybe I was better off than I had imagined!
20# of high-pressure babbitt!
89% Tin, 7% Antimony, 4% Copper!
Wow.
So now my question is: Will the 4% copper screw up a boolit alloy? How should this be mixed with WW or soft lead?
Or should I just try to sell it to a machine restorer (there's lots of steam thresher and hit/miss engine nuts here in Ohio)?
What the heck, I thought, roll the dice. My father-in-law had turned me on to this guy he knew who shot muzzle-loaders (like my F-I-L does- that's where all my stickon WW have gone lately...). He had a lot of lead. He didn't want the "hard" lead, he needed soft lead for his muzzleloaders. He had a box of miscellaneous lead that he had gathered through the years and it sat under his bench, sometimes used to prop the garage door open. All too hard for him to use.
"Whatcha gimme fer it all?" the fellow asked me.
After hemming and hawing in my head, I offered fifty cents a pound- shipped. I figured, heck, sounds like linotype lead to me. Lino for half a buck a pound would be a sweet deal.
So the deal was done, and after about a week a USPS flat-rate box was hauled to my porch by a sweating mail carrier. I cut the tape and beheld my latest purchases.
There were some 6# scuba weights- obviously soft lead. There were a few odd ingots and shapes of hard lead, about WW alloy I guessed. Then there were some odd ingot-chunks, obviously broken from a three-part bar. They were lighter than pure lead, but not much, silvery, and gave a pleasant "TING" when tapped on the concrete porch.
Crap, I thought. Zinc anodes! 20# of them. Wasted my money.
I put the box on the back of my porch and took one of the "zinc" bars to work with me.
After Googling the name moulded into the bar- "Syracuse Smelting Works" with a picture of an Indian head, and some wording about Government Genuine Standard or something. I discovered that maybe I was better off than I had imagined!
20# of high-pressure babbitt!
89% Tin, 7% Antimony, 4% Copper!
Wow.
So now my question is: Will the 4% copper screw up a boolit alloy? How should this be mixed with WW or soft lead?
Or should I just try to sell it to a machine restorer (there's lots of steam thresher and hit/miss engine nuts here in Ohio)?