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http://tapatalk.com/mu/45069121-a3e6-9c95.jpg
http://tapatalk.com/mu/45069121-a40c-d3ca.jpg
http://tapatalk.com/mu/45069121-a430-663b.jpg
Now I know anybody can put anything in to something. But is this what Lino normally looks like. Please excuse my lee supper accrete readings, just use as a comparison.
The top picture looks just like the ingots I picked up at a printing shop for scrap. They feed these ingots into a machine that melts them and turns them into print. What you have, I am not sure of the lead content, but the shape of the ingots is exactly what they make type out of. There is my 2 cents worth.
These are definitely linotype.Quote:
Originally Posted by castblaster
At least you have something to compare the ingot to. I would cast boolits out of each material and then press them against each other in a vise. They should deform equally.
The second set of pictures is what they made the first set of pictures out of. I haul scrap metal for a living. All of these items in your pictures came from a print shop.
I started a post here
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=125707
i have ww+tin (WD ing) and the maybe lino in pictures. I need harder boolits.
Any suggested mixes
Oh Yes!!! That is lino type in both pictures. The first picture is before being fed into the type melter by the ring on one end. The second picture is the line of print made by the type setter and then arranged to make the column of the article. You fell into a real bonaza here as lino is selling for way more than salvage price.Robert
Print shops melt and recast type metal back into ingots like the ones in the top picture. However, during the process of using this type metal/ingots some of the tin and maybe antimony is lost to dross. This lost over seveal processings leads to less desirable linotype, so print shops purchased an enriching alloy to add to the melt called +metal. This +metal would put back the tin and antimony to make it as it was from the foundry. Having said this, buying linotype from anyone except a certified foundry is a **** shoot on what you are actually getting. Most of the time it is used but still good alloy, but it is easy to pay too much for depleted linotype as it is hard to determine the alloy richness.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mtgrs737
Certainly an accurate assessment. Many print shops just throw the spacer pieces back into the melt also. They are usually soft and add to the lead content each time the alloy is remelted but if the harder worn out individual letters and numbers are tossed in, the harness will be increased. The resulting hardness and make up of scrap printshop metal is anyone's guess, but it still would have much of the desired antimony and tin. My limited experience with buying used printshop metal has been anywhere from 14-19 BHN. Certainly not as hard as real Linotype.
Hmm, I'm wondering. From time to time, I run across some stuff called Phoenix Metal, from National Lead. I wonder if this could have been a Lino enriching alloy like the Plus Metal mentioned above. It is very hard, has to have a high Sb content. In an old metals engineering handbook, the only elements listed for it are Sn and Sb.
There's an answer to my question! I have a supply of typeface mat'l. that only tests @ 14-17 bhn. It must be lino scrap.
Yes they both are
I used to run a Linotype for about 10 years in the late 70's to mid 80's. I was also responsible for melting down the used "lines-of-type" (Linotype) and forming it into ingots (like the ones in the op's pics). Our shop did not do a large volume of typesetting, but I generally had to re-melt all of our type and make ingots several times a year. I was aware of the fact that metal needed to be enriched occasionally, but I had no idea where you could have obtained the plus metal at that time (Linotypes were already obsolete by this time). Our shop had quite a bit of foundry type left over from earlier years, occasionally I would add some when making ingots for the Linotype. Our mixture still worked fine for type, but as mtgrs737 and HamGunner have pointed out, anything other than virgin Lino is a crapshoot as to exact alloy and/or hardness. Our Linotype (the machine) is long gone, but luckily I still have about 70 or 80 ingots stacked in the back of my shop. It casts lovely bullets, ahh . . . I mean boolits.