Another "Whatz it" question

I bought some lead several weeks ago from a salvage yard.
Some pieces looked like they were poured into what looks like an oversized mold of some type about 5 lbs each (approx).

I melted these down in a dutch oven and poured them into Lyman molds, they seemed to melt at a different temp than what my ww and pure lead melted at.
Of course I kept these ingots seperate.

For Christmas I got a Lyman thermometer and decided to see what the melting point of these ingots was.

I completely emptied my 20 lb Lee pot.
I put 8 (cold) of these ingots into the pot and turned the control switch to its highest setting and inserted the thermometer and waited.
The thermometer was not touching anything except the lead.
The ingots started melting fairly fast and at 350 degrees they were completly melted.
Just out of curiosity I put 2 more ingots into the pot.
The temp dropped to just under 300 (this to be expected).
The 2 ingots melted fairly fast.
When the temp got back to 350 all ingots were melted.
The melt was nice and liquid and I could get lead from the pouring nozzle which usually means to me it is hot enough to pour boolits.

So, I unplugged the pot and left the thermometer in the pot to see at what point the lead would start setting up.
It took approx 25 minutes for the lead to cool down enough for it to start setting up partly due to the pot still being hot.
The lead started to set up at 300 degrees.

Any suggestions of what I have here?

Melting point of tin is 450 F. No clue what you have. Obviously some alloy.

Might want to test the Bhn hardness of the metal and then do an Internet look up. It is definately not a lead - tin alloy with As or Sb

50/50 solder melts at 370 degres and can be liquidous at 350 . Maybe it was 63/37 solder but there is a low temp tin/lead solder mix
Try a specific gravity test.
Here is a chart in Excel

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lwknight

50/50 solder melts at 370 degres and can be liquidous at 350 . Maybe it was 63/37 solder but there is a low temp tin/lead solder mix
Try a specific gravity test.
Here is a chart in Excel

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I was thinking some type of solder because of the low melting temp.

All the scrap I got that day at the scrap yard had just been brought in (100 lbs or so )and was still on the scale when I showed up, so I'm assuming it all came from the same place.
It all looked like it had come from a factory or some type of machine shop.
(I still have several pieces that look to be some kind of jig or something with screw holes and looks like it should be screwed together somehow.)

Just to satisfy my curiosity, this evening I melted some of the ingots down again and cast some 45 boolits just to see how they would turn out.
My 50/50 ww/ soft lead boolits average 248g, the unknown stuff weighed about 15g to 20g lighter.
They also had that frosted look to them, but the pot temp was kept low because at my usual temp setting the lead was getting too hot and taking forever to solidify in my boolit mold (Lee 6 cavity).


I'll probably just set this stuff aside until I get around to getting a bhn tester.

Melts to high for Cerrosafe.

Sam :D

Testing specific gravity is easy and very accurate with solder that has only tin/lead.
The larger the ingot, the better reading you will get. A good digital scale is required.

Weigh the ingot, (metric mode is simplest)
Place a pen of water large enough to hang the ingot into without touching the pan in any way.
Zero the scale if you can.
Suspend the ingot in the water
Divide the ingot weight by the suspended weight and you have the SG.

I use a small wire to hold the ingot. A thread would work on a boolit or small ingot.
The ingot size depends on your scale capacity.

Quote:

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Just to satisfy my curiosity, this evening I melted some of the ingots down again and cast some 45 boolits just to see how they would turn out.
My 50/50 ww/ soft lead boolits average 248g, the unknown stuff weighed about 15g to 20g lighter.
They also had that frosted look to them, but the pot temp was kept low because at my usual temp setting the lead was getting too hot and taking forever to solidify in my boolit mold (Lee 6 cavity).

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Sounds very much like solder. I cast my reclaimed radiator tank solder in a 454424 mold to get 1/2oz slugs to sweeten my alloy with. I have to run the melt MUCH cooler than boolit casting alloy. It takes a lot of extra time to cool enough to drop solid slugs instead of still liquid.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bbs70

I bought some lead several weeks ago from a salvage yard.
Some pieces looked like they were poured into what looks like an oversized mold of some type about 5 lbs each (approx).

I melted these down in a dutch oven and poured them into Lyman molds, they seemed to melt at a different temp than what my ww and pure lead melted at.
Of course I kept these ingots seperate.

For Christmas I got a Lyman thermometer and decided to see what the melting point of these ingots was.

I completely emptied my 20 lb Lee pot.
I put 8 (cold) of these ingots into the pot and turned the control switch to its highest setting and inserted the thermometer and waited.
The thermometer was not touching anything except the lead.
The ingots started melting fairly fast and at 350 degrees they were completly melted.
Just out of curiosity I put 2 more ingots into the pot.
The temp dropped to just under 300 (this to be expected).
The 2 ingots melted fairly fast.
When the temp got back to 350 all ingots were melted.
The melt was nice and liquid and I could get lead from the pouring nozzle which usually means to me it is hot enough to pour boolits.

So, I unplugged the pot and left the thermometer in the pot to see at what point the lead would start setting up.
It took approx 25 minutes for the lead to cool down enough for it to start setting up partly due to the pot still being hot.
The lead started to set up at 300 degrees.

Any suggestions of what I have here?

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What you have is not "LEAD" !! Lead is an element, symbol: Pb, atomic number 82, 621.43 deg.F Why people insist on calling anything silvery colored they can melt at home "LEAD" is beyond me.

What you have is an unknown alloy of some low temp. melting metal. It is NOT "LEAD". It may be Wood's alloy, or cerro-safe or bismuth or an alloy of some or all of 'em, but it ain't "LEAD".

Gerry N.

Well, Gerry N. you are right.
BUT

I'm 62 yrs old and too set in my ways.
When I buy wheel weights, thats what I call them, wheel weights.
When I buy water pipe lead, thats what I call it, water pipe lead.
When a salvage yard sells me scrap and I don't know the lead content, I use the generic term LEAD.

Sure the term alloy could apply to the unknown lead scrap.
But buying from a salvage yard the term alloy could apply to steel, iron, and etc scrap.
I can't imagine going to a scrap yard and asking if they have any lead alloy for sale.
To the general public lead is lead, no matter if it is an alloy or not.
No need in getting the nonshooting public any more confused than they already are.

A lot of people (not here of course) don't even know what the word alloy means.
I even know a couple of younger (40 ish) guys I work around have no clue what alloy means.

It may be basically incorrect to call a lead alloy just plain old lead, but as I said I'm too set in my ways.:bigsmyl2:

I wouldn't flame someone over terminology unless it was a gross misrepresentation and/or perversion of the topic that could lead to misinformation and general misconception if the topic at hand.
That was just tacky.

I think what he meant is that what you have is not even an alloy of lead, but some other metal entirely. There a quite a few low melt temp metals out there. My father in law gave me a small jar of Bismuth chips, looks like lead but it isn't. Not sure what to do with it yet, he is a retired chemist and didn't need it anymore, thought I might be able to use it.

sounds like bismuth or kirksite to me, bismuth alloys used to be used and still are in sprinkler heads and fusible links for cooking hoods they can go off as low as 120* but 160-220 is most common.

I cast some 45 colt boolits from this metal and loaded 10g of HS-6 behind them.
This afternoon I fired them into some frozen 4 inch thick blocks of wood stacked back to back at 25 yards.
They shot with no problem and no leading that I can find.
The recovered boolits were completely intact with no deformting except for the rifling marks from the barrel.
I still think I will mark and put this stuff aside for now.

60-40 solder sounds like a good possibility (Actually 63-37, as someone suggested)

And if so, that's good stuff!

From what you describe it almost sounds like Bismuth. It has a very low melting point, will be a bit frosty, and often cast in ingots like a fat hockey puck.
Was there any numbers or letter stamped on the ingots?

:brokenimajacpot, Welcome to the forum!

:redneck:As far as this alloy is concerned.
I would add it it a small batch of
my WW lead and make some
boolits out of it.
Then wait about a week and test
it with a tester.
Then you will know if it makes
the boolits harder or no change.
Then mix it and shoot it!:Fire:

Same technique but measure volume of water displaced (use graduated cylinder to measure before and after immersion or measure spillover from full vessel). A little math will give you the density and known elements and alloy densities can be found <lost the thread, check back>. DRNurse1

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lwknight

Testing specific gravity is easy and very accurate with solder that has only tin/lead.
The larger the ingot, the better reading you will get. A good digital scale is required.

Weigh the ingot, (metric mode is simplest)
Place a pen of water large enough to hang the ingot into without touching the pan in any way.
Zero the scale if you can.
Suspend the ingot in the water
Divide the ingot weight by the suspended weight and you have the SG.

I use a small wire to hold the ingot. A thread would work on a boolit or small ingot.
The ingot size depends on your scale capacity.

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When a SG of 10.67 VS a SG of 10.89 makes a big difference, it would be really hard for average
mortals with regular guy tools to measure displacement with the accuracy required.

Sounds like solder to me.

From the sticky in this forum:
621° = lead
563° = solder (10% tin & 90% lead)
529° = solder (20% tin & 80% lead)
504° = solder (30% tin & 70% lead)
464° = solder (40% tin & 60% lead)
428° = solder (50% tin & 50% lead)
374° = solder (60% tin & 40% lead)
362° = solder (63% tin & 37% lead) (eutectic)
365° = solder (70% tin & 30% lead)
392° = solder (80% tin & 20% lead)
421° = solder (90% tin & 10% lead)
450° = tin

The closest one is 63% tin & 37% lead

I have a lot of experience with eutectic solder which is the lowest melting temp solder that there is according to bumpo's list up there. Anyway, eutectic solder has the specific characteristic that it has no slushy stage. Its either solid or frozen, but no slushy. It has a problem that when cast into muffin tins, the outside cools and freezes faster than the inside and it will sometimes squirt molten lead out of the top of the ingot and leave a divot in middle. This is the only alloy that does this to my knowledge and although its not a definite test, it would be another clue. It wont do it unless its cooled pretty quickly. The solder pots at my day job only do it when the air vent is left running right over the pot (the air flow cools the 1Lb pot pretty quickly) but I had every one of my muffin pan ingots do this. Hope it helps!

BBS70 Do you have enough of the mystery metal to make it worth while to send a sample to ROTOMETALS and have an analysis done?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by goodsteel

I have a lot of experience with eutectic solder which is the lowest melting temp solder that there is according to bumpo's list up there. Anyway, eutectic solder has the specific characteristic that it has no slushy stage. Its either solid or frozen, but no slushy. It has a problem that when cast into muffin tins, the outside cools and freezes faster than the inside and it will sometimes squirt molten lead out of the top of the ingot and leave a divot in middle. This is the only alloy that does this to my knowledge and although its not a definite test, it would be another clue. It wont do it unless its cooled pretty quickly. The solder pots at my day job only do it when the air vent is left running right over the pot (the air flow cools the 1Lb pot pretty quickly) but I had every one of my muffin pan ingots do this. Hope it helps!

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Very good point about the eutectic properties; I completely forgot about that.
Maybe it was 60/40.

Quote:

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From what you describe it almost sounds like Bismuth.

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Nope ... 271.4° C (520.6° F)
If it was bismuth, run to the bank ... it's over $10 a lb

Ok, back on the topic:

Quote:

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The thermometer was not touching anything except the lead.

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bbs70 - not an issue if the tip of the thermometer touches the bottom of the pot. The bimetal strip that records the temperature is an inch or so up from the tip on all these thermometers.

Your next step should be a hardness test of the mystery stuff

My guess, the mystery stuff is pewter :
Pewter is a malleable metal alloy, traditionally 85–99% tin, with the remainder consisting of copper, antimony, bismuth and lead. Copper and antimony act as hardeners while lead is common in the lower grades of pewter, which have a bluish tint. It has a low melting point, around 170–230 °C (338–446°F), depending on the exact mixture of metals