FYI WW properties. Not what you were taught in boolit school.

[MBTcustom]

I just wanted to start a thread and tell what my experience is on WW makeup. I hear a lot that WW alloy has up to 3% antimony and up to .5% tin. I dont think this has been the case for a long time.
Some of you might remember that I traded a small fortune in 63/37 solder for WW on S&S. I ended up getting about 300 pounds of WW from various members all across the country, in exchange for shipping out about 200pounds of solder (my boxes tended to err on the heavy side)
Anyway, as it turns out, the company I work for has an x-ray machine that tests the components in metal alloys. It cost the company a small fortune to get this machine, but the government insisted that we take random samplings of our solder and test it for zinc and other trash. I happen to be friends with the guy that runs that machine and he agreed to test my lead for me. He ran dozens of samples for me in the space of one month. I kept having trouble with hitting my desired rifle alloy because I was assuming that the WW alloy had at least 2% antimony and surly a bit of tin. I was surprised to learn that most of my WW samples were very low in both metals. The average antimony percentage was 1.5% and was pretty close amongst all the samples. I found no trace of tin anywhere in the mix! Nada! Zip! Nothing! and about .5% trash that included trace amounts of gold, zinc, cadmium, sulfur, nickle, copper, gallium, river mud, etc.
I figure that the WW alloy information is out dated, and was based on a time when even the WW manufacturers diluted Linotype metal with pure lead to make their WW alloy. Why in the world would a modern company that makes WW alloy give away expensive tin for free? It doesn't take much to make a WW stiff enough to do its job, so why not cut cost by putting in the bare minimum amount of expensive metals that ti takes to get the job done?
I just wanted to let you all know.
I only tested about five samples (three from each batch so 15), but they were from all parts of the country, including Wyoming, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, California, etc. They all exhibited very close alloy characteristics with the only difference being in the trash that was found. Some would have nickle, some would not. Some would have gold, some would not etc. I hope this helps you guys with your alloys.

[Balduran]

Thanks for that Tim, I had suspected as much for a little while here as i am getting into newer wheelweights and my lead was alot softer than i expected.

[runfiverun]

the stickon's are getting harder.
and the tire dudes are really sending thier ww's back for recycling.
that shoud fill in all the blanks.
ww's have been getting softer since the 50's.

[Sgt Petro]

Thanks for this Tim!
I always appreciate excellent information, supported by facts.
Thanks for putting in the extra effort.

[coloraydo]

the stickon's are getting harder.
and the tire dudes are really sending thier ww's back for recycling.
that shoud fill in all the blanks.
ww's have been getting softer since the 50's.

Goodsteel,
Just curious, of the samples you received from various sources, were they mostly clip-ons, or did you get some stick-ons also, and if so, were you able to check them seperately? I have also noticed that some of the stick-ons were about equal in hardness to clip-ons. Inquiring minds, ya' know.

[Springfield]

I just bought 450- lbs of 20 year old WW's. I think I may get them analyzed before I melt them, might be more valuable than I thought.

[blackbike]

Thanks for that info, Tim
All the info. I have got from you and your dad has ben strait up.
Send our regards to your friend that runs that machine ,for us!
Thanks, BB

[RugerFan]

I'm wondering if your WW samples came to you in actual WW form or already smelted and ingotized?

[Wal']

I'm just getting started in this casting Boolits game & it seem's the day's of picking up your cheap WW's has long gone.

So I guess we'll have to suck it up & look for other way's to supply our habit.

The way I'm looking at it, if the lead suppliers are loosing sales to the recycled WW guy's it has bring down the prices elsewhere.

Hopefully.

[blackbike]

Even if you test every WW, the next one will be different.
Tims test is as good as we will probaly get.
WW aloy aint what they use to be.
Just look at the silver aloy in your pocket, we have ben riped off.
Just my two cents ( and it aint copper)
A dollar aint worth a dollar.
go figure, how long can this go on?
BB

[MBTcustom]

Just curious, of the samples you received from various sources, were they mostly clip-ons, or did you get some stick-ons also, and if so, were you able to check them seperately? I have also noticed that some of the stick-ons were about equal in hardness to clip-ons. Inquiring minds, ya' know.

All of the deals I made were for COWW ingots. So far, all of the stick on's I have dealt with were pure lead, but again, how pure is pure? if you dont care what else gets into your alloy mix, apparently it is easy to get .5% trash that covers half the periodic table. Most lead testing machines are going to give you a fairy tale based on what you ask it to look for. The machine that I have access to, gives a real number for every element in the sample. If there is more than .01% then it will see it and tell you whats there.

I'm wondering if your WW samples came to you in actual WW form or already smelted and ingotized?

All of the samples were in ingot form except one that came from my personal stash that I smelted myself. They were all the same, except for the personality of the .5% trash. That was the realy cool part, If I sample enough pieces, I could probably get to where I could tell you by the inclusions where it was from and how old it was.
It realy surprised me by what was found in a typical WW alloy, but nobody is going to use a machine of this precision to measure bullets, WW, or fishing sinkers......except me. Just thought the information would be valuable, because even though its not what we were taught, the samples still had pretty steady amounts of antimony so I thought I would pass it on for others to learn from.
Go and have some of your lead tested. If they come back with a clean, easy answer; that it has so much lead, tin and antimony; ask them to tell you what other metals did they find. Most would tell you that the machine only finds what you tell it to find. If they can give you a breakdown of every element in the alloy, then I would trust that answer.

[Matt_G]

Just thought the information would be valuable

Thanks Tim. It's very valuable info IMO.

[a.squibload]

Thanks for investigating!

That would make my 50/50 soft lead (what is that?) / COWW (not sure either!)
alloy softer than what I thought. Hey, maybe it will expand!

I have some WW ingots and some 330 gn cast boolits from long ago,
might consider them as "pot sweetener". Recently sized & lubed a bunch
of old 250 gn 44 swcs, cast from straight WWs. Might melt 'em instead of shootin'
'em at targets. Propane vs antimony...

[MBTcustom]

Hold on there pardner! The purpose of this info is to tell you what is actually in WW alloy. That has no bearing on performance in your guns. Antimony is a powerful hardener in lead, even though you now know what the true value is, that does not change the fact that these low-grade WW have been working perfectly for a lot of applications, and if you had a good boolit made up that you know works, you would be nuts to melt them down just because I told you what's realy in them. If they work, then shoot 'em!
The thing is, for me this made me realize that the old timers had a lot better lead to work with than we do now. Keep this info in mind when you are reading the old Lyman recipes (or heck even the new Lyman recipes. I doubt they are aware of this information either) Because vintage information is based on vintage WW alloy.
My real pet peav is when I read someone telling a new guy to "cut his WW 50/50 with pure and that will give you about 1.5% Sb".....um no, that would be .75%Sb, and you have reduced your alloy to slightly hard. No problem if slightly hard is what you want, but if the vintage recipie calls for cutting 50/50 with WW, then you would be just fine using strait WW or only cutting it 10/90 or 20/80.

[PbHurler]

Thanks for the information Tim. Now I'm pondering "tweaking" my alloy calculator.

[gbrown]

Thanks, goodsteel, for the information. I've been wondering the same. I get small amounts of ww from different sources and I sort and test with either a cold chisel or diagonal cutter. It just seemed to me that some were very soft, compared to others. As you have pointed out, you can't take things for granted. I test my hardness of all alloy I make. Just because it is ww doesn't mean it's going to match all the charts. Thanks, again, for running the tests and confirming what some of us have already suspicioned.

[sqlbullet]

Which side of your sample ingots did you test?

The reason I ask is I have a little experience with XFR (x-ray florescence). I had my isotope lead tested a few years back. One thing we found is the "trash" readings were higher on the top (part that was up while it cooled) than the bottom. The numbers on the top were similar to what you report. We hypothesized at the time this was because the "trash" floats in liquid lead. Since XFR only tests a few microns deep, the readings are skewed.

We determined best practice to be to cut an ingot in half to ensure a reading from a largely uncontaminated sample. However I didn't have a saw suitable for such a procedure, so we just tested on sides or bottom from that point on.

I am not surprised by your findings. The COWW I have seen are clearly not the same as the isotope alloys that read 96/3/1 lead/antimony/tin.

[MBTcustom]

I melted a sample of the lead to be tested, poured dollops onto a sheet of steel with a bottom pour ladle, and then filed about .015 off the top of each sample with a new file that was cleaned with acetone. The parts were cleaned with alcohol, and handled with nitrile gloves from that point forward until they were placed in the testing machine. All testing was done in a static free, clean room environment. If there is a better way, I dont know it.

[375RUGER]

Good stuff there Tim. Thanks for posting your findings.
I've suspected that the antimony is real low becasue I've been trying to heat treat some alloy and cannot, no matter what I do, add more than 1 to 2 pts of BHN. Indicating a low antimony content. I also add solder to each pot to help with boolit fillout.

[badgeredd]

Perhaps I missed it, but do you have the arsenic content of the CCOW ingots? Since the As does also affect the ability to harden boolits by water dropping, it would seem to me that is a number that would also be helpful. Thanks for going to the trouble to get the WW analyzed. Those numbers put a dose of reality into trying to get a harder alloy.

Edd