Wearing out alloy

[DickelDawg]

How many times can you reheat and recast WW alloy before you wear it out!! Just kiddin'.....I'm starting to get into bullet casting and am at the low end of the learning curve.

[mattw]

Technically you can sorta wear it out. Each time you flux, you may loose some of the goodies and will have to put some back in! I know, not really wear but must think about that... Flux with sawdust and you will minimize the loss of valuable metals with each heating.

[bangerjim]

Each fluxing will slightly reduce the Sn & Sb in there. You need some linotype metal to sweeten it up again. Get some on here in the S&S forum and add small amounts as needed.

banger

[powderburnerr]

I shot reclaimed lead at home for a few years and found after reclaiming it 3-4 times I had to add a little new to it , like I lost some of the tin out of the mix or something, once I added new, the bullets started casting a lot better,again

[fredj338]

You never wear it out, but it will get softer. So repurpose it or add lino or harder alloy to bring it back up.

[MtGun44]

Twice only. After that, send it to me for proper destruction.

One boolit at a time through my guns.

Bill

[Bigslug]

Really not a bad question to ask. Linotype was a common casting material/additive back in the day before electronic printing. I recently found a stash of commercial cast bullets from the mid 1980's that tested as pure lino. Musta been cheap during the transition phase. Printers would run their letters till they wore down, then melt and recast them. Every time they did that, a little of the tin and antimony would oxidize out. If you run into an old stash of lino, it's worth running a hardness test to see what kind of shape it's in, but the worst case is that it's probably "degraded" to wheel weight status.

[meeesterpaul]

None of the used lino that I have had XRF scanned has been at the 4%-12%-84% spec.
Just checked a pile of photos of scanner results. My guess would have been that you would be 'warm' assuming that used linotype would be in the range of 2.7%Sn - 10.7%Sb - 86.6%Pb. There were a lot of samples in that range but lots of them showing a little more Sn and less Sb; i.e. as low as 3.2Sn to 3.7Sn with Sb of 7.8 to 9.9. A bunch of these were blank flat spacers. I wonder if they got reused without getting remelted as much as the lettered lino. A few samples of lino show "refortification" with Sn in the 5% range and Sb almost back up to 12%.