Lino ? and striking gold, sort of

[jforwel]

I had a three gallon bucket full of dental foils that I was melting and as I got just a couple of inches into the bucket I found raw or still in print form, what I figure is linotype. Probably 35 lbs that I didn't know was there.

I had some other ingots from two sources who both claimed that they were also lino. I heated the two types of ingots together in a dry pan. One was light gray and the other was dark gray with a sparkly or crystal looking interior. The light gray metal starting liquifying first so I pulled out the darker stuff and melted it separately. There must be some difference betweent these two but what?

Then I melted the real type metal and got oatmeal looking stuff on top. Nothing would make it mix in. Is there zinc in original type metal or just something it normally does when first melted?

All of the above melted at fairly low temp, within the lino range on the Lyman thermometer.

[randyrat]

You'll get some dross off that Linotype. Flux it real good and mix with a wooden stick (dry stick) then scrap and it will be fine.
I run into that with type metal, some impurities that rise to the top when heated.
If there was much Zinc it it, the melt temp would be way up there over 700 degs

[giz189]

use some sawdust mixed with beeswax for flux, sometimes that does it.

[lwknight]

That oatmeal sruff will go back in when you melt is at about 660 degrees and you flux it with wax.
You have to work it. Smash it on the sides while the wax is on fire. It is antimony oxides mixed with ink carbon and it will separate to leave just the carbon on top if you work at it.

I just smelted 580 pounds and never tossed out more than 4 oz of dross total. When first melted it looked nasty till the flux started working and I started working it. Then magically the carbon separated from the tin/antimony oxides as the burning was stole the O2 back from the antomony.

[jforwel]

Thanks for the replies. Does anyone think that because of the different colors of the ingots that it's possible that the light gray and dark gray may be something else? Maybe mono or stereotype?

[454PB]

You may want to check this thread:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=61115

[runfiverun]

weigh two small samples from the light and dark alloy against a ww sample.
just pour one from each melt into a known mold weight you'll easily see what is what pretty quick.
in a 240 or so boolit the weights from the ww and lino will show up and the mono will too.
melt temp and weight combined with a hardness test will give you an idea pretty quick.
if they are pretty, 1 gr or so, close i'd say the darker one is depleted lino.

[jforwel]

Thanks for the link 454, I wish I had read that thread before I melted it all down so I could watch for some of those properties.

[lwknight]

I've heard of depleted uranium but, what it depleted Lino?

[runfiverun]

it's been used many times and loses it's tin content which oxidizes out muuuuch faster than the antimony.
the reason for foundrys to make mono and foundry type was. mono was for the larger letters that got used more and re-poured less. [single large letters]
and the foundry type was a replinish metal for lino and mono.
lino [lino-type] line of type [small letters] can /have /were used and re-used for quite some time before it was replinished and would lose it's content through oxidization.
the typesetters were paper guy's not casters.