Type Material

R

Rayleigh_Scattering

Regular
Rating - 100%
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Location
Under the arch
While on my lunch time "I'm a middle aged guy with a desk job." walk around the neighbourhood I noticed a big print shop that has gone out of business. Their building had been getting progressively shabbier, so this is no surprise.

I spoke with the unhappy looking landlord, who doesn't see much hope of getting any of his back-rent, and while looking around I noticed that next to the ancient looking printing machines were racks and racks of equally ancient looking large drawers containing the letter printing elements (like little dull-blue-white dominoes with a single letter on one end).

I vaguely understand that this stuff is good for casting with, so I asked him how much he wanted for it.

He said, "$50 and take as much as you want. I don't have time to sort the scrap."

Question is, is it worth it it? Can I reasonably expect to trade it away lb by lb over the years for various firearms related goodies?

Or is this stuff pretty 'Meh?

Ulrich
 
yomomma said:
TAKE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN AFFORD

You will thank me later
Click to expand...

I disagree.

Take ALL of it if you have a place to store it.
Find a place!

Thanking, I agree with! :)

Type Metal or Linotype metal is GREAT stuff, and can be used to add to lead to harden the alloy up, or can be (wasteful!) used straight for really hard bullets.

It has value. Lots of value, just as scrap. More as casting material. You might wish to take a look on the castboolits buy and sell forum to get an idea of what a couple pounds of type is worth.

Cheers
Trev
 
Lino Type is very hard, ~BHN18 or so and needs to be alloyed with softer lead....It's fantastic magic stuff for casting, it contains a few percent of Antimony which works as a wetting agent allowing your alloy to flow into every corner of your mold. I'm down to my last 50 lbs or so, I'd be all over this like a fat kid on a Smartie.


EDIT:
If your local, let me know when your willing to part with some. I'd be willing to pay you $3/lb or possibly trade you for some firearms goodies. :)
 
I went back and scored about 60lbs of letters (Could have gotten 3x that in spacer bars, but didn't), plus a big-old industrial tap and die set, and a sweet 1960's vintage drill cabinet for $50 altogether.

Dang near popped a hernia lifting it all into the car.

So as not to get on the wrong side of the admins, I'll keep the "Anybody want to trade some of this for a..." things in the EE.

Thank you for your wisdom.
Ulrich
 
I'm done, but if you're based out of Calgary PM me and I'll tell you where the place is.

Just for fun I smacked a couple of them with a hammer and was pleased to see a nice brittle fracture pattern.

The final count was 37 taps, and 54 dies including at least 2 of every common imperial size, NF and NC, from 4-40 to 12-20.

A nice haul.

Ulrich
 
Go get the rest of it for no other reason then to swap it for stuff later on. The scrapper's don't care about it, it's just lead to them.
 
Be aware that there are many different kinds of type metal. Lino will be (for all intents) type that is in a line of any length hence the name lino. Monotype is from a casting machine (like lino is from a lino caster) and was used mainly for mathematical and similar technical setting and is different from lino and unless you lived in down town Chicago you would never find it. Foundry type is pretty much rock hard and was used for hand set, redistributed and used over and over again. Hard to make it last. Very commonly found and often the logo of the maker is on each piece. Rules and space material (leading etc) were often made on a machine called an Elrod using lino metal. It pultruded the material into long strips which were cut up on a saw and used by the Comp to make up pages, upside down of course because it was all wrong reading. There you go, probably more than you wanted to know about hot metal. The big thing to remember is that individual letters are not monotype. The metal is bigtime different. Have a look on the web for the various mixes etc..

Can anyone guess what I did in a former life??
 
Melting temps for monotype and linotype are, what, 50, or 75 degrees apart on the thermometer?
Performance in a gun is a bit different. I cast up some pure lino and mono boolits for my 348. Fired at 20 +/- yards the linotype boolit mushroomed up to .375 dia, but the monotype boolit looked like I could clip another gascheck on and reload in another case.

Melting the 'types was kinda cool. As I watched the thermometer slowly rise to the proper melting temps for either mono or typo, they stayed solid until the "proper melt temp" was met, and then "gloop" they melted directly from a solid to a liquid. No mushy stage in between, as I remember.
 
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