Antimony?

migrant hunter

migrant hunter

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Southern Alberta
I have seen a couple of guys advertising soft lead at reasonable
rates, but for my rifle bullets I would like to harden them a little.
Has anyone bought antimony online? There's a sponsor on Castboolits
who sells metals(Rotometals?).
Just wondering if anyone has ordered antimony or found it elsewhere.
I don't have free wheelwright any more and don't feel like paying $25-$30 for a pail of zinc and steel.
 
Go to your local second hand store/garage sales etc and look for pewter plates/cups/candle stick holders etc. Pewter is 90% or better tin/antimony and adding it to lead or wheel weights will definitely harden it. I can vouch the prices in these places are way cheaper than buying/shipping from Rotometals. Also, if you can find an old print shop with a back room that needs to be cleaned out you can bet there will be a lot of cast letter/number blocks that are made from linotype. Linotype is also almost pure tin or close enough for our purposes. Linotype is getting hard to find these days. It used to be a nuisance material for printers and they often paid to have it taken away.

The best big haul I made for Linotype/Pewter was from a metal recycler just out of Chilliwack. Close to 300 pounds for $125. He was happy to get rid of it because he would have had to pay someone to haul it to the local smelter. He sold me a 220 litre steel drum full of crushed pewter ornaments etc. There was also a 50 pound lump of solder on the bottom. My next test will be to cast some pure pewter bullets to see if they perform any differently. Mike Venturino has a big supply and swears by it for accuracy.

Pewter is easy to identify. It is extremely malleable and the utensils can easily be deformed with hand pressure. Also it will be marked on the bottom with a triangular symbol declaring its purity in some cases but mostly it just says pewter.

People used to use Pewter utensils to eat from. Usually highly ornate stuff. The other 10% of Pewter utensils is lead.
 
Seems even thou it's dangerous one of the best sources of antimony is lead acid batteries. Probably explains why the battery lead comes out so hard.
 
X2 grouch, some lino will be 12,6,82%. I once had some pure antimony powder and could not get it to alloy with lead. I suspect that melting with tin first(pewter?) might work. Some harder babbit metals have high % of tin, some antimony.
 
migrant hunter said:
Just wondering if anyone has ordered antimony or found it elsewhere.
Click to expand...

I've purchased (in person) antimonial lead from Metalex Products; shipping might be prohibitive, but worth a phone call. They gave me an analysis report so I knew what % of tin and antimony were in my ingots.

I've also purchased babbit from Purity Casting Alloys to add tin to my mix.

g'luck,
-Steve
 
Waiting for a quote from Canada Metal for Antimony, been gathering pewter, solder, babbit etc. but the tin content is so much more than the antimony that I need pure antimony to make the best use of all the tin I am accumulating!
Rodney
 
It is extremely difficult to get pure antimony to mix in with your lead/tin. It requires a special flux. There was a fellow that went by The Antimony Man that sold the metal and the flux. I don't believe he is in business anymore though.

Auggie D.
 
rodauto said:
Any idea of the composition of extra hard hummason #2 shot? Nothing on thier web site to indicate this?
Rodney
Click to expand...

................Tin % Antimony % Arsenic % Copper % Silver % Lead %

Chilled Shot 0% 2.00% 0.625% 0% 0% 97.4%
Magnum Shot (6 or 9) 0% 4.00% 1.25% 0% 0% 94.8%
Magnum Shot (7 - 8.5) 0% 6.00% 1.25% 0% 0% 92.8%
 
Just bought 125 pounds of #2 extra hard lead shot for a good price, main benefit being the arsenic component that will sweeten my mixed bag of range lead with unknown composition.
May come in handy as well for the babbit as I want to reduce the tin content but was concerned about the reduction of the antimony content by adding significant quantities of lead as a way to reduce the tin content to a reasonable level.
Hopefully will be a win=win for both situations!
Rodney
 
yomomma said:
................Tin % Antimony % Arsenic % Copper % Silver % Lead %

Chilled Shot 0% 2.00% 0.625% 0% 0% 97.4%
Magnum Shot (6 or 9) 0% 4.00% 1.25% 0% 0% 94.8%
Magnum Shot (7 - 8.5) 0% 6.00% 1.25% 0% 0% 92.8%
Click to expand...

So my number 2 extra hard is likely somewhere between the chilled shot and the magnum regarding antimony and arsenic?
Rodney
 
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