Mystery Alloy

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ted_dent

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A friend of mine gave me about 40 pounds of this alloy in ingots that weigh around 3-4 pounds each. They are marked "Federated Metals Canada Ltd." and on the reverse side are stamped "BM94x9297".

They are pretty heavy so I assume the main component is lead but they are harder than lead so other metals are obviously mixed in with them. I took them to a couple of local scrapyards but they were not able to identify them and an internet search came up pretty empty except for a story about an industrial accident involving Federated Metals in the U.S. and an EPA Report about how the former Federated Metals Corporation facility in Indiana may have contaminated surrounding residential areas.

I'm hoping this stuff is usable as bullet alloy but would like to know what's in it first.

Any help would be appreciated.

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Might be a bar of 95/5 solder composed of 95% tin and 5% antimony.

Melts between 450°F - 464°F

Anyway to see what temp it melts at?
 
HuskyDude said:
Might be a bar of 95/5 solder composed of 95% tin and 5% antimony.
Melts between 450°F - 464°F

Anyway to see what temp it melts at?
Click to expand...
I can probably melt an ingot down & take the temp with my alloy thermometer. If I can't get any definitive answer I'll give that a try. Thanks.
 
It's funny, any photo I can find online of a Federated Metals ingot, it is clearly marked as to the alloy. I wonder why they wouldn't mark this one.

It could be almost anything, Federated Metals seems to have made a lot of alloys over the years. Measuring density, hardness, and/or melting point would be helpful.

I can probably melt an ingot down & take the temp with my alloy thermometer. If I can't get any definitive answer I'll give that a try. Thanks.
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Probably a whole lot easier to use a drill bit to get a couple of shavings, then put them on a flat plate and heat it while checking the temp with an IR thermometer.
 
Yah with the possibility it could be babbit, temp may not tell you much

BTW, any lead is useable. First I would cast a bullet and do a hammer test.

If it does not shatter I would get the hardness checked and use that to determine what type of bullets you cast.

Casting a bullet will also let you know how well it fills out a mold

@3lbs 5 oz it is probably Tin.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/294131524593
 
yomomma said:
Yah with the possibility it could be babbit, temp may not tell you much

BTW, any lead is useable. First I would cast a bullet and do a hammer test.

If it does not shatter I would get the hardness checked and use that to determine what type of bullets you cast.

Casting a bullet will also let you know how well it fills out a mold

@3lbs 5 oz it is probably Tin.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/294131524593
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This might be the best way to go. It definitely isn't brittle so I suspect it won't shatter. I do have a Saeco hardness tester so I could get a comparative reading to my wheel weight and linotype bullets.
 
I used to use those quite a bit, for pouring Journal Bushings. It's Babbit, it casts beautiful bullets as is but it's a bit on the hard side.

I found it worked best when mixed 25% with 75% Pure Lead or 50-50 with Wheel weights

It was also good for casting handgun bullets when there was a stack of WW with a lot of Zinc mixed in.

Babbit was also called "White Metal"

Most of what we used was a mix of Lead/Tin/Zinc.

Not all Babbit is the same mix.

There are different mixes available and they usually have a grade/mixture-specific number such as Babbit #2, which is mostly what I used.
 
No. 2 Babbitt is a great addition for bullet casting, I have some in my own stash.

But the problem with your theory is that I have never seen a foundry Babbitt ingot that wasn't marked with the number. As you say, there are several Babbitt alloys, with very different compositions and applications. A bar of Babbitt that wasn't marked with the specific alloy would be useless, because no millwright would risk a piece of heavy equipment by putting in an unknown bearing alloy.
 
Looking at the lack of grain structure and shrinkage in the top side of the ingot, It's most likely one of the (numerous) eutectic babbitt alloys. It's doesn't look 'gold' enough to me, at least in that picture to be tin based, so I would assume it's lead based.

Babbitt's usually run 7 to 15 percent antimony, and usually half that percentage in tin, as well as copper.
 
Cast a bullet from it and weigh the result comparing to the advertised bullet weight or the weight of another bullet of a known alloy from the same mould. Then do a hardness test on that bullet. From those two tests (weight and hardness) you will be able to compare the 2 most important aspects of bullet alloys and determine what, if any "additives" (pure lead, tin, antimony etc) may be required to give you the density and hardness you would want to shoot them. Melting temp would also be a good and important indicator as It COULD be something like cerrosafe.
 
I just melted down a block of mystery alloy. Had similar letters and numbers but nothing I recognized. Took higher heat than wheel weights to melt. I alloyed it with WW 50% and still have a hardness of 23. My usual alloy is 16 so harder than what I want. It does cast beautiful bullets. I will probably use it to harden my usual alloy. If it looks like lead I am going to try using it. I had antimony from a local mine that had impurities it , which once I melted and scooped the crap off I had beautiful stuff for bullet hardener.
 
Snider shooter said:
I just melted down a block of mystery alloy. Had similar letters and numbers but nothing I recognized. Took higher heat than wheel weights to melt. I alloyed it with WW 50% and still have a hardness of 23. My usual alloy is 16 so harder than what I want. It does cast beautiful bullets. I will probably use it to harden my usual alloy. If it looks like lead I am going to try using it. I had antimony from a local mine that had impurities it , which once I melted and scooped the crap off I had beautiful stuff for bullet hardener.
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I finally got a chance to do some more investigation on these alloy bars. I used some alloy with a known Brinell hardness of about 12 to cast some bullets and compared them to bullets cast from this alloy. The bullets were cast in a 9mm 125 gr. M-P mould. The Brinell 12 alloy bullets dropped at about 122-123 gr. The bullets from the mystery alloy were considerably lighter (around 88-89 gr.) but were beautiful bullets, shiny with no wrinkling, even after just 3 casts. The alloy melted fairly easily in my Lee melter set at maximum. When I checked the hardness they were very hard (about 26 on the Brinell scale).

I was also getting a purple/blue film on the alloy when in the melter.

Another interesting point is that when I drained the alloy out of the melter and into my Lee ingot mould it took about 3-4 times longer to cool down to a solid state than the softer, heavier alloy.

I'm still not sure what it is but considering that it is quite hard and casts fully filled, great looking bullets I think it it is going to make a good hardener to combine with the range lead I normally use for casting.
 
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