Lead. 2 questions.

Red Herring

Red Herring

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I have decided to stock up on lead as I want to learn smelting and casting. Wheel weights seem harder to come by, so my thought was to smelt my own mixes using pure lead and pewter. I would like to start casting for my 9mm and .308, but will likely get into cap and ball pistol down the road as well. So far I have 100 lbs of lead diving weights, and would like to gather another couple hundred pounds.

My 2 questions.

1. A local place sells scrap lead for $.60/pound. I paid a visit today and they have a fair amount of flashing, pipe collar, window lead, and a bunch if other stuff. None of it is particularly clean. Is this of any concern...or do the impurities rise during smelting with a wax flux? Anything in particular to avoid?

2. I am just starting to learn about hardness and testing for it. Does anyone have a great, and preferably cheap way to test for decent bullet hardness. I have read about stapler testing... any other thoughts?

Thanks guys!
 
With Todays ww if you bought 100 lb of Scrap WW you would have in your Bucket --
Steel WW
Zinc WW
Soft Lead Stick ons
Med Lead Stick ons

and when you melted down the remainder of Lead WW you would have 50-60 Pounds of ingots

Scrap lead flashing 100 lb = App 95 lb of ingots
the lead could be hard or med or Soft

Soft lead can be used with adding Lead free solder (95% Tin) to your mix to help fill out your mould to make better bullets

Soft lead can be used for a lot of the lower pressure rounds and some of the higher pressure rounds with no problem with the correct fit & lube
for example
38 spl
45acp
44 spec/44 mag and others ( light target loads)

Some of it is trial and Error

Most Rifle rounds will require a Gas check to prevent leading
 
I work at a scrap yard and also cast many different balls/bullets, the divers weights are usually soft lead but some are not. The roof flashings and plumbing made from lead are for the most part soft lead also. I check the softness with my thumb-nail...if I can gouge it to about 1/16 inch deep it is soft (pure). I get pewter for free at the yard because they don't have a market for it and it is over 90% tin. For cap and ball revolvers and black powder rifles I use near pure lead, for .45 Colt and .45ACP bullets I mix in about 25% pewter to harden it up.
 
i get alot of clip on WW still that are lead if you look real close you will see the symbol Pb for pure lead,Sb for antimony,Sn for tin watch out for any with Zn this is zinc some are not marked these are best tested with a pair of wair cutters if you can bite into it with them its a lead alloy if you cant then you got zinc also alot of zint and steel are rivited onto he clip
 
25% Pewter...wow. Had not realized it required so much. Guess I need to expand my metal scouring!

Thanks for the lead free solder tip, and the site referral... great stuff! Ohhh....this is going to be FUN!
 
Red Herring said:
25% Pewter...wow. Had not realized it required so much. Guess I need to expand my metal scouring!

Thanks for the lead free solder tip, and the site referral... great stuff! Ohhh....this is going to be FUN!
Click to expand...

that much tin would yield lighter bullets.
if you want to harden the lead you need antimony and heat treatment (water cooling and 2 days rest at room temp).
 
vagrantviking said:
Pewter contains quite a bit of antimony and will do a lot to harden up the mixture. Tin alone helps with mold fill-out but doesn't do very much to harden the alloy.

Heat treating lead alloys is a whole science in itself but can be useful for higher pressure loads. It works sort the opposite of heat treating steel. Sort of.

http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Contents.htm
Click to expand...

Modern pewter contains 92% Tin and about 8% Antimony.
It's a waste of tin to try to harden lead with it. And since tin is quite a bit lighter than lead, the bullets will end-up lighter.
In Vancouver there are at least two lead merchants that offer antimony lead. I personally buy 7% antimony lead and 4% antimony lead.
By mixing the two in various proportions I get between 10BHN and 18BHN bullets.
(I did pay for a Lee hardness tester)
 
I wish we had a place here that sold the same stuff...but for the life of me I can't find one...yet.;)

legi0n said:
Modern pewter contains 92% Tin and about 8% Antimony.
It's a waste of tin to try to harden lead with it. And since tin is quite a bit lighter than lead, the bullets will end-up lighter.
In Vancouver there are at least two lead merchants that offer antimony lead. I personally buy 7% antimony lead and 4% antimony lead.
By mixing the two in various proportions I get between 10BHN and 18BHN bullets.
(I did pay for a Lee hardness tester)
Click to expand...
 
The soldered joints of the plumbing pipe should give you enough tin to use for filling out your moulds.

The wheelweights I've gotten lately give me about 3/4 wheelweight lead and the rest is junk that just floats to the top of the melt. Just skimm it off with a junky old spoon that won't see service in the kitchen ever again

I melted a lot of lead on an old hot plate with a junk frying pan, moved up to a Lee melter (5 lb?) and now I've got a tiger torch and an old dutch oven to melt my treasure in.
I usually have about 3 melts before I cast my bullets. The first melt is just a rough melt to get the big stuff out and I pour into homemade angle iron ingots that fit into ammo cans.
The second melt is processing from larger ingots into smaller ingots that fit into my bottom pour Lee melter. I skim junk off every melt and put it in an old can for recycling back to the scrap yard.

Remember lead is way heavier that steel, dirt, and cigarette buts, so all that junk will float to the top like a piece of wood in water.

You don't have to be fancy, or have the "best" equipment. If you're not having fun at your hobby it's all work and you'll soon lose intrest and go back to buying bullets.
 
When scrounging the bins this AM, there were a couple of big, flat slightly concave sections of babbitt. Hard, but pinchable with my small wire cutters, which makes me think it's lead based. I think I will pick this up as well, and play with it.

** Picked it up. 2 small slabs, about 120 pounds. It pings when you drop it on concrete, and from the color of a torch cut section, it looks like it's tin based babbitt. Stuff is hard. Should make for a great lead hardener. I am looking forward to experimenting!
 
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For fluxing I use Marvelux from Brownells. It is powdered rosin and works quite well. Stinky and smokey so you'll want to be outdoors (a good idea anyway) when preparing your lead.

Oh and you're not smelting, you're melting.
 
Red Herring said:
When scrounging the bins this AM, there were a couple of big, flat slightly concave sections of babbitt. Hard, but pinchable with my small wire cutters, which makes me think it's lead based. I think I will pick this up as well, and play with it.

** Picked it up. 2 small slabs, about 120 pounds. It pings when you drop it on concrete, and from the color of a torch cut section, it looks like it's tin based babbitt. Stuff is hard. Should make for a great lead hardener. I am looking forward to experimenting!
Click to expand...

use it wisely :D
I bought 2 such Babbitt pigs long ago from a guy who was selling boat ballast.
They were great for hardening lead. As long as they lasted.
 
legi0n said:
Modern pewter contains 92% Tin and about 8% Antimony.
It's a waste of tin to try to harden lead with it. And since tin is quite a bit lighter than lead, the bullets will end-up lighter.
In Vancouver there are at least two lead merchants that offer antimony lead. I personally buy 7% antimony lead and 4% antimony lead.
By mixing the two in various proportions I get between 10BHN and 18BHN bullets.
(I did pay for a Lee hardness tester)
Click to expand...

Who would that be?
 
graydog said:
Can someone out there tell me where the best place to look for and buy Modern pewter might be?

Thanks Graydog
Click to expand...

Last week I bought 10lbs of pewter from EE and the package is heading my direction as we speak, it wasn't cheap but if you compare it to leadless solder (95%Tin, 5%Sb) in Home Hardware, Rona or Home Depot then it was well worth it. I will use it to dissolve copper in it to add strenght to my lead alloys. I still have some exess linotype (84%lead, 12% Antimony, 4% Tin) and 50%tin/50%lead solder left for sale on top of my personal stash. I saw yesterday that lead price is up substantialy to $1.12/lb now so my squireling away easy accesible stuff years ago is paying off.
 
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