Babbitt?

[PerversPépère]

Hello!
One of my friends has found a good stash of clean Babbitt metal.
I'm looking for recipes for mixing it with refined lead or clean wheelweight metal. This could give us suitably hard bullets for auto pistols and some real good 44mag loads with 250-300gr. flat nosed profiles.
Any recipes?
PP.

 

[Cocked&Locked]

your gonna have to experiment my friend, unless you know exactly what the babbit alloy is. They varied by use and maker.

 

[hunter64]

As Cocked&Locked said, is there any markings on the babbitt ingots?

 

[H4831]

Babbit was used for bearing material in old machinery. The babbit was formulated to suit the job it was to do.
For a slow turning shaft without much weight, the babbit could be, or maby was, pure lead! Or, at most, very little hardening in it.
Your coming into a quantity, probably means you have used babbit. In that case you will have no idea of its formulation. New babbit, originally poured into, often, five pound cakes, will have a number, or some kind of marking on it, but that number or marking will also be of no use to you, unless you contact the maker of it.
I have some cakes of high speed, high pressure babbit. I sent the markings away to Canada Metal, who about sixty years ago, made it. They still had the information on hand and sent me the specifications.
Spec. grav----9.87
Pouring temperature, 750 degrees F.
Brinell, 25
Lead-------75%
Antimony---15
Tin---------10
Some really high speed and high pressure babbit, for example that used in old planers in sawmills, had nickel in it.

 

[PerversPépère]

Well, I guess I'll have to experiment a bit.
But it's an interesting stuff. I have some big linotype bars on order, too.
PP.

 

[big boar]

Where did you get linotype, haven't seen that around for years.

 

[bearhunter]

Bruce is right, you have an unknown commodity. I came accross 50lbs of it as well. It was the same stuff Bruce is describing. I mixed it 50/50 with a bunch of pure lead cast ingots that were used as ballast blocks (I wish I could find more of that stuff, especially when you could have it for carrying it away).
Use some decent Rooster Red or Blue with it and it should be fine. We shot the bullets into a trap and remelted the metal several times.
That mix was very clean, no leading to speak of and very nice to cast.

 

[broncoo]

not just old machinery

most if not all sawmills use babbit for there bandsaw guides
i spent a couple weeks as a teenager pouring and flycutting babbit bearing blocks at a sawmill i worked at.

wish i had of known that i could have used that stuff in the future as they used to replace the babbit with new alloy every couple months (100lbs or so). it would just get thrown in the steel bin...

Babbit was used for bearing material in old machinery. The babbit was formulated to suit the job it was to do.
For a slow turning shaft without much weight, the babbit could be, or maby was, pure lead! Or, at most, very little hardening in it.
Your coming into a quantity, probably means you have used babbit. In that case you will have no idea of its formulation. New babbit, originally poured into, often, five pound cakes, will have a number, or some kind of marking on it, but that number or marking will also be of no use to you, unless you contact the maker of it.
I have some cakes of high speed, high pressure babbit. I sent the markings away to Canada Metal, who about sixty years ago, made it. They still had the information on hand and sent me the specifications.
Spec. grav----9.87
Pouring temperature, 750 degrees F.
Brinell, 25
Lead-------75%
Antimony---15
Tin---------10
Some really high speed and high pressure babbit, for example that used in old planers in sawmills, had nickel in it.

 

[tootall]

In the Articles by Members section, there is a piece on babbitt.
http://www.castpics.net/
(for some reason, the URL does not go beyond the homepage)