Casting find: What is it?

Hunter1970

Hunter1970

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I picked up some used casting tools from an estate sale a while back and in the mix was this:

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It's heavy as hell, and much harder than pure lead. I gave it a tap with the ball peen hammer:

FVyaQw4l.jpg


Any one have any idea or thoughts?
 
If you have an electric melting pot and a thermometer, you could try to do a melting / freezing plot? Set melting pot at one value - read off and record the temp every, say, 15 seconds. At some point the stuff will go liquid, but during that phase change it will not increase in temp - the energy is going to the phase change from solid to liquid. Once liquid, do it in reverse - shut off power, let the stuff cool - record the temperature as it drops - at some point the temp will flatten out as the stuff changes from liquid to solid, giving off heat as it does so, then it will continue to cool. Once you know the melting and "freezing" points, can compare to known alloys. Also, a hardness tester would tell you the Brinell hardness of that sample? Could be linotype, could be a lot of "mixes" that a caster might find handy to have? "heavy as hell" and dinting it with a hammer will not define what it might be, much... Only what I have read, and I may have mis-understood... Although I did do the melting / freezing thing to satisfy at least myself, that a bunch of "stuff" I had was not pure lead...
 
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A quick search on google for "CMC ingot" comes back with "Commercial Metals Company", also "CMC China" - seem to be scrap metal dealers - make ingots of various materials, various metals... No idea of age or era of your sample, so not a lot of help, I would think??
 
Get a container big enough to hold the ingot, and set it in a bowl. Fill the container right to the brim with water, but don't get any in the bowl. Then, gently set the ingot in the container. Collect and measure the water that overflows the container.

Pure lead is 11.3 g/cc. All the common alloying elements are lighter.
 
Okay - got the part about using water displacement as a measure of volume - especially for an irregular shape. Gotta find something to accurately measure cc's of water. I suppose clean or distilled water would be close enough to 1 gram weight per cc volume, so maybe I will try weighing the overflow to figure out its volume?
 
Did you get any molds for boat zincs? CMC makes lead silver ingots too. Might be a small fortune you have there.
Polish and end a take a pic and post it.
Or it could be babit for making bearings.
 
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Too heavy for zinc. Too hard for pure/soft lead. I found the hardness tester. and should be able to get a harness guesstimate today. Re: small fortune - not my luck. It was being used as a door stop, probably a spent fuel rod from Springfield nuclear plant...
 
BattleRife said:
Get a container big enough to hold the ingot, and set it in a bowl. Fill the container right to the brim with water, but don't get any in the bowl. Then, gently set the ingot in the container. Collect and measure the water that overflows the container.
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BattleRife said:
Pure lead is 11.3 g/cc. All the common alloying elements are lighter.
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That part is correct, however:

BattleRife said:
Yes, weighing the water is quite possibly the easiest way to get an accurate measure.
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You need to measure the volume of water displaced in cc's and the weight of the dry ingot in gms to determine density.

Even then, all you'll know is if it's not pure lead and by approximately how much - you won't be able to identify or know the proportions of the other the components in the alloy. Of course this assumes that it's a lead alloy, not tin, zinc or something else. After you know the density, if it's close to 11.3g/cc, you'll know it's a lead alloy or not.

Great door stop!
 
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Could be about anything from babbit to contaminated lead that could ruin a whole batch if added in.

If you have a scrap dealer nearby that has an X-ray gun that can identify the component make-up, that might be worth chasing down.

Or you can try a melt of it alone, see what it gets you as far as bullet hardness from some casts, and make a best guess from there.

Pour what's left of a ladle full into the bottom corner of an ingot mold to make a long narrow stick. Bend it once it's cool. Tin makes a crinkly noise when bent. Tin is good! :)
 
ted_dent said:
I think babbit is still good as a hardening alloy, right?
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trevj said:
Could be about anything from babbit to contaminated lead that could ruin a whole batch if added in.

If you have a scrap dealer nearby that has an X-ray gun that can identify the component make-up, that might be worth chasing down.

Or you can try a melt of it alone, see what it gets you as far as bullet hardness from some casts, and make a best guess from there.

Pour what's left of a ladle full into the bottom corner of an ingot mold to make a long narrow stick. Bend it once it's cool. Tin makes a crinkly noise when bent. Tin is good! :)
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B said:
I'd say it's babbitt as well. Mostly Tin with a good cut of antimony and a bit of copper. Should be great for alloying, nice score.
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Babbitt can have many parts...some beneficial for casting others not so much.

Last babbitt I had x-rayed had over 6% copper.

My suggesyion would be to make a small amount 50/50 pure lead to mystery ingot and cast a frew bullets to try
 
Andy said:

You need to measure the volume of water displaced in cc's and the weight of the dry ingot in gms to determine density.
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If you go read it again, we were discussing using the mass of the water as a short cut to determining its volume, which is entirely practical if the water is sufficiently pure.

B said:
I'd say it's babbitt as well. Mostly Tin with a good cut of antimony and a bit of copper. Should be great for alloying, nice score.
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There are at least seven Babbit alloys in current production, and at least twice that many historical forumulations. Some are what you describe, (No.2, for example) but many are not.
 
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