Need to get some Antimony in the GTA Ontario
- Thread starter MuthaFunk
- Start date
I would not suggest to buy pure antimony to alloy your lead with. To melt antimony you will need to heat up the pot at twice the melting point of lead and that calls for troubles. At that temperature the lead will be at the boiling point and the gases expelled will be a real danger for your health. I wouldn't wanna be closer than 50 yards to a pot with boiling lead.
Do as yomomma said and find some hard lead to alloy with. I won't heat lead over 800F.
Just saying, you do as you wish.
Do as yomomma said and find some hard lead to alloy with. I won't heat lead over 800F.
Just saying, you do as you wish.
If you can find bearing babbit it has lead/tin/antimony and melts at lower temperature as it is all ready mixed, You do need to know what the ratios are to get the right mix when adding to pure lead otherwise it will likely be too high in antimony
Go to your local Thrift shop or some other such venue and look around their shelves of nick knacks. Look at the metal trays and containers and even flower holders for a triangular mark on the bottom that indicates it's made of PEWTER. Pewter is mostly TIN/ANTIMONY with a bit of lead. They used to make dinner plates, decorative plates, cups, goblets, alcohol flasks and a multitude of other cast objects out of Pewter. Often large pieces weighing from a few ounces to a few pounds for less than a dollar per pound.
I picked up a flower vase that weighed just over two pounds at the local Salvation Army store for a dollar on Tuesday. Yes, I gave them five dollars and told them to keep the change. They pointed out a lot of other stuff but it was all stainless or silver plated brass. One easy way to tell if it's Pewter is to bend it. If it bends easily it's usually Pewter. You don't need a lot of pressure to bend Pewter products so don't try to pretend you're Hercules and bend up the stainless/silver.
Most of what I find is made up as beer steins. Some of it is beautifully cast or engraved and it's a shame to melt it down but after seeing so much of it I have become quite mercenary about slipping it into the melting pot. Most of it is personalized anyway.
Another good place to look is at scrap metal dealers. Often they have big balls of 50/50 tin/solder or bars of tin or if you are really lucky a big pile of Linotype. Linotype used to be easily come by but with new printing procedures and lack of printers purchasing the Lino letter/number blocks it's getting almost impossible to find. I picked up 200 pounds of Pewter and a hundred pounds of Linotype from a scrap dealer for $150 but I had to go to his yard to pick it up. His laborer had even melted it into 5 pound ingots for me. The dealer figured $150 was about what he would have cleared on it when he took it to a local smelter as scrap and I saved him the time and expense of sending someone to do it.
It was darn good stuff. According to my hardness tester it was almost pure tin/antimony. I am going to use some of it to cast up some 7mm bullets with gas checks to see how fast I can push them accurately without leading. Likely a pointless waste of good tin but interesting and fun to do.
I picked up a flower vase that weighed just over two pounds at the local Salvation Army store for a dollar on Tuesday. Yes, I gave them five dollars and told them to keep the change. They pointed out a lot of other stuff but it was all stainless or silver plated brass. One easy way to tell if it's Pewter is to bend it. If it bends easily it's usually Pewter. You don't need a lot of pressure to bend Pewter products so don't try to pretend you're Hercules and bend up the stainless/silver.
Most of what I find is made up as beer steins. Some of it is beautifully cast or engraved and it's a shame to melt it down but after seeing so much of it I have become quite mercenary about slipping it into the melting pot. Most of it is personalized anyway.
Another good place to look is at scrap metal dealers. Often they have big balls of 50/50 tin/solder or bars of tin or if you are really lucky a big pile of Linotype. Linotype used to be easily come by but with new printing procedures and lack of printers purchasing the Lino letter/number blocks it's getting almost impossible to find. I picked up 200 pounds of Pewter and a hundred pounds of Linotype from a scrap dealer for $150 but I had to go to his yard to pick it up. His laborer had even melted it into 5 pound ingots for me. The dealer figured $150 was about what he would have cleared on it when he took it to a local smelter as scrap and I saved him the time and expense of sending someone to do it.
It was darn good stuff. According to my hardness tester it was almost pure tin/antimony. I am going to use some of it to cast up some 7mm bullets with gas checks to see how fast I can push them accurately without leading. Likely a pointless waste of good tin but interesting and fun to do.
Be advised that not all the "antique" advertised as pewter is real pewter. As was mentioned above pewter can be easily bent and it feels heavy. I bought a pewter marked trinket for 2$ and it was not pewter as it didn't melt. I have a small smelting pot (also from salvation army store) where I smelt trinkets. ALWAYS smelt one by one. Some of them have in the base to maintain balance a filthy brown substance who will make the rest of the trinket useless if contaminated with that filling mass.
Ever since I got that bad luck and I've learned my lesson I cut in pieces every pewter trinket before smelting it. That way if in the base there is any filler I can either remove it when is in solid state or pure and simple throw it away. I've got a nice stash of pewter from thrift stores.
I'll post pictures with my last buy. The base of one was filled with a strange filler but having my lesson learned I cut it around and trowed away the unwanted part.
Also remember NOT to buy anything marked Stede, Armetale or Wilton. Best marks are BM(Britannia metal), they are 92% tin and that's what I like.
these are the marks I'm after
[/IMG]
[/IMG]
[/IMG]
and these are the trinkets
[/IMG]
[/IMG]
Ever since I got that bad luck and I've learned my lesson I cut in pieces every pewter trinket before smelting it. That way if in the base there is any filler I can either remove it when is in solid state or pure and simple throw it away. I've got a nice stash of pewter from thrift stores.
I'll post pictures with my last buy. The base of one was filled with a strange filler but having my lesson learned I cut it around and trowed away the unwanted part.
Also remember NOT to buy anything marked Stede, Armetale or Wilton. Best marks are BM(Britannia metal), they are 92% tin and that's what I like.
these are the marks I'm after
and these are the trinkets
This is the today's catch. 4 lbs of pewter in nice ingots for 18$. The cups had a marking I never seen so I bought one, went to the car light up the torch and you can see in the picture it melted in seconds. So I went back in the store and snatched all the cups from the shelve. Is worth stopping at thrift stores.
[/IMG]
