Sources of Tin in Canadian please?

JBD

JBD

CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Rating - 99.2%
254   2   0
Location
Northern New Brunswick
I am on the hunt for some tin to make my bullets fill out a little better. Everytime I go to the hardware store I am confused as they do not spell out the ingredients like they do at a grocery store.

Can someone tell me the type of solder or something that I can pick up at Canadian tire or Home Hardware. That has tin and lead in some predictable percentage?
 
if you look at the end of the spool ( not the little things you get at radioshack or whatever they call it now) you'll see the percentages- common used to be 50/50 for plumbers, 60/40 common, and i think now it's somewhere about 80 or better percent tin- it's an expensive source of tin, however- meant for doing circuts,not making bullets- your better bet is the junkyard or scrap metal place- remember, there's a lot of work that goes into making solder to get it refined to where it's suitable for electronics-
 
If you are adding the tin to wheelweight, adding any more than an additonal 2% would be wasteful. Look for 50/50 (50% tin/50% lead) solid core solder. A one pound roll should cost in the $10 range and will be good to add to 25 pounds of wheelweight. Just unroll it, measure its length and divide by 25 to get the length you need to cut off for each pound of wheelweight you add to the mix.

If it's 60/40 or some other higher ratio, you will need to add relatively less than for the 50/50.
 
Last edited:
Jamesburndundee,
I haven't had any luck finding scrap tin at scrapyards. What I do is buy Lead-Free plumbers solder at Canadian Tire or Home Depot. That stuff is 95-5 so is practically all tin. It's a couple bucks more per roll but is cheaper considering the amount of tin. Most of these lead-free rolls don't have the mixture marked on them, some BPCR guys told me about it. I did get a CanadianTire staffer to check it out, we went all the way back through the distributor to the manufacturer to confirm the contents. Its a good thing they get paid by the hour.:D Ironically the manufacturer wouldn't tell us what the 5% was, but confirmed the 95% tin. My hunch is that the 5% is LEAD, the "Lead-free" is a trademark and that's why the 95-5 isn't on the label. Sneaky little buggers!
 
If it says "Lead-Free", it can contain only small traces of lead, at most 0.1%. The other components will be varying degrees of silver and copper. IMO 5% copper and or silver would likely be tolerable, because it will be diluted 50/1, i.e. down to 0.1% (one part per thousand), but I'd stick with tin/lead to be sure.
 
Last edited:
Look for an electronic manufacturing company in your area. I work for a company that manufactures electronics. We use bar solder 63/37 for our wave soldering machine. Cheaper than buying spools of solder. If you don't have a local source then shipping can be expensive.

Go to http://www.digikey.ca/ and then search for KE1602-ND
$30.21 for 1.6 lbs.

A $6.50 handling charge is added to your order if the subtotal is less than $32.50.

Tin is the expensive part to solder. Price is roughly 10 times the cost of lead.
 
JBD: If you can find ingots at scrapyard marked IXL, or NICKEL BABBIT, or any other tin base babbit(high speed?), it's about 80% tin 12% antimony, amounts of nickel or copper are so small at dilution rate they cause no problem. The antimony will cause a problem for muzzleloaders, but helps hardness for rifle and pistol. Some scrapyards will have 20/80 babbit, but they don't usually know anything about alloy. Happy hunting
 
Dogleg said:
Ironically the manufacturer wouldn't tell us what the 5% was, but confirmed the 95% tin.
Click to expand...

Most of the remaining 5% was almost certainly bismuth. Bismuth depresses the melting point of tin considerably, so it allows them to control the melting point of the alloy quite closely.
 
The best source for cheap tin is to go to a radiator repair shop. The solder that they use is 60/40 and usually you can get a whole 5 gallon bucket for 10-20 bucks or even free. I scored at one rad shop and got two buckets for 25 bucks and that was 2 years ago and I still have lots left.
 
Last year I bought my lead and tin from Canada Metal, in Delta B.C. 1-604-525-0471. If you live in Eastern Canada, google "Canada metal" they have an eastern division and should have what your looking for.

Daryl
 
The remainin 5% in 95/5 tin solder is antimony. Should be a convienent hardening agent as well.
 
For electronics, 95/5 uses 5% silver. Don't know what the plumer's stuff is. My company pays about $11.50 for a lb of Sn63/Pb37 bar solder.

Auggie D.
 
Thanks to all I ran out and bought a small spool of 50 50 at canadian tire to try. I am under the impression that 2% makes the mould fill better. Also how long should I stir to be sure that it works.

Update tried the solder my bullets were well filled out and even dropped from the mold easier.
 
Last edited:
A google search is showing most of the 95/5 being tin/antimony, some tin/silver. Will the tin/silver blend kill werewolves? That's what I really want to know. ;)
If I could get 5 gallon pails of solder for 20 bucks I'd be rich in short order. There's got to be some confusion there.
 
Glad you got good results. Another 2% tin added to wheelweight is all you need, and pretty much all I use.

Even though tin is expensive, the 1/2 lb you find in one lb rolls of 50/50 is enough for 25 lbs of wheelweight. That'll make at least several hundred bullets of the weights most people shoot.

You need to get to castboolits.gunloads.com - a great bunch of guys and tons of info. Seems you're already hooked, so a warning would be futile. Here's how bad it can get: I spent last evening converting 340 lbs of raw wheelweights into about 250 lbs of wheelweight ingots (I usually get about 75%), and couldn't imagine a better evening.
 
Last edited:
Yes. As ANDY said go over to castbullets and you could spend hours reading there. They also get custom molds made from lee that are excellent and you won't find anywhere else. There is a wealth of knowledge unequaled anywhere else that I have searched. The majority of people right now are getting as much WW's as can be found. Europe has outlawed lead as WW's and have turned to zinc or metal because the green peacers are on there rampage and we all know that it is coming here to Canada, just when is the question. I personally have just over a ton of melted WW's in 25 lbs ingots and I am constantly looking for more all the time. I figure when they are outlawed there will be a high demand for lead and I can at least supply myself and the children and grand children for years to come. Thought of building a bullet catcher to haul out to the range to help keep some of that lead, nothing fancy, hey if I could come home with 1/2 the lead that I shoot I would be very happy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom