Alloying Lead?

[leadhound]

I think what he’s looking for is where it says to whip to stiff peaks or knead until comes together in a smooth dough.

Makes sense friend but I have never really seen much in the subject, figured not much in its liquid state, I’m sure there is a formula. In what little reading I have done, I figured that with stirring then scraping the sides and then fluxing which should help distribute some metals back into the alloy, I was covered.

[matt56]

There is a lead alloy calculator excel spreadsheet I found somewhere (possibly the cast bullets forum) and downloaded. You can punch in the weights of your ingots and mix appropriately. It has the approximate hardness of many different alloys already plugged in so you can mix what you think you need based on different ratios of different alloys.

I have a little kitchen scale that goes up to 12lb or so and I use that to load up my 20lb pot with different alloys. Works great

[bushog]

Dec 27, 2021 15:18:39 GMT -5 leadhound said:

I think what he’s looking for is where it says to whip to stiff peaks or knead until comes together in a smooth dough.

Makes sense friend but I have never really seen much in the subject, figured not much in its liquid state, I’m sure there is a formula. In what little reading I have done, I figured that with stirring then scraping the sides and then fluxing which should help distribute some metals back into the alloy, I was covered.

Yep and thanks….

[meeesterpaul]

Here's the link to that spreadsheet. I sure would like to meet that guy and buy him a beer or roll of tin solder. castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?141266-Spreadsheet-calculator-for-mixing-alloys
Knowing what your different components are is pretty handy. As people here have noted, if you have a batch of something make ingots of it and mark them. Then see if you can find an XRF scanner in your area. High-end scrap yards especially ones dealing with specialty metals will probably have one. If they have metal dust and stuff like that on it you might get quirky readings. Bring something you know as a test, like marked solder or previously scanned samples. A smelter that handles precious metals will have one. Ask the scrap gold buyers who they sell to. I take small samples of my different batches and I have them marked. The scanner is about the size of a cordless drill and only takes a moment to analyze the samples that could be as small as a matchhead. Sometimes I would tape them all on a piece of cardboard and as the guy with the scanner went down the row I would take a picture of the screen so that I could see the numbered sample as well. Then I put all those different results in the spreadsheet from the link above. One of the things that I found is that most linotype is not 84/12/4 anymore. Printer type fonts are all over the place and all generally quite hard. I have about six dozen trays of that stuff and I probably would need about three tons of lead to soften it down to bullet alloy level. I have a lot of 'used' linotype made into ingots. Generally it XRF scans about 86.7/10.6/3.1. I mix that with the same amount of pipe lead(95.9/3.5/0.6) and half that portion of range lead (97.3/2.2/0.5) and you'll be in the classic hardball range of 92/6/2. about 15Brin,good for autos and brisk revolvers. I did a pot with 7.5/7.4/3.8 and no solder. If I wanted it softer I would chop the lino to 2.5lb (perhaps eliminate it) but then I would need about 20 inches of tin solder to get the tin back up to 2% after losing what was in the linotype.
If you are powder coating you can go pretty soft if you don't have access to hard stuff. If you need hard stuff let me know. I'll be casting some candy bar shaped ingots that stack up nicely to preheat on the lead pot. Then they don't jostle your melt temperature around very much. Also I can pack a lot of them into a small flat rate box for easier to handle shipping. - btw, powder coater in my area gave me a box full of scraps of different color powders for free. It was leftovers from different jobs. He said they had melted about a 75 lb pile of it rather than throw it loose in the trash because it made colorful clouds that scared his trash guys.
If I could figure out how to add a photo slideshow photos of the xrf screens

[wvhunter460]

Dec 26, 2021 12:43:35 GMT -5 bushog said:

Has NOTHING about mixing/stirring

Sawdust 👍😎 I got lots of that