Rotometal's Foundry Alloy Pieces

[kcofohio]

Rotometals has a special going on for "foundry alloy pieces" right now. For $129 (free shipping) you would get 32-34 lbs. that is 12% tin and 26% antimony. About 4 lb of tin and almost 9 lb of antimony.
Anyone wanting to alloy lead, the site says the pieces weight 0.1-2.0 oz.
https://www.rotometals.com/foundry-...-26-antimony-balance-lead-trace-of-cu-and-fe/

 

[AJC1]

I ave been eyeing that just haven't taken the leap yet...

 

[kcofohio]

I ave been eyeing that just haven't taken the leap yet...

I actually went there to check out their super hard alloyed lead. A couple years ago I had ordered 5-5 lb. bars of it for $19.99. Now it's $32 per bar.
So I started seaching around and seen the foundry alloy. Not quite the 30% antimony, but with tin as a bonus, I figured that's about as good as I will get it.

 

[Highland Lofts]

I have been buying a bunch of scrap lead, melting it down, clean it up and reselling it for $1.25 a pounds.

Tomorrow I will be picking up atleast another 1,500 pounds if any one want some. I can check the hardness of it. I have it listed in the reloading classifieds.
55 pounds $77 shipped
70 pounds including box $103 shipped.

 

[AJC1]

I actually went there to check out their super hard alloyed lead. A couple years ago I had ordered 5-5 lb. bars of it for $19.99. Now it's $32 per bar.
So I started seaching around and seen the foundry alloy. Not quite the 30% antimony, but with tin as a bonus, I figured that's about as good as I will get it.

You and I must have got the same deal. Five bars for a hundred shipped. Down to one and a third but am having rifle bullet issues, so I was looking at the pieces to get some tin in the mix.

 

[243winxb]

https://missouribullet.com/results.php?category=12 Ready to cast alloy. $2.55/lb. To compare.

I like linotype myself.

 

[kcofohio]

You and I must have got the same deal. Five bars for a hundred shipped. Down to one and a third but am having rifle bullet issues, so I was looking at the pieces to get some tin in the mix.

Yep, that's the one!

 

[Nipty]

I have been buying a bunch of scrap lead, melting it down, clean it up and reselling it for $1.25 a pounds.

Tomorrow I will be picking up atleast another 1,500 pounds if any one want some. I can check the hardness of it. I have it listed in the reloading classifieds.
55 pounds $77 shipped
70 pounds including box $103 shipped.

yes , thoughts for buckshot making? I have been pondering this.. when an what to buy

 

[WestKentucky]

I still have an 60lb box that’s not been opened but I like this and haven’t found a better price anywhere. I like to support the community when I can so hopefully my last order at least paid for longdayjake’s dinner. The hardening metals do sound enticing, especially since I just got a mold for 10mm and want to cast a bit harder for it.

 

[AJC1]

View attachment 1063080 I still have an 60lb box that’s not been opened but I like this and haven’t found a better price anywhere. I like to support the community when I can so hopefully my last order at least paid for longdayjake’s dinner. The hardening metals do sound enticing, especially since I just got a mold for 10mm and want to cast a bit harder for it.

When casting for 357 mag I add a 1/3 bar of superhard to a lee 20lb pot when using that material. The pieces in the post would also add tin, and 1.5-2 pounds in a pot will be gooder.

 

[Highland Lofts]

yes , thoughts for buckshot making? I have been pondering this.. when an what to buy

You will need a electric melting pot. For most people a ten pound pot will work.
I have a ten pound pot and will be buying a twenty pound melting pot.
Thw bottom spout makes it easier.
A set of molds and handles.
Safety glass are a must, a splatter of 600 degree melted lead in your eye will blind you.
Even a drop of sweat in the molten lead can be devastating.
YouTube has some decent videos on casting bullets & buckshot.
Then you have some videos that shouldn't be out there for people to watch.
It will take a little bit of time to recoup the initial cost after buying the necessary equipment to cast. But your shotgun shells in #00 buck will always be available when you need them.
Plus you can cast shotgun slugs as well.
You can cast pistol and rifle bullets, blackpowder balls and conical.

I have a lot of pistol & rifle bullet molds and just bought two diving weight molds.

The spew you cut off the buckshot goes right back in to the melting pot.
And never run the melting pot empty. Any contaminated material floats to the top of the lead that needs to be skimmed off with a spoon.

Leaving an inch or so of molted lead in the melting pot makes it quicker to get the next batch melted faster then starting with an empty pot with fresh ingots.

 

[kcofohio]

View attachment 1063080 I still have an 60lb box that’s not been opened but I like this and haven’t found a better price anywhere. I like to support the community when I can so hopefully my last order at least paid for longdayjake’s dinner. The hardening metals do sound enticing, especially since I just got a mold for 10mm and want to cast a bit harder for it.

While it would be hard to beat Jake's pricing. I still take to it that tin needs added for reliable mold fill.
These are recovered lead ingots. Very little cost to me in them. With using the superhard from Rotometal for a 3% antimony, and adding 2% tin, I get a 11 Bhn hardness.
When I'm needing tin, I look on ebay for recovered pewter. That's the most expensive part of cast bullets.

 

[stormshrike]

While it would be hard to beat Jake's pricing. I still take to it that tin needs added for reliable mold fill.
These are recovered lead ingots. Very little cost to me in them. With using the superhard from Rotometal for a 3% antimony, and adding 2% tin, I get a 11 Bhn hardness. View attachment 1063216
When I'm needing tin, I look on ebay for recovered pewter. That's the most expensive part of cast bullets.

What's a good price for pewter?

 

[AJC1]

While it would be hard to beat Jake's pricing. I still take to it that tin needs added for reliable mold fill.
These are recovered lead ingots. Very little cost to me in them. With using the superhard from Rotometal for a 3% antimony, and adding 2% tin, I get a 11 Bhn hardness. View attachment 1063216
When I'm needing tin, I look on ebay for recovered pewter. That's the most expensive part of cast bullets.

Jake's lead needs nothing for low pressure bullets like 38 or 45. I like a little superhard for magnums. I think tin is something I need to add for rifle bullets because adding superhard until bhn 18 throws something off. I don't claim to know the exact answer but a portion of tin seams the likely answer. If I was using these bits vs superhard I think I would get a better result.

 

[Highland Lofts]

Picked up another 1,600 pounds of recycled lead today.
Will work on making ingots Saturday if it isn't raining here in the great Pacific northwest. Rain capitol of the United States.
I will be picking up another four hundred pounds early Saturday morning.

 

[kcofohio]

What's a good price for pewter?

I bought 3 lbs last week that came to $50 shipped

 

[AJC1]

Picked up another 1,600 pounds of recycled lead today.
Will work on making ingots Saturday if it isn't raining here in the great Pacific northwest. Rain capitol of the United States.
I will be picking up another four hundred pounds early Saturday morning.

View attachment 1063232

View attachment 1063233

Seems like the metals industry is going to go nuts soon. Dam commercial bullets already 40 cents each. Get the supplies while the getting is good.

 

[Highland Lofts]

He probably has another 5,000 pounds I want to pick up and process. It is going crazy on scrap prices and will continue going out of sight if the Russian/ Ukraine conflict get bigger and it draws more interest from other countries.

 

[AJC1]

He probably has another 5,000 pounds I want to pick up and process. It is going crazy on scrap prices and will continue going out of sight if the Russian/ Ukraine conflict get bigger and it draws more interest from other countries.

As far as I know the last lead foundry in the us closed a decade ago and we have no in country capacity.

 

[RockRat64]

I still take to it that tin needs added for reliable mold fill.

Depends on the mold

 

[kcofohio]

Depends on the mold

To be honest, I have never tried casting without tin in the mix. When I started acquiring lead, I read and reread Glen Fryxell's: "From Ingot to Target". I don't know how many times I have reread it.
http://www.lasc.us/fryxell_book_contents.htm

And considering the knowledge there, I figured it was best to follow in those footsteps.
Especially interesting is his write-up on Alloy Selection and Metallurgy".
http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Chapter_3_alloySelectionMetallurgy.htm

As the concentration of antimony increases over that of tin, at first the SnSb phase serves to dissolve the small amount of excess Sb. At higher Sb concentrations however the SnSb phase becomes saturated and a separate antimony phase begins to precipitate. At this point, the alloy begins to take on some of the brittleness properties of the binary lead-antimony alloys. As the antimony concentration increases, this brittleness becomes more pronounced. So those tertiary alloys which have 2 or 3 times as much antimony as tin (e.g. linotype, 12% Sb, 4% Sn) tend to be more brittle than those alloys of similar hardness with similar Sb and Sn levels. OK, here’s a subtle point, WW alloy (3% antimony, 0.3% tin) can fall prey to this issue as well, although not as severely since its not as hard. But by adding tin and making the alloy slightly harder, the alloy also becomes less brittle and more malleable due to the formation of SnSb and the elimination of the precipitated Sb phase. Thus, WW alloy with approximately 2% added tin makes an excellent bullet metal with hardness suitable for a variety of applications, and it still can be made harder through heat treating or water quenching. This can also be made using Lyman #2 mixed with an equal amount of pure lead

 

[kcofohio]

If you can ever get wheel weights, get what you can. I treat them as redneck platinum.
The arsenic will allow for age hardening. To make it stretch, I alloy the WWs to the same as alloying lead. Then I will mix 2/3 alloyed WW to 1/3 alloyed lead. I get a consistent 15-16 Bhn.

In addition, arsenic (As) is commonly added to industrial lead-tin-antimony alloys to improve the strength (this strength enhancement is only observed when As is added to a Sb containing alloy, As is virtually worthless in the absence of Sb). Arsenic also significantly enhances the ability of the alloy to be hardened via heat treatment. All that is needed is 0.1% (more does no good). Wheelweight alloy commonly contains about 0.17% As.

 

[AJC1]

To be honest, I have never tried casting without tin in the mix. When I started acquiring lead, I read and reread Glen Fryxell's: "From Ingot to Target". I don't know how many times I have reread it.
http://www.lasc.us/fryxell_book_contents.htm

And considering the knowledge there, I figured it was best to follow in those footsteps.
Especially interesting is his write-up on Alloy Selection and Metallurgy".
http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Chapter_3_alloySelectionMetallurgy.htm

Sometimes you have to fail to understand how things work and why there important. I just happen to learn most things the hard way. I'm pretty confident in my successes because I have a lot of failures to back them up.

 

[Swampman]

What's a good price for pewter?

Look in thrift and secondhand shops for pewterware and pewter knickknacks.

I recently got over a pound of pewter for three bucks (a serving platter and 2 mismatched dinner plates).

I just happen to learn most things the hard way. I'm pretty confident in my successes because I have a lot of failures to back them up.

Please tell me that you're not a Surgeon...

 

[kcofohio]

Look in thrift and secondhand shops for pewterware and pewter knickknacks.

I recently got over a pound of pewter for three bucks (a serving platter and 2 mismatched dinner plates).

Please tell me that you're not a Surgeon...

I have read over at castboolits about others checking out thrift shops. I tried that, but not being near one makes for too much consumed time. If someone frequents them, it sounds like a good route. A person not familiar with pewter ware, needs to read up on signs of real pewter.