Mystery metals for bullet casting

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earlmck
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Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by earlmck »

Its been 20 years since this country used lead wheelweight metal for wheelweight balancing so those days of going to the local tire shop and coming away with several hundred pounds of lead for 5c a lb (or free if you hit it lucky) are loooong gone. So us old bullet casters have been scrounging whatever came along for many years.

My friend George is a garage-sale addict. Every now and then he gives me a call and says he's found some item of shooting/reloading/casting interest and over the years has picked me up several hundred pounds of casting metal, usually in the form of home-cast fishing sinkers. All the home-cast fishing sinkers that fit in my pot have gone directly in assuming them to be wheelweight metal and as far as I can tell this has been a valid assumption. He has come up with the occasional commercial cast fish weight and the old thumbnail test has showed these to be pretty much pure lead and I have set them aside for that purpose (you know -- when you want soft bullets for muzzle loaders or target velocity revolver bullets).

But I had set aside two boat anchors (about 30 lb each) and two powerline weights (also about 30 lb each) that seemed to be harder than pure lead, as well as a total "mystery metal" consisting of what looked to be a pile of drips falling into pine needles from some unknown adventure (about 25 lb of this weird-looking mess). Yesterday I fired up the big melting pot which is a propane-fired turkey cooker with a nicely sized cast iron roasting pot. Melted down the different metals and when I had them nicely melted and ready to be cast into ingots I cast a couple bullets from each using my trusty 45/70 bullet mould that casts up 532 grains from wheelweight metal.

Years ago I built a spreadsheet by applying knowledge gained from high school physics where I used the atomic mass of lead, tin, and antimony to predict what the weight of a bullet would be when cast of a number of different alloys of those three metals. So both the powerline weights and the boat anchors cast up bullets that run about 536 to 537 grains. Pure lead should be 537 grains according to my spreadsheet, so these go into the "pure lead" pile. But that weird mystery metal gave a bullet weighing just 490 grains. And a hard and tough bullet it is, too according to my "pound with the hammer" test. Even linotype should make a bullet a bit over 500 grains, so this is something with even more of the tin/antimony than linotype. My spreadsheet says "stereotype" would give a 494 grains bullet, so this is probably stereotype. I never found stereotype before in all my scrounging adventures. What a neat deal for alloying up some hard bullets! I just wish he'd found a whole lot more of it.

Anyway, I just thought you other old bullet casters would appreciate hearing of my bullet metal adventures.

Here's a shot of that mystery metal bullet after some test whacking with the hammer.
mysterymetal.jpg
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GunnyMack
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by GunnyMack »

Back when while I was in gummsmiff skool a guy showed up with about 300 lbs of lead, 40 lbs of pure tin and a couple bars of Babbitt and a pile of the 50/50 plumber's bars. A buddy and I jumped on the deal and split it up. One of the instructors saw us hoarding the stash into our trucks and came to see the score. First thing he went to was the Babbitt and told us flat out to never, NEVER melt it down as it has a lot of arsenic in it. The bar I have has not moved in years.
I've used up probably 2/3s of the lead, some of the tin.
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765x53
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by 765x53 »

GunnyMack wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2019 11:58 am Back when while I was in gummsmiff skool a guy showed up with about 300 lbs of lead, 40 lbs of pure tin and a couple bars of Babbitt and a pile of the 50/50 plumber's bars. A buddy and I jumped on the deal and split it up. One of the instructors saw us hoarding the stash into our trucks and came to see the score. First thing he went to was the Babbitt and told us flat out to never, NEVER melt it down as it has a lot of arsenic in it. The bar I have has not moved in years.
I've used up probably 2/3s of the lead, some of the tin.
According to the chart in this Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_%28alloy%29 babbitt may or may not contain arsenic. The amount is minimal.
From this entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic many of your mystery metals may also contain arsenic.
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by J Miller »

My shooting friend once brought over several long pieces of what we thought might be Linotype but we were not sure. The stuff came in about 3' x 3" rods and if dropped on concrete it rang like a bell.
It took us a long time to cut it into melting pot sized chunks. Made really purty and shiny bullets.
We never did find out what it was.

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GunnyMack
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by GunnyMack »

Could have been pure tin. You can hear tin crinkle if you hold it up to your ear- provided its thin enough to bend! Tin has a gold look to it.

I'm sure there is arsenic in a lot more than we know! The hunk of Babbitt is for the last pour when the oceans are lapping at our toes, the zombies are upon us and I'm outta everything else :D
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earlmck
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by earlmck »

Yeah, there are a bunch of Babbitt metals. My mystery metal wouldn't be too far off from Babbitt #7 as another possibility.

Is a bit of arsenic in the blend a big deal? One of my old college buddies made a bunch of 45/70 bullets from Babbitt metal his dad had laying around his garage. The dad worked in maintenance at a railroad yard where they used Babbitt metal for repairing big bearings. That was over 50 years ago and we're both still alive -- in fact that old buddy will be here tomorrow and we'll go out and shoot 45/70's all weekend long.
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AJMD429
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by AJMD429 »

I think if you're careful, most metals aren't going to be that toxic, especially as just a 'hobby' reloading type thing. Different if you're in a factory setting 2,000 hours a year messing with them.
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by Thunder50 »

I think the old time formula for WW's had 0.25% arsenic in them. Helps if you drop in water, to harden the alloy. I use #3 babbit when I blend my alloy as I like a bit of copper in my HV alloys
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by ollogger »

I cooked up some mystery metal today also, cut some of it with the saws all, it was in about 2 foot kind of triangle bars
also cut some tin, the mystery bar cut harder than the tin, so I threw the mystery metal in with about 2lb, of ww
it had a lot of gold colored dross, I fluxed the heck out of it & it also had a lot of powder along with it, but after cleaning it up
I made a few hundred 357 bullets & they looked real good, weight was right on at 158 gr.+ or - a bit, seems fairly hard
per the scratch test, maybe gas check them tomorrow & load them up, I bought it close to 10 years ago & was getting low on ww
so figured id try some, what ever it is it looks good to me, if I had Earls experience in metals I would maybe know what it is



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Bill in Oregon
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by Bill in Oregon »

Stay safe, fellas. I found a clip-on wheel weight the other day and was about to slip it into the pot when a voice kept telling me the weight was just all wrong. Tossed it instead. But if your cast mystery boolits shoot, you're a peach!
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by marlinman93 »

A fair number of anchors were cast from zinc, which makes them more impervious and resistant to corrosion. You sure don't want any zinc ever going down your bore as it will leave deposits you'll never get rid of! I'd make sinkers, or weights for whatever, but never put unknown metal in the shape of bullets down my bores.
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by Bill in Oregon »

Vall, zinc is very nasty to the human body when heated enough to give off fumes. This is why blacksmiths and welders stay the hell away from anything galvanized.
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by AJMD429 »

marlinman93 wrote: Fri Sep 27, 2019 5:23 pm A fair number of anchors were cast from zinc, which makes them more impervious and resistant to corrosion. You sure don't want any zinc ever going down your bore as it will leave deposits you'll never get rid of! I'd make sinkers, or weights for whatever, but never put unknown metal in the shape of bullets down my bores.
Maybe a reason to use sabots....
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by 765x53 »

AJMD429 wrote: Fri Sep 27, 2019 6:36 pm
marlinman93 wrote: Fri Sep 27, 2019 5:23 pm A fair number of anchors were cast from zinc, which makes them more impervious and resistant to corrosion. You sure don't want any zinc ever going down your bore as it will leave deposits you'll never get rid of! I'd make sinkers, or weights for whatever, but never put unknown metal in the shape of bullets down my bores.
Maybe a reason to use sabots....
Or, Liquid Alox.
A friend once gave me nearly a thousand commercially cast and lubed .429 's because they leaded his bore so badly.
I coated them with Liquid Alox and never had to scrub lead from my bore.
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by marlinman93 »

Liquid alox isn't a fix for zinc bullets. And it wont stop zinc from ruining your bore. Sabots would stop it, but they certainly wont give very good accuracy, and they add a significant increase in price and time to reloading. Better to just use the right mix than have the extra cost, and less accuracy.
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by Ray Newman »

Best better heed Marlinman93's advice.
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Re: Mystery metals for bullet casting

Post by Shasta »

I have been casting bullets for over 50 years, primarily with mystery metal obtained from wherever I could get it. I always keep known metals such as pure soft lead, wheel weights, tin, linotype, etc. separated. Any unknown mystery metal I melted in a pot with a thermometer controlled temperature of 675°F. Lead melts at 621°, tin at 450°, but zinc takes 787°, so if whatever I had in the pot refused to melt, or floated on top of what did melt, I assumed it to be zinc and tossed it. This happened only a few times, usually with wheel weights. Alloy hardness of each batch was tested using a Saeco Lead Hardness tester.
I had about 3,000 lbs. of various lead alloys cast into 1 lb. bars, carefully labeled and stored by hardness in standard .50 caliber GI ammo cans that held about 120 lbs. each. Then came the Carr Fire last summer and wiped out my entire property. The ammo cans of course survived, but all labeling was burned off and the nice 1 lb. bars had all melted into a single brick inside each can. I am back to having all mystery lead that I have been very slowly re-melting one ammo can at a time to determine what it is. It is amazing how long it takes to get that big ol' lead brick to melt out of one of those ammo cans!

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