casting alloy? I hope..

[morgan in nm]

Lately at work we have been taking apart propane tanks to make cookers and smokers and have been coming across some weights that were used for the liquid guages that are of some unknown alloy to me. I thought at first that it would be a good hard ball alloy as you can scratch it good with a pocket knife(shows as hard as pure linotype) but one problem, its magnetic. I don't have a clue as to what it is. They are in 1lb ingots dated around the 30's. anybody have an idea?

[Don McDowell]

Maybe a babbit alloy of some kind.
Enough tin content and it could show magnetic tendancies.
Melt some down cast some bullets and see where the diameter and weight come out. Then you can decide if you want to shoot them or not.

[kimwcook]

Melt some down cast some bullets and see where the diameter and weight come out. Then you can decide if you want to shoot them or not.

+1 That'd be my thought.

[Gobblerforge]

That's a levergunner attitude there. One man's waste metal, another man's bullets.
Gobbler

[M. M. Wright]

Maybe they have enough tin to be useful for alloying your own bullet metal? For years I have been using pure lead and alloying it with 50/50 lead/tin solder to get either 20:1 or 30:1 bullet metal but haven't been able to buy bar solder from the plumbing supply houses here. Thanks a lot tree huggers. I do have a name and address for a source of pure tin that I will order as soon as I run out of bullet metal.

M. M.