358156 hp
At large, whereabouts unknown.
As a lead scavenger, I end up with all sorts of different alloys. My primary base metal is range scrap, which primarily runs about 10-12 bhn from my sources, cleaned, and ready to cast. To enhance performance I blend alloys, as do most of us, I don't believe I've ever bought pre-blended, ready to use alloy, ready to cast. I've been barnstorming bullet metal from the beginning. Some time back I bought a small amount of type metal spacers, perhaps five lbs at a throw away price.
These spaced are (were) smaller than the normal lino spacers we normally see, they were perhaps 1/8 in. square, perhaps 1-1.5 inches long, and had a bunch of equally tiny brass spacers which were the dickens to sort out. On one of the long sides they were serrated in a sawtooth sort of pattern. Outside of that, they were unremarkable in appearance. Last night I was ready to whip me up a pot of hard alloy. I started out with approximately 12 lbs of scrap, and once it was melted I added approx. 3.5 lbs of type metal, let it melt into the base metal and fluxed twice with sawdust. Then I added more scrap to fill the pot, and fluxed again and cast samples for hardness testing, unplugged the pot, and called it a night.
This morning I tested the hardness of one of the samples, and the bhn was 22, by my LBT tester! Holy smoke, bhn22 after less than 12 hours. The samples cast very well, great fill out, and harder than hell. The alloy in the pot did not shrink or crater, and looks really good. Now I need to let everything sit for today so I can test another sample at the 24 hour mark. Does my description of the spacers ring any bells for anyone? I'm thinking I must have gotten into some high antimony Foundry Type. Depending on where hardness ends up tonight I may cut the alloy in the pot 50/50 with more range scrap to get down to the 16-18 bhn area. I'm also guessing that the resulting alloy should heat-treat very nicely. I don't have much for pure lead to cut alloys with, it's pretty scarce around here so that wouldn't be an option. What do you think?
These spaced are (were) smaller than the normal lino spacers we normally see, they were perhaps 1/8 in. square, perhaps 1-1.5 inches long, and had a bunch of equally tiny brass spacers which were the dickens to sort out. On one of the long sides they were serrated in a sawtooth sort of pattern. Outside of that, they were unremarkable in appearance. Last night I was ready to whip me up a pot of hard alloy. I started out with approximately 12 lbs of scrap, and once it was melted I added approx. 3.5 lbs of type metal, let it melt into the base metal and fluxed twice with sawdust. Then I added more scrap to fill the pot, and fluxed again and cast samples for hardness testing, unplugged the pot, and called it a night.
This morning I tested the hardness of one of the samples, and the bhn was 22, by my LBT tester! Holy smoke, bhn22 after less than 12 hours. The samples cast very well, great fill out, and harder than hell. The alloy in the pot did not shrink or crater, and looks really good. Now I need to let everything sit for today so I can test another sample at the 24 hour mark. Does my description of the spacers ring any bells for anyone? I'm thinking I must have gotten into some high antimony Foundry Type. Depending on where hardness ends up tonight I may cut the alloy in the pot 50/50 with more range scrap to get down to the 16-18 bhn area. I'm also guessing that the resulting alloy should heat-treat very nicely. I don't have much for pure lead to cut alloys with, it's pretty scarce around here so that wouldn't be an option. What do you think?