A friend has been offered a 50 pound ingot of pre antimony.
I remember having read that melting pure antimony can be difficult or dangerous.
Can someone enlighten us , please?
A friend has been offered a 50 pound ingot of pre antimony.
I remember having read that melting pure antimony can be difficult or dangerous.
Can someone enlighten us , please?
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Check out this info on mixing antimony into lead/tin alloy, it is the way I do it, I had a chuck of about 15lbs pure, chrushed it with a big hammer into about 1/4” size pieces and followed recommendations of Bill Ferguson, I used marvelux, the closer you can keep the melt to 600
I remember having read that melting pure antimony can be difficult or dangerous.
Can someone enlighten us , please?
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Here is the link maybe: http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?37734-How-to-melt-antimony
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The antimony chunks will float on top of the molten lead, so use an inverted wire basket to hold the antimony chunks below the surface of the melt until they dissolve. This will take some time and you must be patient. Also use a layer of crushed clay cat litter or “Fuller's earth” on top of the melt as boundary layer oxidation control to reduce drossing.
I was able to do so with my RCBS pot, initially blending 5 pounds of antimony nuggets into the rest of the pot of wheelweights, drawing off one full ingot mold level across the top, so the individual ingots were connected, about 5 pounds total. After each pour then topping off the melt with 4 pounds of wheelweights, and putting another weighed pound of antimony nuggets under the wire basket clamped to the drop spout handle. Each melt and pour cycle took about an hour at 700 degs. F to enable enough time for the antimony to dissolve. I used Irish penny whistle, hornpipe and fiddle music to speed up the melt time. If you use Mozart or Vivaldi add 10 minutes per cycle. The antimony-rich ingots readily snap apart when struck with a hammer. I would then use 1 ingot of the antimony-enriched metal and 1 pound of 50-50 solder to a 20-lb. pot topped off and fluxed with wheelweights or ran ge backstop scrap, and the resulting mix performed very much like commercial 92-6-2 “hardball” alloy.
73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia
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Thanks for the info.
If someone gave some pure antimony free of charge to me , i think I would try to trade it to some professional melter ,and get some antimony lead alloy.
What a pity that linotipe and wheelweights have nearly disappeared, to day I can find range scrap , from 22lr bullets and the cores of 9x21 bullets , that is hard enough for boar shooting ,cowboy action and my 50 meters gongs and plates.
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Ed, Listen to Wagner and you can take 5 minutes off the time. Ric
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Seems like more trouble than it is worth. I get antimonal lead from rotometals (70/30) in the 5 lb ingot. they don't sell by the lb anymore. For Lyman #2 mix: 8.5 lbs. lead, 2 lbs. 70/30 & 1/2 lb tin. BHN 14.9.
Pat
If someone else had of done to me what I did to myself . . . I'd have killed him. Humility is an asset. Heh - heh.
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I put a generous amount of olive oil on the molten lead with the chunk of antimony floating on top and kept pouring lead over the chunk . It will dissolve in the lead. The olive oil does not ignite very quickly and stays quite long on the surface.
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Sawdust works for me but I use Rotometals buckshot sized antimony. I bought 10 lbs some time ago. I haven't seen it offered recently. It works best if the temps are kept between 620 and 650 and required a lot of mixing and sawdust. I leave the ash floating on the top till it alloyed in. A 2% tin with WW to start with.
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If you hang around here You are bound to learn something NEW! Thanks for the info!javascript:emoticon(';}',%20'images/emoticons/castsmile.gif')
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Lead will amalgamate about 3.5% of Antimony readily and at normal leat temps. It takes a little time but is quite doable. To deter the alloy from getting to brittle hold equal amounts of antimony and tin.
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