A friend found out I'm casting bullets now and gave me a couple of buckets of wheel weights and some big chunks of what he called "plumbers lead." His son, who has moved away, had it left over from making fishing sinkers. The wheel weights can be added right in to what I've already got going, but am a not sure about the other. There are several pieces of odd shaped jointed pipes that I think IS lead. But there is some crumpled sheets that looks like lead but doesn't seem as heavy as it should be - could this be tin? How do you tell? It is pretty soft and easy to bend. Since I'm mostly doing low pressure handgun loads, I thought it would work to mix some of the pure lead in to stretch it out a bit - maybe even 50/50. How can I tell what the metal/alloy is and should I mix it? Does it matter anyway - should I just mix it all together and go with it or just not use the stuff I'm unsure about? Any suggestions? I've already got about 125 lbs. of wheel weight ingots that I'm using for casting. There is probably 50-75 lbs. of wheel weights in the buckets and about 100 lbs. of the mystery metal.
Thanks,
Dan