How to add antimony to harden alloy?

[hansg/Ups]

I just read Lyman's 4th Ed. Cast Bullet Handbook.
It mentions antimony to harden cast bullets,it doesn't say how to or how much....
Have any of you added antimony to a wheelweight mixture?
How does one do it?,what proportions,temperatures?
Sources of antimony?
I'm using wheelweights and have access to tin solder[97% tin,3% copper].I'll be melding this over a coal fire and hand dipping/pouring the projectiles.
I'll also water chill the cast bullets.
Thanks.

[Nobade]

The flux you need to do that is some pretty nasty stuff. Not to mention powdered antimony is not terribly good for your body. If you are using wheelweight metal, you can do several things to it to make it harder. A coffee scoop full of magnum shot in a pot of lead will make it a lot harder. Dropping your bullets from the mould directly into a bucket of water will make it harder still. (after 24 hours) And if that isn't enough, oven heat treating with a quench will make them incredibly hard. (475F for an hour, directly into water as fast as you can. Wait two days and they're like glass.)

If you really want antimony, contact Bill Ferguson in Sierra Vista, AZ. He used to have kits available to add it yourself, but I think they won't let him ship the flux anymore. Have to give him a shout and see.

[S A Webbx1]

Bill Ferguson is the AntimonyMan.


www.theantimonyman.com
[/size][/color]
[/size]Normal industrial hygiene when handling and smelting/casting and you should be fine.  I don't remember the flux being nasty or the process difficult.  Bill has everything for alloying lead and is a great source of professional info. too.  Guy loves the subject and sharing about same.[/color]
[/size][/color]
[/size]Been a while since I dealt with him or antimony, but he still advertises, so I would look there for info and materials.[/color]
[/size][/color]
[/size]Essay W.[/color]

[S A Webbx1]

Not sure how all the crap ended up in my last post; it didn't show when I previewed.  My apologies regardless.


Essay W.

[Lloyd Smale]

i was once give a pile of antimony both crushed and in rock form. I tried fluxing it in using about every suggestion i could find. I did get some to mix in but it just didnt work right. It made my alloys very grainy. I ended up tossing it all and giving up. Like was said bill ferguson (antimony man)  sells a flux just for doing it and i never did try that so maybe thats the answer.

[Greg B.]

At the place where I buy lead and tin they said to add the antimony to the melt, hold it on the bottom and cook at 850 (presumeably Farenheight) for about 2 hours. It should eventually blend in. Since I don't have the equipment to do this I have never tried. Linotype or the other options already mentioned seem like the best bet.
 
Greg B.

[kbstenberg]

  Pure antimony melts at about 1200 deg.
  Alternatives would be as mentioned above add "hard shot" which is higher in ant. than chilled shot. Or add any of the Limo types to your melt.
  Can I ask. Why do you want to make your alloy harder? If you are looking for a hunting bullet straight WW is harder than it usually takes for bullets in rifles. And an alloy of 50% WW/ 50% soft lead is a usuall pistol alloy
  Kevin

[anachronism]

You can buy ingots of lead & antimony from Rotometals or Bill Ferguson. It will melt in a normal pot, at normal temps. Most common seems to be 30% antimony to 70% lead. At once time you could buy pulverized antimony, but those days are gone. It's just too hazardous to risk breathing in the dust from pure antimony. Any more than perhaps 6% antimony total in an alloy gives you super hard bullets that shatter on impact, or fracture at the taper crimp in a semi-auto. 3-4% is probably much more realistic. Harder is not better for every application. Wheelweights can be heat-treated the bhn 22 and above. Magnum shotshell shot (not chilled) is a great base for high-performance alloys. Just cut it with soft lead until you get the mix you want.

[mechanic]

You can harden sufficiently with the tin solder you mentioned for any reloading task I am aware of.  I have shot high speed projectiles such as 22-250, and 223 cast from wheel weights with a gas check.  I only harden my lead above wheel weight when I want something that will really penetrate.
 
Ben

[Lloyd Smale]

tin is a poor way to harden lead. To get any measurable increase in hardness requires alot of $ in tin. A much cheaper way is to go on ebay and buy some linotype. How much antimony, lineotype, or tin to add cant be answered unless i know how hard of a bullet your looking to make. Another way to harden lead WWs is to just drop the bullets out of the hot mold into a pail of water. This will take ww alloy which is usually around 10bhn to about 18bhn which is hard enough for 2000 fps rifle shooting IF you have a decent  barrel on the gun. To get ww to 18 with linotype add about 1/3 linotype to 2/3s ww. I dont know how much tin it would take but it would cost enough that youd probably be better off buying jacketed bullets.

[SHOOTALL]

95/5 soder for plumbing is 5% antimony . Old rolls are 5% lead but new is antimony thank EPA.
The mould I got said to take a bullet with the hardness you want and place it aginst one you make and squeeze with a vise . you can gage your bullet hardness aginst the one you like.

[Lloyd Smale]

are you sure abou that shootall. I cant imagine you could make solder out of antimony. Its to hard and to hard to melt. New solders are mostly tin. in most solders the  first number is the lead content and the second number is the tin content. 60/40 would be 60 percent lead 40 percent tin.

[Redcap]

Lloyd,  lead free solder is 95% tin and 5% antimony.   I've used it straight to cast 44 bullets in a Lyman 429421 mould.  They shoot just fine but they only weigh 206 grains instead of my normal 246 grains for  wheel weights.

[SHOOTALL]

are you sure abou that shootall. I cant imagine you could make solder out of antimony. Its to hard and to hard to melt. New solders are mostly tin. in most solders the  first number is the lead content and the second number is the tin content. 60/40 would be 60 percent lead 40 percent tin.

Yes very sure as lead is no longer allowed in plumbing as related to water pipe . I most places the use of Tarmet or Bridgit soder is used and is a mixture of several metals , silver , tin etc. In the old days on commerical work joints were made with 95/5 then capped with 50/50 on both water pipe and HVAC chilled and cond. piping. The OSHA standards on working with lead , EPA and The National Plumbing Code has changed all that. The 60/40 you mention was used to commect radatiors and some heating pipe . 40/60 was used for car rad. We also used 40/60 and 50/50 to seam lead pans and copper pans. It has become hard to pour lead joints now days and meet the safety standards and forget wiping a joint . Plumber meant lead smith and we can't touch it in most cases . 
I get lead from old joints we remove ( soft ) and add one roll of 95/5 to 20 lbs of lead . Bullets work well .

[bfrshooter]

I use Bill's flux and chunk antimony. It will melt in at 600*. I use a thermometer to hold the metal there. The flux is not nasty, the only thing to watch is that it will absorb moisture big time.
I have no idea how you would hold antimony at the bottom of lead? 

[anachronism]

I just read Lyman's 4th Ed. Cast Bullet Handbook.
It mentions antimony to harden cast bullets,it doesn't say how to or how much....
Have any of you added antimony to a wheelweight mixture?
How does one do it?,what proportions,temperatures?
Sources of antimony?
I'm using wheelweights and have access to tin solder[97% tin,3% copper].I'll be melding this over a coal fire and hand dipping/pouring the projectiles.
I'll also water chill the cast bullets.
Thanks.

Run with what you have. High antimonial alloys have a "grain" to them, like Lloyd was referring to. Try wheelweights with a little tin, and water drop the bullets as soon as they start coming out of the mould frosted. Tin only reduces the surface tension in lead, it doesn't really harden lead to any appreciable degree. If you wan/need more hardness, experiment with adding MAGNUM shot (not chilled) to your alloy. Magnum shot contains both antimony, and arsenic, both of which are needed for really hard bullets. Should I mention that you need really good ventilation?

[Nobade]

Evidently others have had more experience with the antimony and flux than I have. I was just going on the information Bill himself posted to the Cast Bullet E-list. I figured he would know better than anyone else.

Either way I am still curious as to why the need for extremely hard bullets? I haven't found they are good for much, especially with loads of antimony in them to make them brittle.

Now Zinc, that's an option if you want some hard bullets....

[Lloyd Smale]

ya but if your relying on that 5 percent antimony content in solder for your hardness you have to figure if you had pure lead and wanted it to be equal to ww in hardness youd need about 2.5 percent antimony. to get that with a solder thats 5 percent tin youd have to mix the solder 5050 with the lead. If your only adding say 5 percent tin the ammount of antimony youd get from that ammount of solder wouldnt add up to enough to do anything. same thing applys to copper in babbit. Ive got a bunch of tin babbit and its got about 3-5 percent copper in it. but when your only adding 5 lbs of it to a 100lb pot that ammont of tin that you added doesnt effect a thing.

are you sure abou that shootall. I cant imagine you could make solder out of antimony. Its to hard and to hard to melt. New solders are mostly tin. in most solders the  first number is the lead content and the second number is the tin content. 60/40 would be 60 percent lead 40 percent tin.

Yes very sure as lead is no longer allowed in plumbing as related to water pipe . I most places the use of Tarmet or Bridgit soder is used and is a mixture of several metals , silver , tin etc. In the old days on commerical work joints were made with 95/5 then capped with 50/50 on both water pipe and HVAC chilled and cond. piping. The OSHA standards on working with lead , EPA and The National Plumbing Code has changed all that. The 60/40 you mention was used to commect radatiors and some heating pipe . 40/60 was used for car rad. We also used 40/60 and 50/50 to seam lead pans and copper pans. It has become hard to pour lead joints now days and meet the safety standards and forget wiping a joint . Plumber meant lead smith and we can't touch it in most cases . 
I get lead from old joints we remove ( soft ) and add one roll of 95/5 to 20 lbs of lead . Bullets work well .

[SHOOTALL]

I mix in the 95/5 for tin . Someone mentioned the 5% was lead which I noted was ant.

[anachronism]

I mix in the 95/5 for tin . Someone mentioned the 5% was lead which I noted was ant.

That's 5% of the solder content. I suppose you could cast bullets out of pure solder, which would net you 5% antimony. The expense of doing this would be considerable. Most casters use 95/5 lead free solder to enrich a lead alloy. I'll sometimes use 1/4 to 1/2 lb of such solder in a 20 lb pot of alloy, often range scrap, to get the tin needed to help the alloy flow better, and fill in the mould cavities by reducing the leads surface tension. If the resulting alloy isn't hard enough, I'll pour a portion of the alloy into ingots, usually about 25 % or so, then top off the pot with magnum shot. Most mystery alloys respond to this pretty well, giving nice shiny well filled out bullets around 16-18 bhn, which is pretty much what I prefer to use. Anyway, 1/2 lb of solder in 20 lbs of alloy is what, 2.5% tin and roughly .0012 % antimony. BTW, a plumber once told me that antimony is added to lead alloy to may it extrude smoother, and that even lead water pipe had small amounts of antimony in it. This could be the same situation with solder, which is also extruded.

[SHOOTALL]

If you used pure 95/5 you would have tin bullets    , And yes I know what the 5% was . Until lead was banned the 5% was lead, If antimony was added to water pipe I would think it was to give it strength by making it harder to hold more pressure or its shape . The lead pipe I have worked was quite hard compared to the sheet lead we use .

[daboone]

I measured the antimony, tin and lead on a digital kitchen scale. Got the 18lbs of lead up to melt, fluxed, added the 1lbs of tin, fluxed, at that point the temp was about 630 to 650. Then I added 1/2lbs of antimony and more saw dust as flux. About 10 minutes I noticed a little of the antimony was mixing in!!!!! Added bees wax and things really got moving, fluxing saw dust, beeswax every few minutes. When the first half of antimony disappeared checked the temp, it was at 630. Added the rest of the antimony (1/2lbs) and repeated the fluxing. All was incorporated or alloyed in about 15 more minutes!!!!![/size]I took my mold off the hot plate poured and dropped 6 beautiful boolits! Took one inside to filed off a flat and did the Lee hardness test. The indent was .052 = 19.2 BHN less than 10 minutes out of the mold. YES that was WAY easier than anything I had read or heard!!! I'll be adding some pure lead to the rest of the mix to try to to get some ingots at 16BHN and 18BHN.  I've never fluxed as much or a frequently as I did with this. Adding wood ash as a flux also work very well. I didn't have ash to add but as I said I did have sawdust so left it's ash floating on top. I was stirring the pot almost the whole time. I didn't get as much dross as I expected, if fact very very little. But I did leave the ash from the sawdust fluxing in till all the antimony was alloyed in before skimming the ash off. It is important to keep the temps below 650, about 630 was the best for me.Excuse my rambling here but I was sure alloying antimony was going to be very difficult with out high temps and special fluxes. Total time was about 1 hour from start to first cast boolit! [/color]

[Larry Gibson]

I just read Lyman's 4th Ed. Cast Bullet Handbook.
It mentions antimony to harden cast bullets,it doesn't say how to or how much....
Have any of you added antimony to a wheelweight mixture?
How does one do it?,what proportions,temperatures?
Sources of antimony?
I'm using wheelweights and have access to tin solder[97% tin,3% copper].I'll be melding this over a coal fire and hand dipping/pouring the projectiles.
I'll also water chill the cast bullets.
Thanks.

WWs already have sufficient antimony in them, about 3+%. What they lack is sufficient tin, usually around .05%.  Tin by itself does not harden the alloy that much.  However in a "ternary" alloy of lead/tin/antimony the tin and antimony combine together to give a better structure to the alloy.  Add 2% tin to the WWs and water quench them very quickly from the mould.  If water quenched at high temperature the BHN will be very similar to linotype but the alloy will not be as brittle.
 
Larry Gibson

[daboone]

  Pure antimony melts at about 1200 deg.  Kevin

Yes pure antimony does melt at 1200. However take a look at Lyman's 3rd edition of the Cast Bullet Handbook on page 45. You can and I do regularly do alloy in Antimony shot ([size=78%]http://www.rotometals.com/Antimony-s/1.htm[/size] into a lead and tin melt at just 630 degrees. Antimony at less than 14 bucks a pound is the cheapest way I know to increase BHN. It is not without some safety concerns but if done out doors or well ventilated area it is practical .

[Hellgate]

I bought 50 lbs of 8% antimony reclaimed birdshot from Rotometals that came in a USPS flat rate box. (same price to ship regardless of the weight). I melted it down into 1 lb ingots and mix it with scrap/relaimed lead to harden bullets.

[Lloyd Smale]

again adding bird shot with is 8percent antimony to lead to harden it isnt going to do much. If you took a 100 lbs of lead and added shot to get the antimonly percentage up youd have to add 50 lbs to get the antimony up to 4 percent and thats not factoring in that that the other 92 percent is  pure lead that your adding. Putting something in your alloy that is 8 percent antimony is going to give your final mix such a small ammount of antimony that is hardly worth the bother. take type metals for example. There antimony mix is usually somewhere from 8 to 12 percent antimony. to get any real advantage out of mixing them with pure to harden you have to mix them about 5050 by weight. So again like i said to do it with bird shot you have to do about the same. Same goes with solder mixes with antimony. When i alloy lead with solder or babbit i about ignore the small amount of antimony in it because if i add say 5 percent tin to my alloy the minute ammount of antimony in that 5 percent is to small to even notice. Biggest reason most casters will add hardened shot to there mix is it also contains small amounts of arsenic. Adding a bit to something like pure lead which has no arsenic will alow you to water drop your bullet to harden them. Pure lead without aresnic will not harden if water dropped and it only takes but a trace of arsenic to allow this to happen. Adding small ammounts of shot to something like ww doesnt do anything as wws allready have trace amounts of aresnic. Bottom line is unless you have access to an enrichening alloy like printers used or like some lead selling companys carry hands down the easiest way to add useable amounts of antimony to your alloy is with linotype.

[Nobade]

I see Rotometals has "super hard alloy" that is 70% lead and 30% antimony. That would certainly do it. And it's $4.19/lb with free shipping.

[Lloyd Smale]

that would be a real good way to do it.