hi y'all,

I've been told to add a couple of % of tin to the melting pot, to improve castability of the lead. now, tin is rather expensive overhere...about the only you could buy is for soldering, and it will cost ya up to $55 per pound of actual tin.
That ain't fun, paying that much.

So, here I went to the 2nd-hand store, and picked up a bunch of the ugliest tin "artwork" I could find. I now have over 2 pounds of tin, and it cost me only $4.
The only thing that bothers me is that I don't exactly know what the "tin" really is made of. Is it pure tin, or mixed with something else...like (oh, the horror!) zinc?
(I've been told to make sure no zinc ever gets into the melting pot, because it would ruin the alloy)

Did I find a cheap source for tin....or did I buy useless junk? I there a way to test if the plates and cups I bought are made of good tin?

I'm not sure what you bought. Sounds like it might be pewter, which some people say is a good source of tin, but I don't know what the rest of the alloy's composition is.
You might try asking on http://www.castboolits.com or http://www.castbullets.com. I don't remember which of the two URLs is correct, but there are one hell of a lot of knowledgeable people on that site.
Paul B.

I get my tin at the radiator repair shop. I buy a 5 gal bucket of floor sweepings. It works out to about 80% dirt and junk and about 20% of 60-40 solder (60% tin). It takes one to two hours of cooking and stirring to get all of the solder to the bottom but yields about 40lbs per bucket of very good tin/lead.
Just cook it in a very well ventilated area and it wouldn't hurt to wear a good mask since the non-solder stuff ends up being a fine powder.
Now I've done it, the secret is out. Well just leave me a bucket once in a while.
Joe

What alloy are you using to make your bullets? You might find that simply running your casting pot hotter, and getting your molds heated up before casting will produce a well filled mold, ableit a frosty bullet.

I cast straight wheel weights and they work great so long as you work hot.

I kept hearing add tin and get better fill out. I do cast a lot of .22 cal and when people heard that seems the frequent tip was add tin. I bought some solder for the tin and that was the first and only casting material I have ever bought. I couldn't tell a bit of difference. So to free wheelweights,add wheelweights you didnt have to pay for and get good fill out.

Alloy? Well....
I use an alloy made of roughly equal parts roofing lead and airgun pellets.
Yeah...that's 100% straight lead, I know. But I cast for BP, so pure lead is ok. Except that sometimes the base of a bullet gets slightly rounded edges. A small % of tin should prevent that from happening.

The solder being sold these days for household plumbing is about 96% tin. I just picked up a 1# roll at homedepot for about 7$. Sometimes you can catch it on sale.
C.G.B.

I used to work for a huge Government contractor and that one department had 15 soldering stations. To tin the wires each station had a pot of clean liquid solder.About 8 lbs per station. The regulations were that all solder had to be discarded after several weeks due to oxydation. Guess who has that solder cast into ingots?

I heard once that the wrappers used on wine bottles were pure tin and if you hit up fancy restaurants you can get the foil off the bottles.

It seemed like a lot of work to me.

I think the leadfree tin solder in 1 lb rolls from the discount big box home fixing stores is pretty good. Stretch out the roll, cut into equal parts so you can track what you are doing when adding.

I have bought a bunch at pretty goood prices off of e-bay. Radiator shops are a nice place to get solder but I don't want to have to worry about my %tin.

Catmandu

Mcmaster Carr sells Pure virgin tin at $17 a pound. search for "tin" (I didn't have to say that last bit, did I?)

I used to work in a print shop and in the offset dept. the plates they used were pure tin. Once the contract was filled, the plates were set back for one year and after that they were discarded because they could not be reused. This is also a good place to find old used linotype ....

Several years ago a friend and I went to a local recycling center (scrap yard) and was poking around for some lead or something useful when we came upon 3 milk crates full of linotype, covered in dust in the back of a building. I tried not to look excited and asked the employee what they wanted for it? He said we could have it for scrap lead cost as that was all it was, around 20 cents a pound as I recall. We almost fell over each other carrying it out, a little over 180 pounds, which my friend and I split. He cast his straight for high velocity pistol (357 maximum) and I blended mine into Lyman's # 2 alloy. I still have a large stack of 5 lb. ingots in a shed. So check the local salvage yard, you never now what you might find.

Good luck and good shooting,

Eterry

Several years ago I was poking around the recylers looking for WWs and he had several (10-15) 55 gallon barrels of linotype type most in individual letters. Local printshop had gone out of business and he had their full shops supply. 25 cents a pound just like the rest of the lead.
Can you imagine how much a 55 gallon barrel weighed?
I wish I had storage, I could shoot lino for the cost of WWs and ignore the damage to molds and sizers due to the harder material.

A heaping full barrel of ww at my scrap yard was tagged at about 1775 lbs at my last visit. I would imagine a full barrel of linotype would be in the neighborhood of 1400 to 1500 lbs.

Catmandu

My lucky day!

Thanks Catboat, for the tip!

I was going to cart an old beer cooler to the scrap yard not knowing that the tubing was made of tin.

I salvaged about 10 pounds of tubing.

You learn something here at AR every single day.