Babbit Alloys.

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dale2242

Well-Known Member
Does anyone know anything about thermo-electric Babbitt alloys?
Any info would be appreciated.
The ingot says Electric Babbit Metals Company.
 
man,, Babbitt is well it has tin in it.
it could be almost all tin or 10% tin.
there's a Babbitt for every purpose on the planet.... including engine bearings back 100 years ago.... and turbine bearings still today.
 
I had this vintage wood Lathe I got from a neighbor, back in the 1980s. He was a retired preacher at the time. He said it was his grand father's Lathe...so I'm thinking it could have been from 1900ish, no electric motor, it had a wooden pulley that was driven by a flat leather belt off a steam engine. The Lathe frame/chassis was all Oak, it looked like it was hand made by a kit, ordered from a 1900 Mechanix Illustrated magazine. Anyway, the Headstock had poured babbit bushings. Quite interesting. That's my working knowledge of Babbit.
 
Babbitt is made in many alloys for different applications. Most you’ll encounter was used for bearings and bushings. Unless you encounter ingots with a code, it’s hit or miss unless you have it analyzed. Lead, tin, copper and antimony in various proportions.
As handgun casters use it to sweeten soft alloy. Rifle shooters is another story. We’re after the copper. Copper cannot be alloyed at our casting temps. Babbitt with copper can. Why do we want it? It makes the bullet surface “stronger”. Felix sent me some when I was playing with the Cast .223 loads. At 2400 fps, accuracy went south. With an ingot of Babbitt per pot of metal I was able to get 2800 fps and decent accuracy and 2600 in the .30/06. Reason, the surface “strength” allowed it to be driven that high without the bullet stripping the rifling./beagle
 
actually the copper forms a boundary layer around the antimony strengthening the crystals so they don't break down as easily.
the antimony breaking down is like a lubricant to a lead alloy and it allows the lead to flow and move even easier than when it isn't mixed in.

that's why they use antimony in extruded or swaged lead products.
 
Like making sausage. Don’t know what goes in it but I like the outcome. All I know is it works as Felix said it would. The trick is to find out the composition. Got some I know off the railroad one time. So hard I couldn’t size and lube in an old #45. Had to remedy and cut
 
Like making sausage. Don’t know what goes in it but I like the outcome. All I know is it works as Felix said it would. The trick is to find out the composition. Got some I know off the railroad one time. So hard I couldn’t size and lube in an old #45. Had to remedy and cut and re-cast./beagle
 
yessir.
you can also see stringy looking streams from a bottom pour.

no more than 1/2% and less is better.... .2-.3% seems to be about the sweet spot.
 
If you salvage plated bullets or wire solder drips you have . More so if you separate the plated bullets and they have any tin at all in them . I'm told the tin present will hold half it's value of copper in suspension.

My mechanic take is that the copper plated base layer of plating is at the molecular level and already stuck to the lead alloy . A gross over simplification I'm sure .

At .5% , best guess, it will yield 18 bhn that acts like a 22 in the barrel and 16 on impact . It can also cause bullets to grow as they age .
 
dale2242 said:
Interesting thoughts about the copper.
New to me.
Of course, I`ve never delt with an alloy with copper.
Click to expand...
Some years back, I bought several MFRB's of 94-3-3 alloy. The seller cooked up large batches of range scrap, that had plenty of jackets. He would have the batch XRF scanned, then add what is necessary to bring it to 94-3-3, then have it scanned again. I got alloy from 3 different batches from him, that came with scan sheets. They all had a little copper in them 0.20% to 0.25%. He believed that copper came from schmelting. He would keep the jackets in there long enough through several fluxings, to remove all the lead alloy that was clinging on the jackets (so he could get a better price at scrap yard), so the extended duration at 700+ deg must have something to do with it?
 
When I fell and broke the ribs resulting in an air bubble in my chest . Because I didn't bleed it's unlikely that I had a puncture . That means that I had enough shock and directional momentum to literally suck the air out of the tissues .

At 18-55kpsi l suspect that there is impact transfer at the interface layer that creates a similar condition to the boundary layer of copper and lead alloys. 1-2% tin will hold .5-1% copper in the initial melt . Everything added dilutes the copper in suspension down . At 8oz in 99 lbs 8oz of almost WW bumped to 125# batch to hit the tin /antimony numbers the 8 gets to 6 pretty fast .
 
Actually Cu alloys with Sb in a ratio 1:5. Makes a very tough alloy. It will alloy with tin (SnCu) but likes Sb more. Cu will not stay in lead (solubility). It will mix in the liquid but drop out as cooled. I chronied a 145gr PB cast @ 2150 fps, 300BO (1%Cu 5% Sb). Per GRT it is a 51k psi load. One inch 'circle' at 100 yds. Bullets made a dent in the bar of superhard I had, vice test.
Edit: that alloy was just an experiment to see what could be done. 0.5% Cu in ~3% Sb would make a good (hard/tough) hunting alloy for tough targets.
 
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Always metallurgy very interesting and made many emails with Antimony Man in years past.
 
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