Roto Metals Response:

I sent an email to Roto Metals last night about some bad alloy I recently received. This morning (Saturday) here is their response:

Hi Roy. Sorry about this those ingots came from our sister factory and looks like they messed up the alloy or stamped the wrong ingots. What is your order number and I'll send you a new order from the original bars. I'll also email you a return label Monday if you can send back just one ingot I can test it and see what is wrong with it


Thank
Ryan


Now THAT'S the kind of company I like to deal with! They will have my lead business forever!

Here is the email I sent them:

Recently I received a shipment of 20-1 alloy. I’m a longtime user of Roto Metals and have never had an issue. I only cast with Roto Metal alloys as I trust your product and don’t want to put an untrusted product down my expensive match barrels. There is a major problem with this shipment as it simply will not cast proper bullets. It will not fill out the mold.

I switched to the 20-1 alloy I previously purchased and the bullets formed beautifully.

I did a search on the internet and I found another fellow experiencing the exact same problem. I too had the crud continuously forming in the melt and the consistency of maple syrup. My ingots were also the new shape as in this thread:

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The bars of lead are different in shape and appearance. The new bars are segmented where the old style was a single bar of alloy. The new bars have a cloudy, dull appearance where the old bars were shiny like a bar of silver.
When casting even after heavy fluxing the melt has a clumpy texture with lots of impurities in the dross .
It does not pour freely from my bottom pour pot no matter how large I set the orifice.
It will coat my ladle and stirring stick with the same clumpy clinging stuff.
The bullets do not fill out the mold and have the same cloudy grey color instead of shiny silver.

I can understand your satisfaction with Rotometal's quick response. The mistakes really bother me. I know that sometime in the future I will have to buy metal. Rotometal claims they can provide high quality certified metals. Apparently they can't. Certified means exactly right every time with the COC or COA that matches the lot.

In industry, companies scrutinize the certificates and file them for future use should there be a material failure. The certifications are supposed to mean something when you are buying materials for medical or aircraft manufacturing.   
If you order a low temp metal primarily of tin and bismuth you expect it to be safe. What if they send one of the cadmium bearing low temp alloys?
I am sure some of Rotometals customers depend on the company to protect their reputation. 

Received a 70 pound box of the proper alloy today. I was told to keep the other alloy and to send one bar back to them so they could let me know what it was.

It might be useful to mix with something else to make it usable.

BTW, all of this took less than three business days.....from California to Massachusetts!

NOW THAT'S CUSTOMER SERVICE!

I've received a couple batches of lead/tin alloys (not from Roto Metals) that were not alloyed as stated, so I now check all alloys by doing a specific gravity (SG) check.  It's relatively easy to determine the specific gravity using a good digital scale.  See my article in the latest edition (Summer 2014 #86) of Black Powder Cartridge magazine titled Measuring & Using Specific Gravities of Lead Alloys.  Once the SG of the lead/tin alloy is accurately determined a casting alloy calculator is needed to convert the SG to the percentage of lead & tin.  Or one can make a rough estimate from the following:

SG of 30:1 is 11.1485
SG of 25:1 is 11.1115
SG of 20:1 is 11.0574
SG of 16:1 is 10.9918

Note - If there are elements in the alloy other than lead or tin, the above SGs do not apply.  Therefore one cannot use the noted SGs for wheelweight alloys that contain antimony, arsenic or other stuff.  For wheelweights and other alloys see the following note.

Note - I highly recommend the software-based Precision Casting Alloy Calculator at the following link: (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) It can provide the SGs of many bullet alloys including Lead/tin, wheelweights, Lyman #2, monotype, linotype and many others.  It also offers other features/benefits for bullet casters.  I've used it extensively.  It's excellent & well worth the price.

Wayne

Dr Tom,

Thanks.  I discuss the Archimedes connection in my article and describe an even simpler solution and very quick method to determining the specific gravity of bullet alloys.  All that's required is a digital scale, pill bottle filled with water, the bullet and a piece of sewing thread.  Of course a standard calculator is required unless the simple math calculation is done by hand.

The more complicated issue is, once you have the specific gravity, how does one determine the elements and amount of each in the alloy.  For lead-tin-only alloys there are online charts available and the software-based Precision Casting Alloy Calculator I referred to earlier works great if the alloy contains only lead & tin.  But if the alloy contains 3 or more elements than it's only a guess based on the specific gravity.  Here's a good article that contains a specific gravity chart of lead, tin & Antimony.
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Wayne

Quote:


Tom, 

there may well be a hardness chart for only tin and antimony but I have not searched for one as all the alloys I use contain lead. I'm sending you a PM so look for it.

Wayne

Bravo Zulu to Rotometals for their outstanding customer service.  I had received some of their new bullet alloy ingots months ago, but just got down to using some of them this weekend.  Sure enough, they were out of the bad lot.  Didn't really expect much since I didn't have my paperwork but I did find the order in My Account on their website.  Wrote them an email this morning and got a call back within a couple of hours.  They sent me an RMA and re-shipped the alloy.  Mistakes get made, it is how you deal with those mistakes that shows the character of the man/company.  Rotometals is a stand up outfit.

RoyB wrote on Jul 9^th, 2014 at 11:26am:


Your batch may have been contaminated with zinc.  You can tell by putting a little piece in a Clorox solution.  More Clorox, the more obvious it will be.  It will give off tiny bubble as the zinc reacts with the chlorine.   

I got contaminated when using 50/50 wheel weights and lead for LR BP.  Some of the WW were beginning to have zinc in the mix back then.  Total disaster.   I was trying to make bullets for the 150th Anniversary LR BP Match at Ottawa.  Bullets looked terrible and the sprues were tearing out!  I do not remember how I got the contamination out of the pot and mold, but it took  a while. 

good luck.