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My curiosity has been raised - does anyone have any sources for the make-up of the old (pre-1997) lead-based White Metal alloy Citadel used to use?

I know they switched to an alloy of Tin, Antimony, Bismuth and Copper, but what about before that?

Disregard.

SJ

I believe the original formula was Lead and Tin.

Just those?

I loved the lead minis. Ahhhh the nostalgia.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Just those?

Most likely. As far as I'm aware, the general idea with lead casting is to use as much lead as possible (because it's relatively cheap, and easy to cast with) with just enough tin thrown in to make it a little more durable than pure lead would be. There's not really any need to add anything else.

I would expect that the arcane blend used in the white metal that replaced the lead was to try to balance out the cost of tin against functionality.

I'm not convinced that the actual alloy mix was consistent; especially in the earlier days, I would imagine it could vary between batches and suppliers.

Not sure. I just wish they'd bring back metals.

i have some old lead alloy ones, you could tell from the weight, there solid, never ever fallen over though

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Just those?

Mostly. Antimony, Cadmium, Bismuth, and Zinc are also listed as being common inclusions. But mostly Tin and Lead. It really depends on what the manufacturer was doing at the time.

Their really old stuff was tin/lead - but this is a very soft alloy and the oxidation products tend to mean not many survive to this day.
The Tin/Lead/Antimony mix is more stable and had fewer "lead rot" issues.

Antimony was about a 5-10% additive for flow control.

When they went lead free, they upped the tin content and subbed Bismuth in - the casts got harder, but tended to break their cliippers (or injure passers-by with shrapnel).

I used to game with a metallurgist, who made WMA plates for the printing industry. I got him to test a few samples.