How to pour babbit.

If you have ever watched someone skillfully pouring babbitt it can appear so easy to do it yourself. It is actually a choreographed set of movements and processes that require careful timing. I can understand why it would take years of practice.
 
ursus said:
If you have ever watched someone skillfully pouring babbitt it can appear so easy to do it yourself. It is actually a choreographed set of movements and processes that require careful timing. I can understand why it would take years of practice.
Click to expand...

Well actually it is way more then that.

What you do not see is the science of pouring babbitt.

It is not just melt the babbitt and pour. You have a bunch of things that are done to prevent the metals from making too large a crystals. From proper cleaning of the pots to how fast the babbitt is allowed to melt and cool. To having a large enough pot that the ratios of metal do not change much as they oxidize on the surface. To mixing the metals with a certain action of the ladle (yes you much mix with a certain motion!).

It is very expensive as you have to waste a lot of babbitt to do a proper pour. Once the babbitt has been melted there are strict limits on how much reused babbitt can be in a pot. When you look at broken apart fresh babbitt and babbitt that has been repoured many times (you have to practice a lot!!!) you will find the crystals are different. The re-used babbitt has large visible crystals you do not find in the babbitt only poured once.

My brother and I have done a lot of babbitt pouring to learn the process. We also have researched the science behind it. The guys that pour right all follow the same rules and never have problems with bad babbitt. The ones that do not know the rules seem to have problems, go figure.

One final note. There is no real good reference on pouring babbitt on the internet. I have looked extensively. Some of the good science references are no longer available. Most of what you need to know is pieced together from KRW instructions and some science papers found online like 15 years ago (the links are dead these days). Then you still need to ask questions to a person with a background in the science of metals to make sense of some of the technical information.
 
Not to mention the years and dollars to find the tooling in good order with all of small pieces to make the system complete. Several manufacturers, some of the components interchangeable and most not.
 
Most of the people who do Babbitt learned from a "little old guy ", who learned it from a "little old man ". I did it the hard way, on my own, a very steep learning curve. You must be willing to fail lots of times before you get to the point where you can get repeatable good results. The machining was the easy part of it for me, getting good pours every time is the challenge. A very learnable skill, but requires lots of sticktuitaveness to see you thru the process. Mine is not a high production shop, all of the tooling is from the 1940's, but it is the way I like it and I get good results.
 
Growing up in my Dad's shop, my brothers and I learned the most important thing about pouring babbitt was that if you didn't have your part completely and perfectly tinned, the babbitt wasn't going to stick. Period. None of the aforementioned rules matter for squat if you didn't tin your part right.
 
While living in Minnesota, our A club, the Lady Slippers, had the opportunity to observe an older fellow last name of Boe who did complete restorations on very rare Packards and Pierce Arrows. He restored these vehicles in the town of West Concord. His restorations started at $100K in the late 90's so was a true artist. It was amazing to watch him go through the process. As stater earlier the process is quite complex to get things done correctly. He taught the person who did the babbiting on the engine in my A. The babbit was poured over 12 years ago so guess it was done correctly.
 
We learned a lot of wrong things from little old men who used to pour babbitt.

You really need to be careful about who you learn from. That is why we turned to manufacturers (KRW for one) and science based papers to get some answers.

Knonke and J&M gave us a lot of answers that went along with what we had learned from the reliable documentation.
 
Not all materials get tinned. I was told by a babbitter that the Model A and T cast iron blocks would get pored and peened, no tinning. Same with cast iron caps. The cast steel caps would however be tinned before poring.
 
Wow. I had no idea this was so complicated! My three A's have all been rebabbited, and all are holding up well. One was done ten years ago, one three years ago, both of those by the same fellow. The third was redone by a different fellow about five years ago after the babbit failed after about 20years. But I have concluded that that job failed because I had been driving that A with incorrect spark advance- for 20 years! No one had ever told me that incorrect spark advance (too far advanced) would damage the rear main.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top