So, after much debate, some fly tyers decide to stop using lead. I probably won’t, but it brings up a question I’ve been kicking around for a while.
What can us ‘do it yourselfers’ do with tungsten? It’s the obviouous best substitute, as it’s heavier than lead. But is it workable for the home hobbiest? I don’t want to have to buy it already made into dumbbells and cones if I can do it myself, it’s too pricey.
Can I get it in a bendable form of small wire? How maleable can it be made? Can it be cut with my wire cutters?
Can it be melted/poured like lead, maybe with more heat, but can it be done without dangerous fumes or severe fire risks?
Does it have to be machined into shapes? If so, in what forms can it bought in bulk? Any special health risks with the particulates?
I’d enjoy playing with it, but I’m not up on metallurgy where tungsten is concerned.
With all the knowledge here, someone should be able to shed some light on this.
Buddy, good question. I have found a reasonable solution that circumvents the use of tungsten. I call it ‘Poor Man’s Tungsten’ and use non-lead wire tucked under whatever bead you might be using for the particular fly you’re tying.
Here is the link to a recent Fly of the Week I presented that shows how simple it is to do this without the added expense of using tungsten beads:
Feather-Craft has a tungsten impregnated stretch lace:
“TUNGSTEN STRETCH LACE Solid round stretch material that’s been impregnated with tungsten powder giving it serious weight. Use it for bodies or ribbing. .025” dia (un-stretched). Color is Iron-Grey"
You can also purchase powdered tungsten from golf club shops and mix it with epoxy.
Tungsten has a higher melting point than nearly any other common metal (several thousand degrees hotter than iron iirc), making casting out of the question.
Most tungsten products aremanufactured through a process of powder metallurgy, where a metallic tungsten powder is heated and compressed until the grains of powder fuse, but it never truly melts. It could be done, but not in any kind of a metal vessel or using any metal components in the process (which would be very expensive).
I’m not familiar with how they make the tungsten wire for light bulb filaments, but considering the properties of tungsten, i’d have to suspect that the wire is fairly brittle.
Probably the most useful form of tungsten for the fly fisherman, aside from beads, cones, and eyes, would be the sink putty that is sold in many fly shops, a tungsten powder in a malleable polymer medium. Other than that, the equipment necessary to work the stuff makes any products made with it fairly pricey.
I’m not really sure about it’s workability (I took a class where we covered alot of this, but that was a while back), but I think it’s quite hard. You’d not be able to use any standard metal, but rather you’d need some ceramics…carbide may do the trick, not sure. In fact, most of the metal that would be obtainable would probably be an alloy of some sort (the “tungsten beads” used are actually probably an alloy as well, and not elemental tungsten).
You’re not going to find round stock tungsten, I dont think. As I said, its typically not melted down and worked effectively as a liquid, making extrusion impractical to produce as a finished product to sell as-is. Even at that, I’d have to venture a guess that buying elemental tungsten in quantity would be prohibitively expensive.
I’ll disclaimer all of this by saying I’m no metallurgical professional, just someone who’s done a little learning about the subject.
Tungsten pellets used in shotgun shells may be a relatively inexpensive source of round beads of tungsten alloy…don’t really know though nor do I know how you would use them.
It’s expensive…I know that much. It’s not malliable enough for the hobbiest. You can grind it…and drill it. But you would not play well trying to melt and mold it.
I’m not sure if it helps you, but tungsten is what makes carbine saw blades carbide. I used to work for a saw sharpening shop and our specialty was dealing with tungsten carbide blades. The main indicator of the quality of the saw blade was the quantity of tungsten found in the teeth. In order to sharpen such an animal you needed to use special, diamond impregnated stones because nothing else would cut it.
If your idea is to find something with a high quantity of tungsten and turn it into a fly weighting material, you may find your options limited.
That said, there are other weighting wire compounds that do a fair job depending on the size of the fly. And if what you get from said wire isn’t as effective as lead, there’s always the option of adding some weighting putty or split-shot to the leader.
I ain’t no metallurgist but a quick search on the machining of tungsten confirmed what I suspected from a little experience with TIG welding many years ago. The rods used in Tungsten Inert Gas welding are made of this metal and are extremely hard and brittle. Old rods were even used sometime to dress grinding wheels by some folks at the plant where I worked. Its melting point is 6192 degrees Fahrenheit. It must be machined at a transition temperature which I could not determine, but I would suspect is higher than the kitchen oven.
Just for kicks, I checked McMaster-Carr for prices. A 12" long X 1/8" diameter piece of durable tungsten, as opposed to tungsen carbide, is almost $42 plus shipping. That will make about 30 dumbbell eyes. So roughly $1.50 each. And the price goes up abut $14 for each 1/16" in diameter. At $10/dozen + shipping on Cabela’s website, you might break even if you already have the tooling to make your own. Granted, McMaster is expensive, but you don’t have to buy immense amounts of material for an experiment.
Wow, just looked, and the yield strength on this stuff is 80,000 psi! As a reference, annealed steel is 50,000 psi, and brass is roughly 1/3 of that.
I still have a couple hundred feet of 1/8 inch lead wire for making dumbbells, and I can turn brass ones if I run into a non lead area on my lathe. They’ll do.
I had a friend who used to work with soft, annealed tungsten wire. If that is available at a reasonable cost, it might work for you as well. I’m sure that it was a tungsten alloy, but I am not familiar with the particulars.
