Fun with zinc

[44man]

I smelted some WW's yesterday and threw all the stick on weights in a box. I finished the weights and decided to see what the stickies were. Most were painted. I cut one with a knife and it looked like lead, soft and cut easy.
It was like melting insulated garbage so I had the heat high. There was a pile of burned paint and crud on it. I removed it and found the surface formed a gold hue all over.
Touching it with a spoon made the whole surface move like a solid sheet. I scooped it off and another sheet would form. Disturbing it would show a galvanized gutter look underneath, pretty stuff.
I poured it into my molds to get the pot clean and it poured with lumps like air was trapped or some gas released. Funny to see ingots with bumps.
Well 7# went into the trash with the clips! [smilie=b:
I also found a bag of soldering or body filler sticks in a bag I forgot about. Some were marked roofing and they were marked 50-50. Others were a foot long and about 3/8" square marked 50-50 also.
I have about 50# of it so it was a good way to gain 25# of tin. I did not melt them because I can cut what I need.
I also have a 75# ingot of stereo lead that I need to find a way to cut up.
Funny how we find stuff buried in the barn behind junk.

[462]

The other day, a zinc clip-on slipped past me and contaminated the pot (inadvertenly turned up the temperature). Removed most of the sludge, poured off the remainder of the melt, and started over. What a mess.

[44man]

The other day, a zinc clip-on slipped past me and contaminated the pot (inadvertenly turned up the temperature). Removed most of the sludge, poured off the remainder of the melt, and started over. What a mess.
Easy to do. I refuse to look at every weight and they're filthy anyway.
I start to remove clips from one side as lead leaves them, the rest of the melt will still look like meal. Makes it easy to find one that has not started to melt as I work them to the hot side.
I found 4 that were still whole and not softened.
Those painted stick on things can fool you. I only had a small amount of the plain ones, not even worth melting. :veryconfu
Best to stay at 600* when smelting, then floaters can be tossed but I forgot to take my thermometer to the barn.
I use a plumbers stove and a propane tank. I have the cast iron pot that fits it, holds about 40#. I found this outfit out in the boonies, far from a road, sitting next to the RR tracks while I was hunting. Must be 55 years ago. No idea why it was there but I cleaned it and painted it.

[geargnasher]

I have a coffee can full of arched, painted zinc stickies. Most of them say "Zn" in one corner and the weight is marked in grams, not ounces. They will get your attention when doing the side-cutter test after a long run of pure lead ones, like chomping down on a bone fragment in a hamburger when you're not expecting it!

Someday I might try to cast some PP rifle boolits with them, but for now they stay far away from my lead stash.

Gear

[Lizard333]

With the zinc melting at such a higher temp you really have to be cooking your lead. I sort everything I bring home but occasionally a zinc or steel ww will slip buy. As long as you don't just turn your pot on and leave, it's pretty hard to melt a zinc one if your paying attention. Never used a temperature probe, just keep an eye on it.

[Phat Man Mike]

talk about a mess .. :( try getting some babbit mixed in by mistake! lost over 30 lbs of alloy and was a mess to clean out of my furnace.. made my whole day a lost!

[imashooter2]

Babbitt is normally just tin and lead with some small amounts of antimony or copper... what was the stuff you had that killed your pot?

[felix]

PPM, just throw that whole ball of trouble into your next big-batch-melt of WW, roofing lead, pipe, etc. Cast that batch into small bars to be your hardening metal. Add several of these bars to your pot at 800 degrees full of WW except for the amount left out as room for the augmentation metal. ... felix

[44man]

With the zinc melting at such a higher temp you really have to be cooking your lead. I sort everything I bring home but occasionally a zinc or steel ww will slip buy. As long as you don't just turn your pot on and leave, it's pretty hard to melt a zinc one if your paying attention. Never used a temperature probe, just keep an eye on it.
The only time to catch a zinc weight is at around 600*. They will melt easy into the lead at casting temps.
I alloy pure antimony into a mix at 600*, it only takes flux.
Long, long ago I bought some pure antimony down in the Cleveland flats at the back door of a casting outfit. Kind of big chunks and I did not have good flux. I had to bring pure lead to a real high heat to get the stuff to melt. I made 50-50 pure and antimony ingots so I could add some to my WW's. Those would melt in easy at low heat.
Zinc kind of acts like aluminum, it will sit there kind of hard, then all of a sudden it is gone. Lead will have the whole weight get soft and limp.

[geargnasher]

One of the common errors I see here with regard to zink wheel weights is the assumption that they are pure zink. I'm not sure what they are exactly, and the clip-ons are probably a more mould-friendly alloy than the stickies, but most of the ones I've seen do melt at much lower temps than pure zink does. Must be Zamak or something.

Gear

[williamwaco]

One of the common errors I see here with regard to zink wheel weights is the assumption that they are pure zink. I'm not sure what they are exactly, and the clip-ons are probably a more mould-friendly alloy than the stickies, but most of the ones I've seen do melt at much lower temps than pure zink does. Must be Zamak or something.

Gear

Yes.

I don't know wnat they are made of either. I am sure they contain no lead and probably no antimony because they were specified by the greenies. I don't know their melting temprature.

I do know this. They will melt, at casting tempratures. They take longer than lead wheel weights but If you leave one in there long enough, it will melt and it will contaminate your alloy. It only takes one zinc weight the size of your pinky finger to contaminate the whole pot.

That said - I find that zinc contaminated wheelweights will still make useable pistol bullets.

[josper]

I thought the zink ww melted about 100 deg higher than the lead ones. I watch the pot and any floaters are quickly skimed off.I have been lucky so far I guess. I also use my thermomator and stay about 600deg. Question: If I did get a zink one in my alloy would it be noticeable?

[williamwaco]

Yes, yes, and yes!

See this post:
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=118219&highlight=oatmeal

If that is not enough information for you,

see

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/forumdisplay.php?f=57

Search for zinc. If you want more, search again for oatmeal

[zxcvbob]

I have about 6 or 7 pounds of zinked lead that I screwed up a few years ago. (I can't throw anything out; you'd think I was a Great Depression baby.) I'm thinking about melting it and pouring a bunch of little "coins" and slipping one or two per batch into my 20# lead pot. Mostly to use the stuff up without wasting it, but also I think in tiny quantities zinc should be a good hardener. I have lots of lead, but most of it is soft lead (but not pure) and I like shooting magnums...

[FN in MT]

I have about 6 or 7 pounds of zinked lead that I screwed up a few years ago. (I can't throw anything out; you'd think I was a Great Depression baby.) I'm thinking about melting it and pouring a bunch of little "coins" and slipping one or two per batch into my 20# lead pot. Mostly to use the stuff up without wasting it, but also I think in tiny quantities zinc should be a good hardener. I have lots of lead, but most of it is soft lead (but not pure) and I like shooting magnums...

I screwed up a few pots before I figured out the Zinc ISSUE. I use them for surf fishing sinkers. We use 3 and 4 ouncers...so my 40 pounds of contaminated lead went to a good case.

FN in MT

[MikeS]

At what concentration does zinc become a problem?

I'm only asking because I had an ingot of the Lyman #2 alloy that I mix up analyzed with a Niton analyzer, and while it confirmed that my mix was pretty close to the 5-5-90 mixture it should be, there is also .244% zinc, and .197% copper in my alloy, but I have no problems casting with it. This alloy was made with no wheel weights, but rather a mix of pure lead, and stereotype, and a small amount of tin as well. I'm assuming the zinc came from the stereotype, as I've read that type metals sometimes contain small amounts of zinc in them as a contaminate. It also had .197% copper in it, some of which came from my source of tin (I was using lead free solder that is 99.3% tin and .7% copper), but some might have also come from the stereotype as well. The boolits I cast with this alloy test at an 8 on my SAECO hardness tester which is around 13bhn, but after sitting a couple of weeks goes to about 8.5 which is right at 15bhn which is what Lyman #2 is supposed to be.

I'm assuming that the small amounts of both zinc & copper will make my alloy slightly tougher than it would be without them, but I don't know this for a fact. (As long as they're there I might as well find a justification for them! :) )

[luvtn]

What is stereotype? As the son of a printer we had lead linotype to print with.
lt

[DukeInFlorida]

Stereotype is a stereotypical mis-use of a term.

I'm thinking he meant LINOTYPE.

Either that, or he was referring to TWO pieces of identical linotype, which would be a stereotypical reference to stereo vision.

Or, it was a stereotypical reference to looking at a chunk of lead using one of these:
http://www.gizmology.net/images/stereo_09.jpg

[ku4hx]

Stereotype: 6% Tin, 14% Antimony, 80% lead with a BHN of 23. No Arsenic trace.

http://www.lasc.us/castbulletalloy.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=Cv0gAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA400&lpg=PA400&dq=stereotype+alloy&source=bl&ots=wsGDHkQE4_&sig=y1gvtcDG5BlnukcKPyS2Xo3nwAg&hl=en&ei=3MS3Tq3UD_KA2QWKmsjMDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=stereotype%20alloy&f=false

[mroliver77]

There are more printers alloys than just linotype. Actually lino is one of the softer ones. Here is lotsa info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_metal

[MikeS]

Stereotype is a harder alloy that was used a lot in the newspaper business. They would make 40lb curved plates that printed a page of the newspaper on the big presses.

luvtn: the stereotype I'm using came from the newspaper in Morristown TN. Somebody I guess bought the building the paper was in, and is selling off most of the stuff on eBay. I don't think he has any of the stereotype left, but I think he's still selling some linotype.

So does anyone know what percentage of zinc will ruin an alloy? As I said in my previous post in this thread, my alloy has 0.244% zinc in it, yet casts fine.

[44man]

Stereotype: 6% Tin, 14% Antimony, 80% lead with a BHN of 23. No Arsenic trace.

http://www.lasc.us/castbulletalloy.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=Cv0gAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA400&lpg=PA400&dq=stereotype+alloy&source=bl&ots=wsGDHkQE4_&sig=y1gvtcDG5BlnukcKPyS2Xo3nwAg&hl=en&ei=3MS3Tq3UD_KA2QWKmsjMDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=stereotype%20alloy&f=false
I have a 75# ingot of stereotype. I looked it up and it shows 7% tin, 15% antimony and 78% lead. 23 BHN. I have not figured out how to break it up to fit a pot so I can make ingots! :mrgreen: Is it too hard for an axe?

[mpmarty]

I have a 75# ingot of stereotype. I looked it up and it shows 7% tin, 15% antimony and 78% lead. 23 BHN. I have not figured out how to break it up to fit a pot so I can make ingots! :mrgreen: Is it too hard for an axe?

I use my oxcy aceteline (sic) rig with a rosebud to melt pieces off into my big pot on the turkey fryer.

[44man]

I use my oxcy aceteline (sic) rig with a rosebud to melt pieces off into my big pot on the turkey fryer.
My tanks are always empty! [smilie=l: 50 mile round trip to fill.

[MT Gianni]

I have a 75# ingot of stereotype. I looked it up and it shows 7% tin, 15% antimony and 78% lead. 23 BHN. I have not figured out how to break it up to fit a pot so I can make ingots! :mrgreen: Is it too hard for an axe?

Screw an eye into it and lower it slowly.

[docone31]

Use a cheap propane torch, and make drippings.
I use an hot plate where I am. Sometimes the ingots do not quite fit right into the pot. I let them get hot, and with the hot plate on, I use the propane torch. You would be suprised at how many ingots I got melted into ingots I could handle.
With that large an ingot, start on a corner, and make drippings.

[44man]

Screw an eye into it and lower it slowly.
Now that is a good idea! I hang deer out at the barn where I smelt and can hook up my pulley system.

[ghh3rd]

I have not figured out how to break it up to fit a pot so I can make ingots! Is it too hard for an axe?
Would a MAPP gas torch do the trick to make drippings?

[MikeS]

At the marina where I was getting the 26lb bricks of lead I was selling they use a chop saw (a table mounted circular saw) to cut lead. When I needed a small piece of the wheel weight lead they have, he took one of them, and quickly cut off a 2" piece from one of the bars. I don't see why something like that wouldn't work on the stereotype.

Or another way to get rid of the problem of cutting it up is to let somebody else worry about cutting it up, if you send it to me, I'll be happy to cut it up, and cast some really nice boolits from the alloy I make with it! :)