Smelted WW for the first time.

[Hayfield]

I just finished smelting some mystery metal (I think its babbit) so I figured I'd try to smelt some WWs. All these years I've been smelting and alloying lead and tin and linotype. This was a very weird experience. I took the temp to 650F and fluxed with my usual oak stick. I must have had 50/50 dross to mix. Is this normal? I understand the clips but the amount of sludge that I scooped off was incredible. And I'm not talking about stems and such. This was plain WWs. Is this what you guys deal with regularly? I gotta tell ya, I did alot of scrounging to lose 50%.

[NuJudge]

Describe your dross: was it the consistency of wet sand, but silvery? If so, there was a wheelweight made of zinc in there.

Anybody have any other ideas?

[randyrat]

You may loose 50%(with small WWs) in volume but not weight.. Are you fluxing properly? Maybe your throwing some tin away..I flux with saw dust, mix it in real good then skim the top..Once you clean the clips and garbage out the only stuff left to skim should be gray/dark powder off the top NO metal. Zink? i didn't think of that.

[Sundogg1911]

sounds like zinc in the WW's

[cbrick]

If it was silvery lumpy looking it was probably the antimony (Don't ask how I know [smilie=1:). The black burnt stuff is the greese, break fluid, axle greese, paint and whatever else they were contaminated with.

Rick

[Hayfield]

After this abomination of an alloy I'm toying with the idea of mixing up some homogenous alloy to drop shot with and I figured I'd play with these WWs and some lead and babbit to get some type of alloy that would work in the shot dropper. But because of the tiny orafices in the dropper the alloy has to be clean clean clean. Zinc/hardness is not an issue with shot. I think on my next round I'll take the temp way up and see what it looks like. As of now scrap lead, tin and lino will have to do for bullets. And here I thought I was a master caster. You guys work too hard.

[454PB]

I think we're all getting "zincaphobic". Crank it up to 750 degrees annd see if it looks more like what you expected.

[pumpguy]

I am going to have to agree with 454PB on this one. Crank up the heat before you come to any conclusions here. I have gotten about ten 5 gallon buckets of wheel weights in the last 7 or 8 months. Since I hate the smell of all the rubber that gets mixed in with these weights, I sort all of them before I melt them down. In all of these buckets, I have only found one zinc weight. Maybe they are more prevalent in your area, but, in Kansas and Colorado, they just do not show up.

[MT Gianni]

I agree, do you know the accuracy of your thermometer? I would not be surprised at most I've seen to have a 50 degree swing either way at 700F. Gianni.

[IcerUSA]

Last bucket of WW's I picked up had 7 to 10 zinkers in it, I used a big magnet to get the WW's out of the bucket and those zinkers really stick to the magnet, the lead ones only hold on by the clip :)

[454PB]

Not doubting your word, Icer, but zinc is no more magnetic than lead.

[quack1]

Icer- the wheelweights that stick to the magnet are steel. Around here, I get more steel weights than zinc ones.

[Lloyd Smale]

just did 3 buckets of wws and found 22 zinc wws total and we live in the far north about as far from California as it gets. No more high temp smelting for me. I put the turkey cooker on about half power and just wait and watch the melt closely and just as the last wws are on the surface stir it and pick the zinc ones out with the clips. I dont flux until the clips and zinc are gone. I figue the rubber tire stems and junk in the melt is enough to flux it during the melt to insure the tin and antimony are retained and after the clips and zinc are gone i flux once to get any remaining dirt out. Dont be fooled into thinking zinc isnt a problem and isnt going to be more of a problem in the future.

[Rick N Bama]

I've just finished smelting a bucket of WWs and didn't find any Zinc, but I had about 10#s of the steel weights. That's the most I've ever seen in a bucket. I also found 2 strips of steel stick-ons.

If the stuff looks something like silver oatmeal, then it's the Antimony separating out. Mix up some wood ashes & old motor oil, then flux with that. It should all blend back together.

Just another trick I've learned from one of this boards more knowledgeable members.

Rick

[Hayfield]

OK gentlemen. Round 2 of WW smelting just concluded. Thermometer works well as I cast a few thou BPCR boolits yearly from preprepared ingots and weigh them. @ 725F +or- say 5 degrees they all weigh within 1/2 grain. Took temp to 800, stirring/fluxing from 650 up. Scooped off alot but acceptable amount of dross. While using a 2lb dipper to ingot out I noticed mix was somewhat soupy and thicker than I'm used to. I'll check hardness next week. Don't have a tester. I use the SS ball indent method which works well for me. No steel weights though but zinc???

[tommag]

After seperating my clip-ons from stick-ons, I found about 3 or 4% of the stick-ons were marked sinc. Maybe I got a bad batch, but quite a few that were much harder than normal pb stick-ons as well as the ones stamped zn.