Zinc? Trouble smelting

[single shot jimmy]

I will post a couple of pictures. Have smelted pure lead from blocks, pipe, and sheet before. My first try with WWs. I read the sorting WWs thread several times. Hand sorted with a pair of dykes. Only through in the soft ones. The hard Zinc WWs are easy to tell. Almost don't mark at all.

But this looks to me like I missed a bunch of zinc. Also notice some poured well and then broke apart in the middle. The ends of the ingot look good but the middle is crumbly. Also note the big chunk. That was dipped off the top of the melt with a flat curved dipper. Lead would just run off but this big mass stayed together.

Going to get a thermometer before trying again. I tried to keep the temp down to barely melt lead. I don't think it was low enough.

On to the pictures.

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc492/jimdgreat1/Stadium68004.jpg

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc492/jimdgreat1/Stadium68005.jpg

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc492/jimdgreat1/Stadium68003.jpg

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc492/jimdgreat1/Stadium68002.jpg

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc492/jimdgreat1/Stadium68001.jpg

[alfloyd]

Looks to me that you did not let the ingot cool and it was still in the mush stage when you dumped them out.
Wait longer before dumping the ingots out.

Lafaun

[Bill]

lead still to warm to be handled. my 1lb ingots did the same. let em cool more

[Suo Gan]

Looks to me that you did not let the ingot cool and it was still in the mush stage when you dumped them out.
Wait longer before dumping the ingots out.

Lafaun
It is hard to diagnose from here, but it looks like lead right before the liquidus stage. It gets the consistency of peanut butter and that is what it looks like. This is the point I add a large amount of dried leaves or sawdust and I stir it in, usually the clips will release right after this and in less than a minute the pot is completely and fully molten. I remove the clips and slag (will not be all that much). If you were as careful as you say, I really doubt you melted a zinc weight.

[runfiverun]

what they said.^^^^^^^ clean it better next time too.
if you melted down 50 lbs of ww's you would need almost 1 lb of zinc before you even noticed it causing a problem.
thats something like 25 zinc ww's you would have missed.

[single shot jimmy]

Thanks everyone. I read the other post like this one also. I'll order a thermometer and try again.