Zinc contamination

[saguaro]

Been hanging around here for awhile and see much concern over not getting zinc in your mix. Exactly what are the reasons we don't want that to happen? Does it harm the barrel or not cast right? Or is there something hazardous about.

Thanks,
Saguaro

[runfiverun]

it makes a mess of the alloy.
it also has a higher melt point and causes the alloy to cool as it goes into the mold.
which causes fill out problems.
ww alloy has a solubility of about 1.5% before any of these issues become really problematic.
after about 2% you see them.

[madsenshooter]

Primarily, it just doesn't cast right. An example, I had some WW alloy I bought off ebay that would pull back away from the sides of the mold cavity when it cooled. You could see it had been in contact with the sides of the cavity at one point, but pulled away as it cooled. The result in this case was banana shaped bullets that might have been good for shooting around corners. The fellow who made the 10lb ingots, I later found out, had simply melted down any WW he could without sorting out the zinc or pure Pb ones as he was only using the ingots for race car ballast. I got 60-80lbs of the ingots.

[badgeredd]

Last weekend, I learned the hard way that one can't count on others separating out the zinc. I melted down some of my SORTED WW while melting down some ingots an acquaintance had given me. Too late I realized his ingots were heavily contaminated! I used up perhaps 50 pounds of my good sorted WWs to get a nice batch of bad alloy. Just a word of caution to everyone else...BE CAREFUL with using others ingots.

Edd

[KohlerK91]

Last weekend, I learned the hard way that one can't count on others separating out the zinc. I melted down some of my SORTED WW while melting down some ingots an acquaintance had given me. Too late I realized his ingots were heavily contaminated! I used up perhaps 50 pounds of my good sorted WWs to get a nice batch of bad alloy. Just a word of caution to everyone else...BE CAREFUL with using others ingots.

Edd


Thats why I tried to sell RAW COWW so the end user knows exactly what they are getting.

Yet some still bashed me for asking a little more than most for nice size clean sorted COWW. After all it does take a little time to go through a five gallon bucket of weights.

They just went back in storage for later use. Oh Well.