Purifying wheel weights

[The Double D]

I hate it when people make a post about a subject that has been asked and answered a million times without doing a simply search and finding the answer...so I did a simple search and got 217 pages of hits...so I am gonna ask the million times answered question.

Is there any what teh home shop lead melter can smelter wheel wights and extract the antimony and tin to purify the lead?

[felix]

No. ... felix

[Lloyd Smale]

as usual felix has the right answer.

[Blammer]

sorry, no

[dmftoy1]

I hate it when people make a post about a subject that has been asked and answered a million times without doing a simply search and finding the answer...so I did a simple search and got 217 pages of hits...so I am gonna ask the million times answered question.

Is there any what teh home shop lead melter can smelter wheel wights and extract the antimony and tin to purify the lead?

Well I'm just a newbie, but I think that technically there is a way . . .you smelt it down into ingots and then you trade it to people like me who have been keeping our "pure lead" separate from our wheel weights to trade for it. :)

[cohutt]

Well I'm just a newbie, but I think that technically there is a way . . .you smelt it down into ingots and then you trade it to people like me who have been keeping our "pure lead" separate from our wheel weights to trade for it. :)
+1
I had an excellent source clean pure lead but no wheel weights or alloy when i started collecting casting material last fall. Traded for WW and Lino, everybody was happy :-D Since then i have found a good source of scrap and ww, now i have several boxes, buckets and kitty litter bins full of cleaned ingots and well labeled/inventoried for future use. I quit doing it when i found 50/50 pure/ww casts and shoots whell for my 45 and 44 plinker loads.

You casting for bp?

[versifier]

I'd go with the scattering Holy Water and sacrificing virgins route. :mrgreen:
It's as good a way as any to attempt the impossible.

[mooman76]

You could heat it as hot as you can get. Keep scraping the top and you will get rid of allot of tin whatever but will probubly nevr get pure. Trade it to the roof flashing guy!

[The Double D]

That's what I thought, or we would all already know it as common knowledge.

I know Versifier's method is no good as I would just drink the holy water and don't want to make the "comittment" required of the second part.

[grumpy one]

Send it to Iran and have them run it in a molten state in one of their non-existent ultra-centrifuges that they aren't using to separate U235 from U238. The difference in densities does make it possible to separate the constituents of an alloy, it's just not worth doing.

[Bret4207]

There is, but it requires 7 virgins, a full moon, a large cauldron and 2 pinches of eye of Newt. The virgins would be hard enough to find, but I talked to Newt Fluegeman and he said he needs both his eyes till after the fall harvest at least.

[Netherwolf]

You could heat it as hot as you can get. Keep scraping the top and you will get rid of allot of tin whatever but will probubly nevr get pure. Trade it to the roof flashing guy!

That's what I'd always been told i.e., the "scum" that floats to the top during a casting session is the tin & antimony seperating from the lead (which is why it has to be fluxed back in if you want to maintain the hardness of the alloy).

But, based on what I've read above, it appears that my information is erroneous. If the stuff that floats to the top during a casting session is NOT the tin & antimony seperating from the alloy, the question becomes, what is that stuff & why does it need to be fluxed back into the mix?

Netherwolf

[leftiye]

Nether, The stuff on the surface of your melt IS tin, antimony, and lead OXIDES in that order. When they contact oxygen, they gulp it in and then fight about it with tin winning out.

The fluxing reduces the oxides so that they become pure metal again and re enter the alloy.

I guess it its kinda like two different subjects. The alloying thing releases energy as the alloy forms, and without special means (which I can't supply that info), the alloy will not decompose. Ironically, if you oxidized it all, it would still be mixed, and just as hard to separate probably.