tinning steel ??

[XWrench3]

i found a not so nice rust hole in the quarter panel of my GMC Jimmy last week. i have been thinking about how i want to tackle this job, and the thought of taking a small piece of steel, then tinning it with lead before attaching it to the inside of the panel occurred to me. it should be rust proof because of the lead coating. which would make it a "permanent" repair. well, at least until the rest of the panel rots away. i tried tinning a piece today, which did not work so well. then i appied soldering flux to it, which helped, but still had some spots. then i got out the acid flux, which worked beautifully. the question now is, what to do with the rest of the lead in the pot. i fluxed it twice with parafin, and twice more with saw dust. then i poured all of it into ingots, so i could thoroughly clean out the pot. i have no idea if it would be safe to use this lead for boolits or not. if any acid is left in it, it could seriously corrode a nice barrel. and lead is not anywhere near as expensive as barrels (thankfully). any idea how i could check to see if there is any acid left in the lead? i would not like to throw away 20 pounds of lead if i do not have to. but i would rather do that than ruin a barrel.

[ABluehound]

My late grandfather was an old auto body man from back in the day when cars were made of real steel in his home town in Pennsylvania. In my youth I saw him work on the old antiques the old way using 60/40 tin/lead bars (1X.5 by 18 inches long) to smooth out irregularities in the sheet metal after he hammered it back to shape then he smoothed it with very coarse files with adjustable radius' resembling a block plane much the way modern body filler is used today. I can remember him pointing out a particular Plymouth Fury that was still on the road he repaired the old way many years before... the car was now rusting out everywhere that he had not spread his solder. My dad tells me that his father had to go back to school to learn to use Bondo to stay competitive in his business because the new cars were not built to last as long as the old ones and soldering them back together was no longer cost effective.

The lead we use in casting might have too low of a tin content to "Wet" properly to the metal though I believe grandpa used acid flux also. I would be more worried about the acidic flux causing your solder pot to rust more than a gun barrel like you were. I am one of the strange ones that cleans my solder pot every time I use it and wipe all steel surfaces down with Rig universal before storing it until the next fall/spring casting season.

If I was going to use solder that had been exposed to plumbers acid I would bring a half a lobster pot of water up to a boil with the bars in it and pull them out while hot to let the heat evaporate the water off of them. I would then mark them to warn myself to heat them slowly across the water boiling point with a torch slowly on a incline so if I hit a water filled void it would just release steam and not get into a pool of melted solder to explode. Myself, I would do the same thing I do with all my bad mixes or transition pots... pour the lead into fishing weights and sell them by the ounce to a bait~N~tackle store for half of what he charges his customers for them.

[XWrench3]

i had added tin to the pot, because before this flew into my brain, i was going to cast a batch of rifle bullets. fortunately, i had not yet added any linotype. your suggestion of selling off the lead for sinkers at a fishing store is a good one. but i do not own a sinker mold at all. and i doubt many fishermen would be willing to buy 45-70 "split shot"! lol. actually, i just came up with an idea for that lead. my brother wants me to cast him some weights to put in the back of his vehicle in the winter for additional traction (2wd full size cargo van). he is going to coat them in truck bed plastic coating before he puts them into his van, so that would be a good place to use that lead up. he is going to bring me a bucket of wheel weights to make the weights out of, so i will just keep 20 pounds of his fresh wheel weight lead in exchange. i am going to cast in a piece of chain into each weight so he can secure them in case of an accident. not sure what each piece will weigh yet, but i can not have him get hit in the head from one of these flying around!!!