bigborefan
11-25-2007, 02:15 PM
Has anyone had an experiance smelting lead where the lead took an extroardinary lenght of time to solidify in ingot form? I purchased some scrap lead a few years ago hoping that most if not all was pure lead. After getting it home, I tested the lead and sorted out the pure lead which was about 90% of the pile. I smelted about 30 lbs that showed a BHN equal to Lyman #2 alloy which is nice and hard. After pouring into ingots, it would take as long as 15 minutes to solidify. I just got through smelting linotype and those solidified in three minutes or less, enough time to fall out of the mould with no problems. The problem lead was not to hot. It was still liquid at 460 degrees. When solidified, the ingots were not shiney like pure lead or linotype. They were a dull silver or grey. What lead could this possibly be? Even though the hardness would make good bullets, I'm afraid that the sprue would take forever to solidify and I'd be smearing lead on my mould top during cutoff. It's only 30 lbs but I'm still curious on what it could be.