Is somthing wrong

[TNRELOADER]

So today I was melting some ww down and casting into ingots to fit my lee pot. I used a pair of cutters to check for zinc and believe I got them all out. After making about five ingots I filled the mold let it cool and dumped it out, when I did the ingot broke in halve and had a dull grainy appearance where it broke. I have never had any of my pure lead ingots do that. Was the ingot still to hot or is their something else in the mixture that made it be fragile. After it cooled I tried to break it with a hammer but it just dented. I was worried that I may have missed some zinc or something. Sorry for the stupid question but I am new and this was my first time dealing with ww material. Also why do these ingots come out frosted where lead pipe I have been doing comes out very shiny.

Thank you

[pworley1]

Unless you were running you pot really hot, the zinc should have been obvious in the pot if you had any. It should have still been floating on the top after the lead and tin had melted. The problem was most likely that the ingots were still too hot.

[RickinTN]

Your ingot mold had become hot. The antimony in the alloy gives the grainy texture, and the ingot hadn't cooled enough to remove from the mold. Sometimes I cool my ingot mold by setting it on a damp cloth folded several times for a minute or so. This helps to cool it and your ingots will cool faster as well.
Rick

[zuke]

You tried to remove you brick too early and it wasn't cooled enough.

[spfd1903]

I only have two ingot molds, so I use the same technique as Rickin TN. Put a heavy bath towel down on a piece of plywood after I soak the towel and wring it out. A lot of steam and sizzle but I can keep rotating the ingot molds quickly and the alloy is cooled enough to stay intact.

[TNRELOADER]

Thanks for the information. I will try the damp towel the next time.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I seriously doubt you have zinc contamination, from reading your description. Also, you would have noticed the following ...WW alloy contaminated with Zinc will continually form an oatmeal like dross, as fast as you can scrape it off.

FYI, casting WW with fairly hot molds will produce some pretty ingots...But if there is some Zinc in there, the ingots cast will be oatmeal like, no matter how hot you get the melt, but the Hotter you can get the contaminated alloy, the less oatmeal you will see.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?155778-my-first-Zinc-contamination-in-WW-smelting&highlight=

AND, as you found out, if you dump a WW ingot out too soon and it breaks, it will have that "dull grainy appearance" that you seen, unlike pure lead...So you have no problem.
Good Luck.

[Ole]

What you described is totally normal. As others have stated, let the metal cool longer in the mold.

[TXGunNut]

That's why I now have four ingot moulds. With a decent sized smelting pot I was wasting precious fuel waiting for the ingot moulds to cool.

[zuke]

My melting pot hold's a lot, and I now run 5 LEE mold's with "improved" handle's and use the wet towel method to cool them quicker.

[osteodoc08]

I'm not a big fan of water around molten lead, although I have used the damp towel method before.

Some cheap metal loaf pans are what I use. You can make decent sized 5-8# ingots. If you keep them level, they're easily stackable too.

To answer your question: all is normal. Dumped it too hot. I always tap my bricks with a pair of pliers I'm using to handle the loaf pans. You'll get a feel for what's cool enough to dump in no time

[TNRELOADER]

Thank you for the information.I will get me a few more molds. After reading the posts above I believe they were to hot.

[Octaron1]

Put your molds in a shallow pan of water and add more water as it boils off.
This works great with muffin pans.

[62chevy]

Put your molds in a shallow pan of water and add more water as it boils off.
This works great with muffin pans.

I think Darwin is about to strike.

[osteodoc08]

Put your molds in a shallow pan of water and add more water as it boils off.
This works great with muffin pans.

Definitely WOULD NOT recommend this. Your water surrounding the pans will boil and flash steam almost immediately. Not to mention, they will likely float in any appreciable amount of water making a moving target for the liquidous lead to be poured. Not safe and not advisable.

[ghh3rd]

Some of my ingots break in half if I get impatient and dump them from the mould too soon. The metal does look very grainy. Doesn't hurt anything, just not too purty.

[SSGOldfart]

Good time to get a cool drink right after you pour while the ingots cool in the mold don't play with the water your going to make a mistake sooner or later,if a ingot breaks put it back in the pot

[mold maker]

As with anything else, common sense tells us to keep all water away from and below the melting pot. If the ingot molds are distanced from the pot, water cooling is possible, although not recommended.
We need to offer advice, more than severe criticism.

[MrWolf]

I also use the folded towels and drench them. I learned the hard way to use a 2nd pair of leather gloves as "pot holders" to pick the molds up after a bit. Even after awhile there is still a bit of steam there.

[JSnover]

A nice cool concrete floor works fairly well. I've also used an aluminum loading block. The damp towel method is probably the fastest and safest way.

[Old Caster]

If your sprue breaks like this it is also because the mold is too hot the same as your ingot mold was. Coming out of the ingot mold like this can only make it hard to pick the ingot up but if it happens to a bullet mold, it will smear between the mold top and the sprue bottom and eventually push the two apart making an obvious curved line in its place even putting a groove in an aluminum mold top.

[dakotashooter2]

Since most of my smelting is done in the winter I just set my ingot molds on the icy driveway to cool.......................

[captain-03]

You tried to remove you brick too early and it wasn't cooled enough.

.. and the answer is ^^^^ ..... at least from my experience.

[mold maker]

More moulds are a good investment. They speed up production, and quality. You can always sell them when your through using them.

[MrWolf]

Aye, more moulds would help. I bought the RCBS ingot moulds initially, then realized everyone else was using cast cornbread moulds and such. Bought three Lodge cornbread moulds with nine sections each and just left them outside for the winter to season. Work great and the lead just drops from them with no effort.

[CGT80]

Put your molds in a shallow pan of water and add more water as it boils off.
This works great with muffin pans.

This worked great for me.

I started with a wet towel folded in an aluminum pan. It took a while to cool the molds and the water evaporated. I finally just added more water to the pan. I use 1/4"-3/8" of water. The aluminum molds were still hot enough after dropping the bricks out, that they burned my hands through leather stick welding gloves. It took a minute to get all the bricks out and get the 4 molds back into place to pour more lead. If I thought there was still water, I just heated the mold next to the fish fryer. A full face shield is a good idea, just in case. My molds are 1"x2" aluminum C channel with ends welded so they are around 6" long. I used a big pair of channel lock pliers to move the hot molds. I was well aware of what could happen if I poured liquid lead over any water.

[dondiego]

You can safely pour molten lead into water but you had better not get water into molten lead!

[fatelvis]

Jerry Miculek does the same thing here in this youTube video, so don't feel bad! Lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSgQ82Kqhzo

[HeavyMetal]

I made 6 ingot molds out of 1 1/4 inch angle iron, and these got hot enough during "smelting" that I had an extended cooling period.

I then bought a moving blanket from Harbor Freight to use as a cooling station, much better than towels or rags, soaked it good folded it to position 3 or 4 ingot molds on it at a time.

Flip it as needed and resoak it as needed but don't keep water near the lead pot splashing can and does occur with the usual results, LOL!

I'll also add that you need to be sure you have a large clean work area and good, SOLID, picnic bench will make your back easier to live with the next day.

[Down South]

I use 6 ingot moulds. I don't try to cool them. I have a half sheet of 3/4" plywood that I set the moulds on and dump onto.
After you pour the moulds, just make sure they have cooled long enough that the ingots don't break.
I have the same opinion as most of the other posters. You dumped the mould before the ingot had cooled enough. I've done it a few times myself with the broken ingots looking just as you described.