Funny looking bars

[calsite]

I've been driving around all winter with some lead sheeting and WW's that I scored for traction, getting kinda tired of hearing the stuff role around so I sat down the other day and starting smelting. I decided, Let's make some #2 alloy first and then see what I have left, I was melting at approx. 650, approx. 1/2 & 1/2 soft lead to WW's about 20#'s and I even added little bit of pure tin, I'm guessing about a pound and a quarter. Fluxed with parafin and Walnut sawdust. The tin I have is round balls about the diameter of a quarter, I added 6 balls. (haven't gotten around to weighing a ball yet. My bars came out very dull looking, almost whiteish in color, like old coin silver, also they had little sparkles in them. I wouldn't think the 650 would've been to hot. Could this just be some kinda outter oxidation? Too much tin ?? Haven't cast any of this stuff yet.

Day#2, I finished up melting down the rest of my sheet lead into bars, fluxed a couple of times with sawdust and parafin, man the crap just kept coming to the top, yellowish dust after awhile, couldn't get rid of it. I almost took a pic and submitted it of my pan, it looked like I was smelting gold. What was this stuff?????

[cohutt]

i find the closer to pure lead a smelt is the more gold/bronze looking the oxidation film is on top of the smelt. it tends to skin up and wrinkle faster/more than ww. maybe the higher melting temp contributes, i don't know.

the closer to pure the shinier the inital finish is on the ingots too, vs the frosted look of ww. again, maybe my smelt temp frosts the ww ingots more, i don't know

maybe you can tell the difference, bars/ingots of ww on left, bars/ingots of soft/almost pure on right:
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m284/cohutt/misc028.jpg

99.9% pure clean xray shielding scrap, fresh out of the dutch oven:

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m284/cohutt/leadingots001.jpg

[armoredman]

Drool.

[cbr]

Wish I had a stack of ingots like that!

[idahoron]

My pure lead looked the same. I heated and skimmed until it turned a yellowish grey. Then I added 250 grains of lead shot per 5 pounds of pure lead and some candle wax. The shot made the lead "homognized" and they pour GREAT bullets for my muzzleloader. The ingots I poured just thunked when dropped. So the shot didn't harden the lead. Ron

[calsite]

Those bars pictured look very similar to mine, I thought maybe I had added too much tin to my alloy. I was estimating 1 Lbs. to 20#'s of alloy. (is this too much) Yes my pure lead bars are quite a bit shinier, a yellow oxidation, looked alot like powdered sulfur, I kept cleaning and cleaning it off the top. I casted a big pile of ingots, probably over a hundred in the last 24 hours. Still got more to go....... Darn the luck