Rainbow of Colors from the WW melting session

[FISH4BUGS]

This has come up before, but I can't find the thread. I was melting down the WW's and was smokin' along doing a good production run for making ingots. A particularly dirty batch of wheel weights got put into the pot, and was added to the existing melt. After a wonderful little fire burning off the smoke, and after I skimmed the clips, the metal first took a nice light gold hue on the top, then it turned deep plum purple in a minute or so. Skimming had little effect, nor did turning down the heat. I fluxed and stirred, and nothing happened.
Does anyone recall the thread that this was discussed under? If not, what happened that caused this?

[Wayne Smith]

Don't recall the post, but the color was caused by high temps. Something about the changing chemical composition of the surface of the lead.

[Buckshot]

.................Yup, heat.

..............Buckshot

[454PB]

Or maybe some stick on wheelweights of pure lead......

[FISH4BUGS]

.................Yup, heat.

..............Buckshot
Do most of you watch the heat level when you are smelting WW's down into ingots? It seems to me that you can just crank the heat and melt them down, skim and flux and skim again, ladle them into an ingot mould and add more WW's, then repeat and repeat and repeat.
I actually dump everything into the melting pot. I don't go through and take out the stick on WW's or much of anything else. If it is dirty, it will float to the top and it will be skimmed. It seems to me that overall production is better at this point because the alloying (adding linotype and skimming and fluxing) is better done in the Lee 20 Lb Pot than in a 75-100 lb WW melting pot on top of a 60k BTU burner.
I am open to suggestions, however.

[mooman76]

I don't mess around when I do WW's. I more or less do like you fish4bugs. If I have allot of the stick-ons I will pull them aside and I don't clean up the lead, as said it will float to the top anyway. I will pull out trash that is eazy to get while the pot is melting. Some people use paint thinner or some petrolium products to clean up all the gunk but why waist your money and time! I flux a little but no matter how good you flux you will still have to do it again when you do your boolits!

[Springfield]

I use my temp guage when I melt the wheelweights. I don't lke to let it get too hot, don't want the occassional zinc weight to melt in there. If I don't let it get past 750 anything that didn't melt is suspect and I pull it out of the pot. Why risk it, the lead was cheap enough to throw out the suspected materiel.