Dross, flux, and Alloys

[Gene Perryman]

I attempted to cast my first bullets today and out of about 40, one was possibly good enough to keep !!!!
The dross is the black crude that comes up, right ??? There is a medium gray substance that appears on the top, is that the tin and antimony ??? I am using a small butane camp stove to heat with. It's probably not getting the mix hot enough, right ??? When I put my ingots in the pot, they melted in less than 10 mins !!!!
Please advise.

Thans in advance,
Gene Perryman

[JSnover]

How much lead and where did it come from? Ten minutes to melt is plenty hot. Skim off the black stuff. Save it. Pour the clean lead into a seperate pot for boolit casting. Hard to say waht's on top of your melt. Skim it off and save it.

[Gene Perryman]

My lead (alloy) is range pick-up. It was dirty, but I thought I got rid of all the crude when I melted it down to make my ingots yesterday. I'm using a stainless steel cook pot which I cleaned out before I started melting to day.

The medium gray substance refuses to mix and the more I stir, the more comes to the top. I saved the last batch....there was still some in the melt when I stopped and poured my ingots today....

When I was melting the range pick-up, some old bullets that looked like 58 cal. minnie balls refused to melt. I skimmed them off. I figured they were zinc alloy or sometype of babbit metal ??? Most of the pick-up melted all most right away 7-8 mins, definitely less than 10 mins.

Thanks,
Gene

[Cadillo]

How much lead and where did it come from? Ten minutes to melt is plenty hot. Skim off the black stuff. Save it. Pour the clean lead into a seperate pot for boolit casting. Hard to say waht's on top of your melt. Skim it off and save it.


I'm really curious. Why is he to save the black stuff he is skimming off? Does it have some utility? Not trying to start a fuss. I'm new to this and would like to know what it is that I'm missing here.

[Wayne Smith]

With outdoor range lead you will probably never get rid of all the sand and dirt. Remember the specifc gravity of lead - things will float, but they can't get through the lead to get to the top! Every time I empty my Cast Iron pot I find a layer of iron oxide that is stuck to the bottom of the pot, no matter how much I flux or stir. Every time I flux my ww I tend to get some of the rust, but there's always more.

[GRid.1569]

I get a lot of that dark grey stuff as well... I flux with the frankford arsenel cleancast...what have you used? and yeah, why keep the dark stuff?

[docone31]

If stuff keeps floating to the top, keep heating and stirring. It sounds like it is either too cool or you got some range scrap that was castings with zinc thrown in for good luck.
I would crank up the heat, keep stirring. I use Kitty Litter on top of my casting melt, nothing on top of my alloying melt.
Zinc takes a long time to melt. One of the identifying factors.

[fredj338]

My lead (alloy) is range pick-up. It was dirty, but I thought I got rid of all the crude when I melted it down to make my ingots yesterday. I'm using a stainless steel cook pot which I cleaned out before I started melting to day.

The medium gray substance refuses to mix and the more I stir, the more comes to the top. I saved the last batch....there was still some in the melt when I stopped and poured my ingots today....

When I was melting the range pick-up, some old bullets that looked like 58 cal. minnie balls refused to melt. I skimmed them off. I figured they were zinc alloy or sometype of babbit metal ??? Most of the pick-up melted all most right away 7-8 mins, definitely less than 10 mins.

Thanks,
Gene
Flux often, every time you add metal. The round balls & mini balls are probably pure lead. Pure lead melts at quite a bit highr temps than alloys, 750deg or so. Muzzle loaders I know use only pure lead for projectiles, so they should melt if left in long enough.

[montana_charlie]

I attempted to cast my first bullets today and out of about 40, one was possibly good enough to keep !!!!
The dross is the black crude that comes up, right ???
Anything that is black or brown is some kind of contaminate that you want out of there. Skim it out.

There is a medium gray substance that appears on the top, is that the tin and antimony ???
Probably. It doesn't come floating up from the depths, it just 'forms' on the surface like a thin 'scum' that gets thicker as time goes by.
That would be the 'oxides' that you really want to return to the alloy.
Fluxing...I prefer a wooden stick for that...removes the excess oxygen from the oxide and 'reduces' it back into metal.

I am using a small butane camp stove to heat with. It's probably not getting the mix hot enough, right ??? When I put my ingots in the pot, they melted in less than 10 mins !!!!
Since you didn't indicate how much metal is in the pot, it's hard to estimate how long it should take to melt. But ten minutes seems awfully fast for going from a cold potful to molten alloy.

A thermometer can tell you how hot you are running, and keeping the alloy around 750 will minimize the formation of oxides...won't stop it, but will slow it down.

As a rough gauge for you, a ten pound load of lead typically takes about twenty minutes to melt, in most pots.

CM

[JSnover]

I'm really curious. Why is he to save the black stuff he is skimming off? Does it have some utility? Not trying to start a fuss. I'm new to this and would like to know what it is that I'm missing here.

Just a habit of mine, I guess. I want to know what it is before I toss it. When it cools, it might be hard like plastic, soft like wax or grease... Since he says his lead is range scrap I wonder if he wound up with a bunch of old lube. It is odd, though, to have a lot of contaminates after the scrap has been made into ingots. By the time the ingots are in the pot, ready for the boolit mold, the melt should be pretty clean.

[KYCaster]

Go to the "Lead and Alloys" area and read the sticky "Gold, purple and blue" you'll probably find your answer there.

It sounds to me like you're just getting normal oxidation. When everything is right, the only thing left to skim off will be the oxidized remains of your flux.

Jerry

[Echo]

When I was melting the range pick-up, some old bullets that looked like 58 cal. minnie balls refused to melt.
Thanks,
Gene

Those boolits were probably pure lead, and pure lead melts at a higher temperature than does lead alloy. Save them and melt them with stick-on WW's for a resource of (fairly) pure lead.

[XWrench3]

i do not keep any of the "dross" that i skim off. the little bit of lead that is in there, is not enough to fuss over. the rest, is garabge. as for fluxing, since you are using range lead,which is bound to have dirt etc. imbedded into it, i would flux 3 or 4 times. i usually do once with wax, then with saw dust. i would do that twice in your case. stir the flux in like mad. as much as you can without hurting your self. after that, let it sit for about 1 minute before scraping off the junk. give it a chance to come to the top. i flux twice when smelting, but when i cast, i still get a little. i flux there as well, but i leave the last flux (the saw dust) in the pot until i am down about 80% of the way. at that point, i refil and flux again. p.s. i always leave the casting pot filled with lead. i do not know if that is a great idea or not, but it is what i do. i figure that it is already hot, i might as well use that heat to my advantage. so far, it has not bit me in the butt.

[Whitespider]

The dross is the black crude that comes up, right ???
Nope, that’s dirt, crud, ****, junk and what-have-you.

There is a medium gray substance that appears on the top, is that the tin and antimony???
The medium gray substance refuses to mix and the more I stir, the more comes to the top.
That’s dross. Yeah, it can contain tin and antimony, also lead and probably any other trace metals in the melt. Most of it is oxidized metals, which may or may not be able to be “fluxed” back into the melt. The more you stir (especially if no “fluxing” agent is present) the more melt you expose to atmosphere, causing more oxidation, producing more dross.

I am using a small butane camp stove to heat with. It's probably not getting the mix hot enough, right ???
…some old bullets that looked like 58 cal. minnie balls refused to melt.
Oh, I’m pretty sure your heat source is hot enough. Just because the ingots are melted doesn’t mean the melt is ready, it will continue to heat up, allow enough time.
Most muzzle loaders use pure, or almost pure lead, which melts at a higher temperature that lead alloyed with tin. As the melt comes up to temperature they’ll melt.


edit-
Hey, the server filtered out the word c-r-a-p and replaced it with ****, is that a "bad" word here????

[Gene Perryman]

First of all fellows, thanks for replying to my thread........

I started up my little stove this morning and with a half empty bottle of butane (the temp. lowers alittle when it gets about 1/2 empty) it melted pure lead from a cold start in 4.5 mins...About a couple of mins. later, I added two ingots and in 10 mins., all was melted.................

My first bullet from a cold mould was good, so go figure that ???? I believe I got some candle wax in the mould when I was preparing it, as all the bullets have the exact same marks/ small indentions.

I think the gray stuff was just crude !!!!

Thanks,
Gene

I'm going to try again Sat. when I got more time.......

[454PB]

I guess I'm wasteful. It doesn't make much sense to me to save a few ounces of dirt and dross from 20 lbs. of melt when I have 1500 lbs. of lead alloys stored.

I do 99% of my casting from a bottom draw pot, and I leave the dross and dirt on the surface of the melt as an oxygen barrier until I'm done casting, then skim it off and discard.

Storing dross is the ultimate expression of "hoarding".

[Gene Perryman]

Cast about 150 rds today. Wts varied from 151 to 157. I'm pretty sure the med gray substance is unmelted lead. IMHO my little butane stove is not getting the mix hot enough to thoroughly mix the metals. Most of the bullets look great, but the size seems to be too large .359 to .361. I'll probably have to resize, rats...............

My uncle let me borrow his Coleman propane stove to try. The flame was larger and hotter, but the grill held my pot too high to take advantage of it..............

Sidebar: 40% of the WW's you get now are zinc !!!!!



Thanks,
Gene