Boolits with black smudges

[1stSkink]

Cast many .40 and .45acp boolits this weekend. More than a few have what look like black smudges in/on them. Is this tin oxide? I would hate to have to recast these, but I am concerned as to what is going on. I fluxed with candle wax and stirred with a piece of wood. Scraped the sides, but kept coming up with residue on the top. These are WWs that were fluxed with oil, wax and stirred with wood and a metal dipper. Thoughts?

Thanks,

Skink

[runfiverun]

are they spots??
and random?
or dots of shiney with black rings?
some gunk in the lead will leave odd shaped splotches.
graphite will make the whole thing somewhat grey/black
dark rings are usually too much tin with lead soft spots surrounding it.
little folds and such are lead oxides.

[stubshaft]

Where's the pics? Probably overfluxed and cool alloy allowing contaminants into the mold.

[MikeS]

as you're stirring with a wooden stick, it's possible that very small pieces of charred wood are left behind in the pot, and are actually ending up in your boolits. I had this same problem when I was using a wooden stick to stir my alloy that was a bit on the flaky side. Once I went to using sticks that held together better the problem went away.

[Sasquatch-1]

I used oil smelting once and all the ingots had black residue on top. It came out when I used sawdust while casting.

[Moonie]

Are you water dropping the boolits? Something in the water here causes what looks like inclusions, air cool and they look perfect, water drop and they look dirty.

[hyoder]

Zinc, maybe

[1stSkink]

I think I have included the photos of the boolits with the black smudges. I think the photo on th efar left shows it the best.

If not, here are the specifics:

100% WW, fluxed with new motor oil and wax in a dutch oven over a turkey fryer

Ingots melted in Lee bottom pour

a few grams of Sn solder added to each pot, then fluxed with wax and stirred with piece of Mesquite wood and metal spoon. Dark ashy looking stuff taken off top, sides scraped and additional ashy material removed.

Boolits out of a Lee 6 banger, waterdropped in 3 gallons of water.

My big question is are these safe to use or are they going to cause uincrease wear to the barrels of the firearms???

I do have an additional question that was raised by a poster above: Can you overflux?

Thanks for your help, Guys!

skink

[geargnasher]

Water-dropping does that. Add a tablespoon of dish detergent to your drop water next time, it helps. Other than that, don't worry about it, those boolits look pretty dang decent to me.

Gear

[Bwana]

Nothing wrong with those boolits and they will not hurt your bore. Can you over flux? Well, yes you can. You can flux so much you won't get any casting done. Other than that, no.

[1stSkink]

Thanks for the replies!

So what is causing the black smudges? I notice it more on the >.401 boolits, but it appears on all the boolits?

[Moonie]

All my water dropped boolits look exactly the same. Do some air cooled, you will see the difference. I've heard it said that minerals in the water can cause it.

[turtlezx]

+ 1 on the water causing spots

[runfiverun]

the white is from too much mold heat.
the black gunk is most likely gunk trapped in the alloy.
i have never used mesquite to stir a pot with so cannot say that's the problem.
when i waterdrop my boolits turn a galvanized color,but i have some super hard water around here.
hard as in we have a carbon dioxide geyser with a big build up of calcium carbonate around it less than a mile from my house hard.

[AndyC]

I get that as well. My camera is dead so I tried to take a pic with my phone; my apologies for the unfocused image, but you can see the difference overall.

Blue-lubed boolits = water-quenched Red-lube = Air-cooled



It's not as clear as I wanted, of course, but as runfive above says, they have a galvanized appearance.