Roto Metals response to bad alloy.....

[Magana559]

Something don't smell right. Maybe the sister plant has issues.

[45bpcr]

Hello Roy,

You made out alot better than I did! I spoke to a very nice and polite young lady who informed me that my casting pot was contaminated by some other alloy.
Now, I run 2 pots. One for ladle pouring 20-1 for my 40 and 45 cal bullets and one for bottom pouring my light 40 and 38 cal using 16-1. These are all rifle target bullets.
If I used the dull grey notched ingots the results were the same for either alloy as per my pictures.
I found that if I kept the melt under 600 degrees and fluxed the daylights out of it I could pull large spoonfulls of heavy grey crud off the top and then it would cast ok. And the bullets still tip ove steel animals.

As a small businessman I understand all company's make mistakes. I've just ordered 8 ingots of #2 alloy to experiment with some very long Money bullets for my wifes 38-55. We'll see hoe it goes.

45bpcr

Oh, and to the gentleman from this board who offerd to analyze the alloy for me, Thank You

[Old Caster]

45bpcr, Is there any chance that when you mixed your alloy, the lead that you mixed with tin and thought was pure, actually contained some zinc. That foamy grey crud sounds like that is what is present. If you have a lot of it, there is a method using sulfur to get the zinc out but I don't know the particulars.

[45bpcr]

No,
The only alloy i've used for the last 3 or 4 years has been purchased from rotometals.

45bpcr

[rbertalotto]

Ryan from Roto Metals tells me that I must have contaminated the lead with copper. Huh? Nope. The two Lee 20 pots I have were bought brand new and never had anything in them except 20-1 RotoMetals alloy. I don't have any copper to contaminate anything.

He said the analysis of the lead I sent back showed 95% Lead, 4% Tin and 1% copper..........

He said copper would form the crud we are experiencing.

[Old Caster]

Ryan from Roto Metals tells me that I must have contaminated the lead with copper. Huh? Nope. The two Lee 20 pots I have were bought brand new and never had anything in them except 20-1 RotoMetals alloy. I don't have any copper to contaminate anything.

He said the analysis of the lead I sent back showed 95% Lead, 4% Tin and 1% copper..........


He said copper would form the crud we are experiencing.

This sounds odd to me because a few years ago, I bought some sheet lead that had an obvious copper sheen. I mixed it with wheel weights and had an obvious copper film on the top of the melt. I continually skimmed it off and had no deleterious effects otherwise. The only time I have had the foamy crud on top as mentioned was when someone gave me some lead and the pouring qualities of this alloy was particularly poor. It was possible while bottom pouring to have the spout clog up before pouring all 6 cavities on a 200 grain mold and every time I fluxed it, I got some of the foamy crud out. I don't know that this was zinc but highly suspect it. Supposedly it came from an estate sale of someone who was highly qualified in casting and was marked 12% Babbit. It didn't say what percent of anything else but I suspect wheel weights which may have included zinc.

[alamogunr]

It is not surprising that Roto Metals is reluctant to believe that their safeguards may not be perfect. Their reputation depends on it. At least they are willing to make good.

What does surprise me is that some here don't want to believe rbertalotto or 45bpcr when they state that only Roto Metals alloys have been used. Obviously, both these gentlemen are serious about their boolets and use them in competition.

If this had happened to me, I couldn't say that only XXX alloy had been in my pots. I use WW almost exclusively and add solder for tin. My problems, when they occur, center around temperature, cleanliness of the mold, etc. I am also sure that there is some variability in my WW alloy since it was accumulated over a long period of time. I also have some range scrap that doesn't seem as soft as I have been led to believe it should be.

I have some monotype that I bought from an individual that posted here a couple of years ago. I haven't used any yet but I plan to melt some down and cast into ingots but not in my casting pots. Then I will do some experimenting with it. Hopefully, it is as represented(monotype).

[40-82 hiker]

Just a thought, and please don't get me wrong because OP you seem to be a very careful and articulate person.
But have you been doing any other metal work near you're casting area where some shavings may have gotten into you pot?
Pablo

Copper shavings, if that is what you mean, cannot be incorporated into a lead alloy given the temperatures we use to smelt and cast lead. I have TIG welded copper, and the melting point of copper is 1,984 degrees F. Those incorporating copper into their alloys are using a chemical process in which they are replacing zinc and tin with copper from a chemical compound (don't remember what it is, but it is basically fertilizer - copper sulfate maybe?).

So, to accidentally add 1% metallic copper to an alloy would not only be highly unlikely, I guess it would be really impossible given our normal parameters of heat and metals we work with. It would have to be shavings of lead with a high content of copper in it to begin with.

Rotometals?

[kens]

Copper shavings, if that is what you mean, cannot be incorporated into a lead alloy given the temperatures we use to smelt and cast lead. I have TIG welded copper, and the melting point of copper is 1,984 degrees F. Those incorporating copper into their alloys are using a chemical process in which they are replacing zinc and tin with copper from a chemical compound (don't remember what it is, but it is basically fertilizer - copper sulfate maybe?).

So, to accidentally add 1% metallic copper to an alloy would not only be highly unlikely, I guess it would be really impossible given our normal parameters of heat and metals we work with. It would have to be shavings of lead with a high content of copper in it to begin with.

Rotometals?

Yes, copper CAN be smelted into lead, even at lead temperatures. Copper will precipitate into lead melt such as an ice cube melts in your refridgerator. It goes very slow, but it will happen, especially if a high tin alloy is used.
At lead temps, you cant get above about a 1% copper content, but it does happen.
For the sake of discussion lets say you got a 20lb pot of high tin alloy and drop a single gas check in there. Give it a couple hours, and the gas check will be dissolved. (and you will have that funky oatmeal looking dross)

[40-82 hiker]

Yes, copper CAN be smelted into lead, even at lead temperatures. Copper will precipitate into lead melt such as an ice cube melts in your refridgerator. It goes very slow, but it will happen, especially if a high tin alloy is used.
At lead temps, you cant get above about a 1% copper content, but it does happen.
For the sake of discussion lets say you got a 20lb pot of high tin alloy and drop a single gas check in there. Give it a couple hours, and the gas check will be dissolved. (and you will have that funky oatmeal looking dross)

Geez! Learn something new everyday! If the copper can melt (albeit slowly) 1200 degrees F away from its melting point in the presence of tin, is this in part (or in total?) actually a chemical reaction? Zinc WWs will not melt if the smelting temp is within 50 degrees (for instance - though I smelt at 675 +/- 110 degrees away from the melting point of zinc), so I really am puzzled about this "melting" of copper +/- 1200 degrees F. away from its stated melting point in the presence of tin. I would think that a chemical reaction is really to blame here, though the result is the same.

Thanks.

[Elkins45]

Think 'dissolve' rather than melt, maybe? Sugar will dissolve in a glass of cold tea but it takes 300+ degrees to melt. I found an interesting scholarly article about the problems of Cu printed circuit boards being dissolved by Sn wave solder machines, so there appears to be some real world experience with this.

[smokesahoy]

Just take it to the scrapper and bring something to write on, in a few seconds you will know exactly what it is.

Received a 70 pound box of the proper alloy today. I was told to keep the other alloy and to send one bar back to them so they could let me know what it was.

It might be useful to mix with something else to make it usable.

BTW, all of this took less than three business days.....from California to Massachusetts!

NOW THAT'S CUSTOMER SERVICE!​

[45bpcr]

So today I decided to fool with a couple of ingots marked 16-1 that were of the notched, dull, dark grey variety.
I even took some video and pictures for you folks.

This first video shows the melt at over 750 degrees to eliminate zinc contamination as a culprit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsB56xaCjf8

This second one shows the same melt being fluxed before, during and after.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBkv8qDwSjY

Fluxing the daylights out of it dosn't do much if anything.

Here's a couple of pics of the stuff I skimmed off the top.




At 362 grains it dosn't seem to weigh enough for the size of the glob. Once you skim all the **** off, the alloy underneath casts well.

My 2 cents.

45bpcr

[Lead Bandit]

What good customer service!

As for the copper able to melt thing: That's totally true. There can be many different things in an alloy besides tin and antimony. Aluminum, copper, and calcium just to name a common few.

[leadman]

I have had gas checks that I found in the bottom of my pot when I cleaned it out. They were there for for many pot fulls and still looked like a gas check.
I also have used the root killer (copper sulfate) to test the effects of the copper added to the melt. If I fluxed after adding the CS with Marvelux the Marvelux would have a purplish tint to it. I would guess it is the copper being taken out of the alloy but do not know for sure.
Maybe if the OP would try some root killer in his alloy it might help?

[alamogunr]

I've been following this thread from the start and it just occurred to me that no one has mentioned cleaning up range scrap. What little I have processed(less than 100#), I never thought about the copper jackets contaminating the lead. There is a greater ratio of copper/brass to lead than in WW for sure. I haven't noticed any problem using the lead from range scrap.

Is it because there isn't enough time in the melt to contaminate? Granted, I keep the temp lower than when casting.

[mikeym1a]

If you are interested, there are several threads on the site describing dissolving copper into alloy. mikey