Is this tin? If so, what I am I doing wrong?

[Brother_Love]

This is Lyman #2 and it was smelted and fluxed by me, fluxed several times. When I melted it in my Lee pot I get what you see coming to the top. Is some of this tin? I have fluxed it several times in the casting pot and it still has a large amount of the dross.

Help!

Thanks, BL

Attachment 169089

Attachment 169090

[OS OK]

Boy…you got me? I want to say ash from wood shavings and sawdust but mine turns black in smelting and I never use it in my pouring pot just paraffin. Looks like some tin mixed in but too hard to tell from pics. alone, need to touch and look closely. It appears like some kind of dry powdered metal in the pot there. Lyman #2…?You went accidentally WAY over temp. with it?

Can't wait to hear what one of the Pro's have to say

[bangerjim]

It is definitely metal oxide. I have seen it at times on my casting pot. I always flux with beeseax ONLY and anything that will go back in does. Then I skim that crud off the top and throw it away.

You can also get that same stuff by scraping the side of your casting pot with a metal scraper to clean it. The oxides float to the top constantly.....seems to never end. But I have found nothing in that gray-green-brown stuff that is worth messing with.

You can save it and waste time and fuel trying to salvage a tiny fraction of an ounce of "mystery metal" out of it if you wish. I say just toss it and move on with know alloys. Your time is worth more than the teeny bit of "something" you ever wring out of it.

[runfiverun]

there is quite a bit of metal there actually.
is it worth getting back?
maybe.
personally.
I'd pick out the bigger chunks and the clean stuff out and throw it in the pile to be smelted later.
then wipe everything into a plastic bag and toss it.

after that I'd flux what I have left in the pot, drain it out into some ingot molds, clean the pot and start over.

[Brother_Love]

Thank you. I forgot to add the pot had been stored empty for several months sealed in a plastic bag. I will drain and clean.

[GhostHawk]

If it is in my casting pot I just skim and save. Next time I smelt that is what I will start with.

If it is oxidized metal and I would say a fair portion of it is, you should be able to recover a good chunk of it.

When you flux, are you stirring?

Don't skimp on the sawdust, you should have a 1/8 to 1/4 " layer over all. That should be trying to burn, that should suck all the oxygen out of that gray powdery stuff. Once it does, if it is hot enough, it goes back to liquid metal.

You also need to scrape the sides, bottom so that everything nasty is worked loose to float to the top.

Just my 2 cents.

[bangerjim]

I would not recommend using sawdust or anything chunky in your casting pot, especially a bottom pour! The "stuff" will get down in the spout and cause all kinds of problems. And yes, it DOES get down in there! Most will float, but some will work it's way down.

Beeswax is the only thing you should use in your casting pot. After all, YOU made the 3X fluxed feed ingots, right? And they are 100% pure with no dirt, oxides or inclusions, right? With perfectly clean & fluxed feed ingots, all you need in the casting pot is beeswax to REDUCE the Sn back in. A small pea-sized hunk will give you a mirror shiny surface in just a few seconds with no crud to get into your bottom pour spigot. Beeswax will NOT flare up at proper casting temps and smells great! If it flares, your pot is just too hot.....a good temp indicator.

banger

[HangFireW8]

Agreed on the beeswax.

Perhaps extreme temperatures? What are you running at? A Lee pot that doesn't cycle on and off can go over 900F and stay there. Point being, I had something that looked like that after running a pot way too hot for a while.

I keep all dross in a metal coffee can. When it is full and I'm smelting, I'll put it in the smelting pot with a bunch of steel clips from COWW, a lot of sawdust, and let it cook down for a while. I only get an ingot or two, but it's pretty rich stuff.

[PBaholic]

This is Antimony, and a little tin. Use some pine sawdust to try to get it back in the alloy.

You can heat the dross up above 1500 degrees, and melt it. The impurities will burn off, and you will be left with a greyish metal that is crystaline. Antimony oxidizes out of lead alloy easily, and is tough to get back in.

[Dusty Bannister]

This is Antimony, and a little tin. Use some pine sawdust to try to get it back in the alloy.

You can heat the dross up above 1500 degrees, and melt it. The impurities will burn off, and you will be left with a greyish metal that is crystaline. Antimony oxidizes out of lead alloy easily, and is tough to get back in.

I think I would avoid exceeding 1000 degrees with lead due to the potential for toxic issues. Most home casters do not have the means to get to 1500 degrees anyway, so I suppose this warning is moot.

[RogerDat]

That looks like crud from a smelting pot rather than a pot of finished ingots. I too would wonder about high heat. Thermometer is very useful, Lee pot numbers are not consistent enough to count on from one pot to the next. If smelting I would be crushing that against the side of the pot with a wooden stir stick, tends to squeeze the metal out and leave ash behind floating on the top available for scooping out with slotted spoon.

Ladle casters can tolerate a bit of fluxing with sawdust in a casting pot, I think best to avoid it if possible but it won't cause the clogging problems that it can in a bottom pour. Bees wax works really well, I have gotten it at a discount from farm markets buying the broken bees wax candles from vendors. Takes very little. For smelting I use candle wax from garage sale candles. As banger mentioned bees wax won't generally ignite as easily as cheap wax candles.

Lyman #2 is a pretty rich alloy, this means it has lots of stuff available to cook out if the temp is high. It also means the dross being skimmed is pretty rich in alloy. I collect my dross, drippings, cast bullets that fail inspection, pot scrapings etc. in bread loaf pan while smelting and casting, when pan gets full the collected dross goes into coffee can. When dross gets melted down once or twice a year the resulting 10 - 12 lbs. of lead alloy tends to be pretty rich.

[John Boy]

The pictures show normal dross that has not been fluxed completely for the metal to remain in the melt.
Properly fluxed melt will have a dross that is a blackish/gray powder only floating on the top of the melt.
Not identified yet in both OP's posts ... what he is using for flux and is he mixing it in the melt!
Until identified - a cr** shoot guessing the issue

[Chris24]

Definitely antimony, tin and oxides. I had a pile like that from a bad smelt one time. I saved it, and later threw it in a pot of pure lead, and fluxed it with beeswax. I ended up with some nice alloy, and the ingots were very clean.

[Brother_Love]

I acquired some beeswax today from a local apiary. I was using a commercial flux compound recommended to me. I sort of created a slurry on the top of the lead, not what I was used too. I am going to drain and clean the pot and start back with the beeswax.
Thank uou

[robg]

Turn up the heat and flux again just skim the dirt off

[2ndAmendmentNut]

The best flux imho are the ugly boolits that I didn't notice until after I ran them through the lube/sizer. A few ugly boolits added to my melt fluxes the lead beautifully. I usually don't even skim it off unless it keeps on smoking or I want to empty the bottom pour.

[farmersamm]

Your pot is turned up too high.

Happened to me when I first started casting again after 39 years. Notice the knob, and where it's set.

Keep the metal just to the melting point. Somewhere South of a BILLLION degrees, and it won't happen.

Some stuff floating on the top is good, don't mess with it......it's a protective layer that keeps all the goodies from oxidizing. And, you don't need a thermometer, just observe where the setting is that just keeps it all molten. Note the setting on the knobie thingie..........just enough heat to keep it workable.

Leastways, that's been my experience.

AND NO, the **** won't flux back into the mix Tried that too, and it didn't work. Just discarded the mess, and started over.

[MaryB]

I chuck all the dross into my smelting pot. Next batch of wheel weights and I skim off what won't mix back in and toss it with the clips.

[runfiverun]

that orange color is typical lead oxide.
if your getting that your temp is OMG too high.

[Oklahoma Rebel]

when you have a bottom pour that's dirty like that and are going to drain it, I suggest heating it to liquid, and tipping the whole thing out into a coffe pot/ you large smelter ( using welding gloves or something) if you drain it through the bottom it will clog like no other. I also think a thermometer is necessary and helpful in many ways. some things, like solder can be i.d'ed by its melting temp. there it a melting temp chart somewhere in one of the stickies. good luck, I have been having the same problems with dross with metal in it. like large clean droplets, ang I cant seem to get them back into the alloy. gonna try some of the things. right now it is 20:1, any suggestions on the temp I should be at? any help would be appreciated. have a good day! Travis