I've been scoring a bit of pewter on an auction site. Today was time to start smelting. Everything was going well till I had a piece of Bolivian pewter. Instant mush. My melt temp was right at 700°, Lee pot but checked with my Lyman thermometer, I'm not sure if that big bowl had silver in it or if it was zinc. I've got close to 10 lbs of contaminated pewter.
Ya can see how mushy it was. That was the stuff dripping out of the pot. I did notice that there was a lot of liquid metal seeping out of the mush. I would hope that that metal was tin.
Has anyone else ever ran into this problem? Any ideas? Any solutions?