Melting Down Zinc Question

[RedRiver]

Anyone use their smelting cast iron for zinc? Or should I go to the thrift store and buy a cheap steel pot? Have about 30 lbs I will be putting into banana bread tins and selling back to the scrap yard for $.25/lb.

[hc18flyer]

I melted down mine in a cast iron pot.

[BNE]

Do they pay more for an ingot?

[turtlezx]

i thought zinc was worth $2.00 a lb ??

[RedRiver]

He may give an extra nickel for clean zinc, but I'm not certain. If there were a quicker way to get more for it, I'd do it.

[RedRiver]

Just trying to stretch my wheel weight buckets farther. He gives $.07/ lb for zinc and steel wheel weights.

[mac1911]

Rotometals gets 5$ # so that 25 cents is way off IMHO. I found a few guys that I can trade Zinc with. One makes sacrificial anodes for marine use and another makes cannon balls.
I melt my zinc in a smaller pot I have. Only because I don't have a lot of zinc at any one time. My sources for wheel weights are getting better at sorting.

[RedRiver]

I will just bring it to the yard, worth $.25 trade toward $1.00 lead

[Oklahoma Rebel]

I remember seeing a pic of a lee 4-20 with a hole melted through from a guy using it for zinc, but that could have been a product malfunction, maybe a thermostat broke?

[308Jeff]

I used both my enameled cast iron dutch oven and cast iron skillet for melting Zinc.

[BNE]

I was able to trade zinc for lead cowws 1 for 1 at a local yard.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I use a stainless steel soup pot for smelting lead...and have used it with Zinc as well.

Once in a while a member will post they are looking for and willing to pay for zinc WW, If I were you, I'd save up enough to fill a FRB and sell it to a member...I wouldn't spend the effort to make it into ingots, but if you did, I bet a buyer might pay $1 per lb...also I bet that same buyer will probably pay 50¢ per lb for zinc WW in the raw.

myself, I make them into ingots and save them...I bet that someday, I will want that zinc for something?

[Ateam]

I also smelt WW in a stainless pan, and met zinc ww for dive weights in the same pan. My zinc become dive weights.

[LAGS]

Be adventurous and cast more things out of Zinc then ingots for sale.
Like weights for spotting scope bases, fishing weights, Picture frames.
Have fun with what others dont want or are not willing to pay a Fair Price for.
Zinc also makes nice blocks for making drilling jigs for your drill press to hold parts.

[toallmy]

One of my younger brothers picked up around 300 lb of what he thought was lead for me at a auction but it turned out to be zink in 60 lb blocks . One of these days I'm going to do something with it .

[RedRiver]

Big melting day today.

160 lbs of clip on, 30 lbs of stick on, bunch of pipe, bunch of xray sheet, pipe joints to get the solder off of (26% tin in this solder) and about 35 lbs of zinc which will go into big banana bread pans that I smoked real good last night with acetylene.

Should be about 85 and sunny, perfect day for smelting.

[RedRiver]

Well, I won't be melting zinc anymore. What a pain in the butt. It seized in the pan so I remelted and put it in muffin tins. The stainless pot took forever to melt, took an hour for 10 lbs, just finished it off in my lead smelting dutch oven.

And it was hot today in ND. 89 degrees when I was doing it, I was a filthy sweaty stinky mess when I was done.

At least the lead went well and there is cold beer in the fridge. Beer is so much better when you've been sweating like mad, isn't it?

[308Jeff]

It does take some intentional effort to melt Zinc.

[308Jeff]

Oh and yes, beer is better you're overheated.