Melting Solder

[lightman]

It finally warmed up enough that I fired up the smelting pot. Because of the small amount of solder that I had I used my dutch oven instead of my bigger pot. I started off with 28# of dirty solder. A 5 gallon bucket of odd solder mostly on spools. It had been wet and was dirty, rusty and oxidized. The flux made a messy film on top of the melt. That 28# mess actually yielded 50 ingots from the small side of a Lee mold. Only half of this was mine, so I took my half and melted it again with about an equal number of pounds of mixed but much cleaner solder that was mine. The first melt took forever using the one Lee mold so I got my 4 gang iron molds out. All in all I ended up with 28 ingots from the one pound molds. This was a mix of 40-60, 50-50 and 60-40 with some unknown mixed in. It also was a mix of acid and rosin core. I'll send BNE a sample to analyze.

I may have a mess in my dutch oven from all of the core flux but I guess it will clean up. Its better than being in my smelting pot! I searched about a dozen thrift stores looking for a stainless stock pot with no luck. I found a $13 one on Amazon but it was so thin that I passed on it. A nice thick stock pot was more than I wanted to spend.

Sorry, no pictures. I've yet to learn to post pictures my new photo host site. I do have a few on my phone though. Hoping to start on wheel weights tomorrow, weather permitting.

[lwknight]

You can spoon off a lot of that flux stuff then pour into a slick sided stainless bowl or whatever. Once it cools, you can chip the rest of the flux off and remelt to cast into small ingots.

[lightman]

I wish I could have found a stainless pot to use. I looked at my dutch oven today and there is a funky looking scale in it, left over from the flux. It will clean up, its just something else to do.