A little bit pregnant?

[Petander]

I hace smelted a couple of tons 10-20 years ago. A cast iron pot and propane.

I remember seeing an occasional zinc weight starting to melt on top. I then quickly removed them.

Zinc was rare back then,I picked most but who knows... Alloy casts great - BUT that contamination makes it impossible to coat.

I acid wash my to-be-coated (Hi-Tek,excellent) bullets and all is good. But I'd rather do my ww sorting again If I could. Still have a ton cleaned and mixed with 10-30% mono/lino.

[Leadmad]

Frankford Arsenal make a very good magnet with releasing handle that's designed to use with their wet tumbling brass cleaner, I bought one in case of the inevitable spill of stainless pins but use my magnet mostly to bulk sort a lot of steel wheel weights out very quickly

[RogerDat]

After you melt your first pot leave an inch of lead in the bottom of the pot. On your next pot the slab in the bottom will help transfer heat better and make the next melt go faster AND avoid having a zinc WW pinned against the bottom of the pot to get hot enough to melt.

Control the heat and the zinc will float. Tru-Tel makes an reasonably cheap thermometer in the right range. Cheaper than Lyman.

My sort method is to use a box lid or shallow plastic tub (drawer from one of those plastic stacking drawers) have that full of WW's in my lap pick WW up with left hand, dikes in right hand, nip, toss in appropriate bucket, repeat. I save a lot of motion by having the item being sorted right in my lap with the sorting buckets arranged to my side and front for an easy toss left handed. The other thing that helps is long handled dikes and gloves (nitrile or similar) The longer handles give me more leverage with the nip for less effort and the gloves protect my hands from the wear and tear, the lead exposure, and the absolute funk that is in with the WW's.

I should add that I sort of do what someone else mentioned. When I refill my tray with WW's I pull the obvious big trash out before sitting down with the sorting tray in my lap. Bonus is I can watch TV while sitting and sorting, a movie or sporting event is just about as long as I would want to sort and nip for. I have seen 2 zinc make it into the pot in last 600# of WW's.

Last but not least bangerjim did some testing and I think he was able to cast with little issue up to 2% zinc and could still make it work up to around 4% zinc. Doubt with reasonable care you are going to miss 2# per hundred of lead. I have a couple of pounds of contaminated pewter (zinc handles! and no I don't want to talk about it) has around 9% zinc. Those will go into a batch in small amount when I want an especially hard results with the tin bumped up for easier casting. Thinking buck shot might be worth a try with some of that.

[ikarus1]

Frankford Arsenal make a very good magnet with releasing handle that's designed to use with their wet tumbling brass cleaner, I bought one in case of the inevitable spill of stainless pins but use my magnet mostly to bulk sort a lot of steel wheel weights out very quickly

doesn't that also mean all the steel clips with alloy lead weights attached also stick? I've tried with a magnet and it doesn't work very well.

[lightman]

I've not found the magnet to be very useful for sorting. It will pick up lead weights by the clip. To me the steel weights are very distinctive looking and are easy to spot. If you have a bunch of stick on weights the magnet would work ok.