Fluxing

[Lead pot]

I use rosin.
When I get out west, Mt. Wyo. Between matches I hang out in the National Forests where it's cool and I look for burned out stumps and break off the sap chunks and take a bag full home.
When using a stick or saw dust and you feel a vibration get ready for a lead overcoat

[BrentD]

I have a bunch of pellets made from compressed wood dust/chips. They are for a bee smoker but they don't work all that well so I use them for fluxing sometimes. I wonder if the wood pellets used in some meat smokers might work as well?

[Lead pot]

Brent just take a hatchet and put a vertical cut in a white pine and let it bleed and a couple days scrape off the pitch. Just a small BB size does a good job and it smells better that smoker wood.
I don't think smoker wood has much rosin.

[BrentD]

Kurt, it's not like I have a forest of pines of any type growing outside my door. I have a thousand trees, but not one of them is a conifer.

I don't really think it matters much what one uses. It's all about the carbon. I bet sugar would work.

Does anyone know what was in NEI's casting flux flakes that they sold years ago? Worked well. It sort of looked like shellac flakes but I doubt that was what it was.

[Gunlaker]

Brent has it right. You just need something that is more reactive with oxygen than the metal that has been oxidized. Carbon is good, and as a benefit, it's oxides are gasses.

Chris.

[Chill Wills]

Does anyone know what was in NEI's casting flux flakes that they sold years ago? Worked well. It sort of looked like shellac flakes but I doubt that was what it was.

It is carnuba wax. I still have about half a bag.

[GregLaROCHE]

I only use sawdust when melting range scrap to make ingots. When meeting ingots in the casting pot I flux with sawdust and bee’s wax. When I don’t have any dry sawdust, I’ll use Quaker Oats. Works fine if you just need a little for a casting pot.

[BrentD]

It is carnuba wax. I still have about half a bag.

Unfortunately, mine is all gone. I'm not sure if NEI is still in business after the owner (Walt?) died. I never hear them mentioned any more.

[beltfed]

Re NEI Handtools
I tried the website.
All I got was some stuff about Invenory Management Systems.
Dead End. I think they are long gone.
beltfed/arnie

[Lead pot]

I cast in the basement and fluxing is not an option doing it several times during a session, the vent hood I have over the lead pot does not catch all the smoke. I just use a spoon with holes in it stir the pot and skim off the dross and set it aside on the cookie sheet I have under the pot to catch the sprue cut. When the dross cools I put it in a coffee can and when I mix a new batch of 10 pound ingots outside using the turkey cooker burner and get done with that I dump the coffee pots of dross in the kettle and melt them down with heavy flux of old motor oil and reclaim the alloy I skimmed off casting bullets. Using the drained down motor oil for fluxing the dross just dust floats on top of the alloy.
Two cans of skimmed off dross I reclaimed 16 pounds of good alloy again but it is harder than the alloy was originally from what the Lee tester was before at .080 the skimmed reclaimed is now .074. Below is the new batch of alloy I just finished and the bricks are 10# each. the two by the coffee can is the two bricks of reclaimed dross. It will get used for pistol bullets.

Attachment 249764

[BrentD]

It is carnuba wax. I still have about half a bag.

Carnuba wax flakes are available on Amazon - but the price is not friendly enough. Old bullet lube and beeswax scraps will have to suffice.

[country gent]

I sprinkle the sawdust on the top of my pot in a even layer then let sit for a few minutes to heat and start to char. this removes any moisture from it and gets it in the form to flux with it. A few minutes at 700-750* removes the moisture

[John in PA]

I've been casting for 45 years or so. I've used Leadex, sold many years ago by Eldon Cady, (a black, powdery/chunky dry flux (no idea what its chemical make-up was.) I've also used NEI's carnuba flakes. Both worked fine, but didn't seem to possess any particular advantage over a pea-sized dollop of beeswax, ignited to burn off the smoke, and stirred in vigorously. I probably won't be using anything except beeswax in the future, (and did for 90% of the time in the past). It has served me quite well. As I said, ignite it as soon as it starts to smoke, and combustion pretty much removes about all of the smoke.

[Eddie17]

The left over product from burning sawdust on top of your melt, is mostly carbon.
Carbon, will react with impurity’s in your melt! An pull these to be skimmed off!
I mix this event into my melt! Works for me😀
My 2 cents