Gold and purple and blue... Oh My!

[mdevers]

New to casting as well and noticed the smell colors on wheel weighs I collected myself. I too have been skimming g some of it off. No more. Thanks

I'm collecting a supply of zinc with my wheel weights. What is everyone doing with it? I wonder if someone casting fishing sinkers could use them in exchange for some lead. Or maybe i can just cast them as sinkers and sell to the fishing supply shops

[Danderdude]

I read this thread months ago, but never had a rig that could even get up to the Rainbow Temperatures until today.

I built a small foundry from a steel 5gal bucket inside of an old 15gal steel drum with sand between the two as a quick and easy refractory. The pot itself is cast iron and will hold around 80lbs of lead. There is a 1/2" gap around most of the pot for flue gases. A 2 5/8" piece of drill stem, around 30" long, was inserted near the bottom through both of them to provide airflow to a wood or cheap charcoal fire. A $30 Home Depot leafblower was to provide forced air but proved FAR too powerful at 6 cu ft/sec. I ended up anchoring it about 12 inches away, pointing at the end of the pipe.

This worked for about 150lbs before the coal burned up or turned into small embers and flew out the top.

I planned on running an oil drip line for used motor oil to fall onto the hot embers, but found an old pear burner at a flea market this morning for the right price (free with purchase of some Royal Holland pewter for $2/lb!). I taped the pear burner to the end of the drill stem, lit a charcoal fire under the pot and started fiddling with it to find the optimum mix of propane, coal and air. As it turns out, gas alone with no forced air drew its own draft when burning. The air concentration is too low in the pipe to combust, but once it enters the chamber under the pot, flame ahoy!

In 4 minutes I went from a full cold pot to entirely molten. I killed the gas and let the paper burning off the sheet lead (glued to drywall at one time) do the fluxing. Just then, the normal white tin skim turned golden. Crud. The charcoal was doing too good of a job after such an energetic start. I ladled 25lbs of melt out and replenished the pot as fast as I could to cool it off. After about 45 minutes, the charcoal was spent so I fired up the pear burner again for 60 seconds while feeding the pot cold lead as fast as I could.

Here comes the gold again. Turn my head for a moment and it's royal purple when I peer back. Skimming instantly causes gold dross to reform behind the spoon.

In short, the gas burner worked EXTREMELY well at heating. Even running it just one minute in ten would overheat the melt.

[KirkD]

I was just about going to post a question about the multi-hued lead I got from pure lead (stick-on) wheel weights when I saw this sticky. I had melted down a bunch of stick-on WW to get some pure lead to make some 44-40 bullets (original 44-40 bullets were made from pure lead according to a copy of an 1896 Winchester catalogue). When I saw all the colors I wondered what I had accidentally melted into my melt. However, after reading this sticky, it Looks like I'm alright ..... my melt looks like the right color after all for pure lead! Here is a photo after it had cooled and solidified ...

[wlc]

I was just about going to post a question about the multi-hued lead I got from pure lead (stick-on) wheel weights when I saw this sticky. I had melted down a bunch of stick-on WW to get some pure lead to make some 44-40 bullets (original 44-40 bullets were made from pure lead according to a copy of an 1896 Winchester catalogue). When I saw all the colors I wondered what I had accidentally melted into my melt. However, after reading this sticky, it Looks like I'm alright ..... my melt looks like the right color after all for pure lead! Here is a photo after it had cooled and solidified ...

Glad I looked through this thread. I've got a pot of coww lead looking exactly the same. I'll try remelting at a lower temp and see if the colors go away before I ingotize.

[docone31]

I have run into that crud before.
I put some vegetable oil on the mix. When it melted, I got shiney lead, and floating crud. The floating stuff then looked like oxides of something. Pure lead does not look that kind of blue.
I got it from wheel weights.

[xXFREEDOMisNOTfreeXx]

When I was in the Navy about three years ago, our division was getting rid of some lead solder that was nuclear grade. Luckily I was the RPPO(Repair Parts Petty Officer) and It was my job to dispose of it. Since I disposed of it in the back of my car trunk I was able to take it home and smelt it down. The results were like that of the pictures above, almost looking like a gasoline film floating on top. I can guarantee that this lead was pure since it was rolls of lead solder off of a nuclear submarine.