smelting vs. melting

[dwebb210]

Smelting is the process by which a person obtains metal from an ore.

Melting is what you do to wheel weights so you can cast bullets.

Why does everyone here refer to wheel weight melting as "smelting"???

[docone31]

You are correct, however,
Most of us had parents who cast. My father for example cast tin soldiers. After running out of tin, he got some wheel weights. When I was young, he told me he was smelting the lead for the soldiers. I called it smelting from an early age. Even when I knew it was melting and not smelting, I still called lead melting, smelting.
An old habit fostered by my father, that even though I know better, I still call it smelting.

[theperfessor]

I think that most serious casters pay a lot of attention to the cleaning and blending of various plumbous substances to get the type of alloy they want. This goes a little beyond just melting down WWs. Since metals can pretty much be reused over and over again this re-refining process gets metal from a secondary source, just as refining gets metal from a primary ore source..

It's all semantics. Its just easier to say "smelting" than it is to say "the process of sorting, melting, cleaning, and blending custom alloys from secondary sources".

[ETG]

+1 for the perfessor. Most of what we use are just high grade ore The lead content is very high for ore but there is a lot of other garbage in the mix (steel, oil, grease, dirt, rocks, etc). So I guess it depends on your definition of ore

[dwebb210]

I know this doesn't need to be said, but mixing and blending to achieve a desired composition is "alloying".

Coming from a metallurgical background, it just feels like fingernails on a chalkboard.

However, I understand growing up with it always having been that way.

[ANeat]

I know this doesn't need to be said, but mixing and blending to achieve a desired composition is "alloying".

You do the alloying after the "smelting"


Youre on a forum called cast "boolits" what ya expect

[Rock]

Wheel weights are my high grade ore. From those I smelt out the lead separate from the trash.

[fatboy]

dwebb210,
here is a forum that should be more definitionally correct them folks all talk kinda funny!

http://www.themetallurgist.co.uk/dir...y_forums.shtml

[sagacious]

I believe that using the proper terminology can have positive benefits beyond semantics. When folks are more precise with their terminology, they likewise tend to be more precise in their actions. That benefits the sport today, it benefits the advancement of the sport, and it also benefits the next generation of shooters.

For a variety of reasons, many people chafe at being corrected, and so sometimes that's not the best way to convey information.

To my knowledge, the best way to deal with this subject is to lead by example.

Best of luck.

[bohokii]

my definition of smelting is removing impurities from my final product which is ingots

after which i melt my ingots

bullet scrap,wheelweights and all the stuff that is attached to them ends up in the pot and must be separated

[imashooter2]

The term as used here separates the cleaning of raw scrap from melting the cleaned scrap to make boolits.

We know the term is used incorrectly. We don't care.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

In Northern MN, We go smelting.

Smelt are a small fish that run in the springtime streams
on the north shore of Lake Superior. We us dip nets to catch them
and bring them home in a garbage can filled to the brim.
Jon

[Linstrum]

Let's not forget that one of the really big things that sets this place apart from all other shooting and casting forums is that CORRECT information is one of our main goals. Using correct terminology when describing what we do removes all the doubt and ambiguity that leads to errors and confusion. You can't use a map of Los Angeles to get around New York City even though the maps look pretty much alike. You have to have the correct information to get what you want, and using the correct terminology allows us to describe to others what we are doing with certainty so that the next guy can get the same results.

People can go around saying that whales are fish and that bats are birds, but just because something that is wrong gets said a lot does not make whales have gills and bats lay eggs. What we do here requires good solid correct information to get results that are worth the effort and repeatable. If someone were to tell me to smelt some lead I would go get some galena and charcoal and heat the two together to roast the galena to lead oxide and reduce it to metallic lead with the charcoal. That is not the same as melting some lead metal in an iron pot.

The definition of "smelting" came about in antiquity several thousand years ago and is not a new term like "software". The word "smelting" has a long-established use worldwide and it describes a very specific and well-defined process. Smelting is a chemical process that reduces a metal compound in an ore to the metallic state plus removes the rock and other unwanted material. Melting down wheel weights and scrap lead is not smelting since we are not using lead ore. Smelting is two processes together, one is it chemically reduces a compound of a metal to its metallic state, and the other is that it gets rock and dirt out of the way by chemically combining with it to make a molten glass (called "slag") or by some other means of making it easier to get rid of.

However, a lot of lead alloy scrap does contain SMALL amounts of oxides of the metals used for making the alloy, and recovering the metals from their oxides helps a lot in keeping the alloy in its correct composition, especially in recovering tin and antimony. Reducing is used for doing that and reducing agents like wax and saw dust are what do that.

Fluxing is another useful process that gets rid of dirt that gets in the way of cleaning up a melt of some kind. The word "flux" means "to flow" or "flow away from" in Latin, and fluxing means to make dirt flow or wash away from what we want to keep. Fluxing is not reducing, fluxing is what gets rid of stuff we don't want, reducing is what recovers stuff we want to keep. Wax and saw dust are not fluxes, they are reducing agents. Fluxes are materials like borax, boric acid, and potassium fluoborate that have the property of selectively combining with unwanted stuff so we can get rid of it while leaving the good stuff alone. Unfortunately, borax and boric acid don't work for fluxing lead alloys in our particular situation because the borax and boric acid have to be molten to do that and when we melt lead it does not get hot enough for borax or boric acid to melt into a runny molten glass at medium red heat. Heating lead hot enough for borax and boric acid to work causes rapid oxidation of the lead plus generates large amounts of lead vapor that is hazardous. Potassium fluoborate works at lower temperatures but is extremely poisonous as both a vapor and in contact with skin, causing severe chemical burns that do not heel very fast. It is also a metabolic poison that can make people quite sick for a long time and may cause a slow painful death. The only thing that adding powdered borax and boric acid to a lead melt at low temperature does is keep air away from the surface, which is a good thing. Cat litter does the exact same thing and is a lot cheaper and easier to use. Rosin is another fluxing agent that I use, and it is the best in my opinion because rosin is also a reducing agent. Rosin does two good things, it reduces the oxides back to metallic form and helps get rid of dirt.

I know all of this can be tough to figure out, but keep in mind that what we do here should be described and talked about as correct as possible because it gets everybody where they want to go with a minimum of misunderstanding that lead to hassles and problems.

Keep your eyes on the prize, it is worth it, and have fun!



rl786

[Paladin 56]

smelt1 (smelt), v.t.
1. to fuse or melt in order to separate the metal contained.

I've worked in, built, and re-built copper concentrators and smelters. The material placed into the smelter is known as copper concentrate and is mostly metal, mainly copper, with other metals of various sorts mixed in (sort of like WW's with steel clips and other junk attached). The copper concentrate is milled out of the ore using a flotation process prior to being introduced into the smelter for processing out the residual trash before being cast into copper anodes.

I've also worked in gold mines and there the process is much the same depending on the grade of ore, with the exception being that the metals are most often leached out of the ore with a cyanide solution, then ultimately removed from the leach solution by electrowinning. The resulting sludge (mostly metal) is then smelted to combine the metals and remove residual trash resulting in dore.

In the steel mills I've worked in, specifically around blast furnaces, are the only place I've seen "ore" directly introduced into the furnace, and even then it was concentrated and sintered before hand to keep the material in a fluid bed.

So, I suppose it is all semantics. However, in the non-ferrous metals facilities I've worked in and around, smelting is more or less taking a concentrate of a specific metal, melting it down and cleaning it in preparation of further refinement. Which is sort of like taking dirty wheel weights, melting them down and cleaning them for casting into boolits later on.

So for me, smelting wheel weights is the process of melting everything together, cleaning the trash out, and then casting the results into ingots for later use.

[Trey45]

Ya'll can call it whatever you want to call it and it won't bother me one bit. I call it either rendering or ingotizing. Example:

Hey what ya doing today.
I'm rendering ww into ingots.

Hey, what ya doing today.
I'm ingotizing some ww.

Class dismissed.

[Typecaster]

Ouch! Now I'm anti-semantic?

I've known the proper definitions since I was a kid, but think "smelting" or "rendering" are cute descriptions. That's all. Kinda like "ingotizing."

Best,

Richard

[Linstrum]

I like what Trey45 said 'cuz that's what's goin' on!

When ya can't git everybody on the same page, just make a new page.


rl787

[montana_charlie]

The term as used here separates the cleaning of raw scrap from melting the cleaned scrap to make boolits.

We know the term is used incorrectly. We don't care.

I am one who believes firmly in accurate communication. That extends from spelling and sentence structure to proper terminology.

What constitutes proper terminology is dependant upon the 'society' it is used in. The word 'girlfriend' means one thing in high school...and something else in Federal prisons.

We who pursue the art/science of casting bullets never start with dirt and rock. We never see 'ore'. But a bucketful of scrap, with a guessed-at composition of metal content, does constitute 'raw material' in our view.

Therefore 'smelting', as applied to the recovery of useful metals from scrap obtained in various ways, IS a proper term...in our society.

When a conversation about real metallurgy begins, those who participate become a small subset within the society...for the duration of the discussion. Within that temporary environment, clarity may demand that all participants become much more persnicketty (another technical term) about using dictionary-supported terminology.

If we are to be chastized for using 'smelting' in a manner which would be banned in the Colorado School of Mining, it would be interesting if the chastizer would offer us a term that he approves of.
A single word which means, "I drug home this heavy-assed five gallon bucket full of wheel weights, mystery metal, cigar butts, popcans, rust-dirt-grease, used Kleenex, and pigeon-poop...and melted all of it down to dip the the crud out of it so I could make some pretty ingots."

If that single word suggestion turns out to be 'rendered', it will probably run afoul of those lube engineers who use tallow for their concoctions.

'Smelting' may be incorrect, but it says what we mean and isn't being used by anyone else within this society.

(On the other hand, there IS that gerund of the infinitive of the verb "to flux"...)

CM

[cptinjeff]

What constitutes proper terminology is dependant upon the 'society' it is used in. The word 'girlfriend' means one thing in high school...and something else in Federal prisons.

CM

This has got to be the quote of the week?

[Doby45]

Potassium fluoborate works at lower temperatures but is extremely poisonous as both a vapor and in contact with skin, causing severe chemical burns that do not heel very fast.

That would be HEAL.

HEEL is part of a foot or shoe.

Just to use the correct verbage.