Hey guys,
Ran into something strange today while smelting today. I was trying out a new smelter I built, it has an old dutch that I thought I cleaned out real well. The lead was given to me by a guy that works for a propane company, they were casted into fishing weights and they looked okay. He says the tank gauge floats are made out of soft lead. Going by the fingernail test they are pure or close to pure.
Had a little time so I thought I would try out the new unit real quick, wrong !!
I adjusted the flame on the burner and threw in the 6 pounds of lead from the propane floats. It melted quickly but instead of the gold, purple and blue it was almost emerald green and lumpy. I skimmed off the green dross and more seemed to keep coming up. I was stirring/ scraping the pot w/ a wood stick and more kept coming. I tried fluxing w/ sawdust stirred skimmed, thought I had it but more continued to surface. I tried a couple more times w/ sawdust and still more of this green stuff kept coming up and the sides of the dutch oven were turning mustard yellow. Not knowing what else to do I tried parrafin wax, Threw it in stirred, it caught fire and the melt turned silver. I thought success but when the fire went out and I started to ladle out the green came back. Tried the parrafin wax again, same thing. Went back to fluxing w/ sawdust and it finally worked.
Anybody got any ideas what the green dross is? I think I got most of it out of the lead but could it pose a problem down the road? Any input would be appreciated, jmsj