fatelk
12-27-2010, 04:11 PM
I looked through the stickies a bit but couldn't find what I was looking for.
I've had four 25lb chunks of "mystery lead" for a couple years, finally thought I'd melt them into usable ingots. Three of them were bricks and turned out to be some kind of low-temp bismuth alloy.
The other one was a "pig", and I was finally able to melt it into my Lee 20lb pot a bit at a time. When I got the last of it melted there was a whole bunch of "crunchy mush" on top. I thought "dang, zinc".
I skimmed off the mush and smelted it separate at a higher temp with a propane torch. I was able to get a pound out of it and melted it into a separate ingot. It melted at a higher temp, but not as high as zinc, it seemed. The funny thing is that the ingot is not hard. It seems soft, almost like pure lead.
The rest of the pot I cast into ingots and they are fairly soft too. The odd thing I noticed it that when pouring the lead into the ingot mould it seemed to have very minimal surface tension. Normally the lead kind of bulges up at the sides, but this stuff is just flat.
I've been casting for a long time, and have learned a ton on this site, but I'm still learning and curious about what might be in this lead.
I've had four 25lb chunks of "mystery lead" for a couple years, finally thought I'd melt them into usable ingots. Three of them were bricks and turned out to be some kind of low-temp bismuth alloy.
The other one was a "pig", and I was finally able to melt it into my Lee 20lb pot a bit at a time. When I got the last of it melted there was a whole bunch of "crunchy mush" on top. I thought "dang, zinc".
I skimmed off the mush and smelted it separate at a higher temp with a propane torch. I was able to get a pound out of it and melted it into a separate ingot. It melted at a higher temp, but not as high as zinc, it seemed. The funny thing is that the ingot is not hard. It seems soft, almost like pure lead.
The rest of the pot I cast into ingots and they are fairly soft too. The odd thing I noticed it that when pouring the lead into the ingot mould it seemed to have very minimal surface tension. Normally the lead kind of bulges up at the sides, but this stuff is just flat.
I've been casting for a long time, and have learned a ton on this site, but I'm still learning and curious about what might be in this lead.