Linotype Question

[gtivan]

Picked up a couple of hundred pounds of Lintoype fromk an old friend. It was sitting underneath some cedar trees for a couple of decades. Even appeared rusty, but how can lino rust?

I just dried it out and threw it in the pot. Cedar, dirt, and all. (I did dump most of the debree but did not wash it and clean it.)

As the lino was heating up, a lot of garbage came to the top. Knowing it had a lot of foreign matter I wasn't too concerned. I just took a wood stick and kept mixing it up. Had it running around 750 degrees.

Here is the strange part, some of the junk never turned black like I would expect carbon matter to do. It turned more of a light brown and powdery.

Since the mix was totally liquid and it wouldn't mix in, I just scraped it off. (I did save it seperate just in case.)

Being a stupid newb. What the heck was it? Should I heat it all up again, dump the stuff back and remix?

[Merlin43]

some organic things have a high ash content, so even if the carbon all goes away there is still stuff left, usually grey - if you fluxed the mix at all, you should be good - toss the crud!

Oh, as for the rust - it's not the Lino', but it could easily be something iron that was resting on top of it, nails, fence, bolts, "tin" cans, etc.

[gtivan]

Okay. remebering some things now. he gave me 2 buckets. 1 was plastic and the lino was pretty nice in that once the cedar stuff was picked off.

The other was in a very rusty 5 gallon metal bucket that fell apart as i picked it up. Had to transfer the lino to other containers. They must be from the rusty bucket.

I did flux, so should be pretty good?

If some of the rusty bucket was left in my stuff to be heated, would that account for the light brown dusty crud?

[arjacobson]

I get a bunch of brown powder when I smelt lead wate pipe. It is the minerals on the inside of the pipe that I am getting..

[lwknight]

There is always a lot of crud in lead pipe unless you get it new and you will not be doing that very likely.

[gtivan]

Thanks guys