SkookumJeff
02-19-2011, 01:31 AM
OK, I'm finally getting rolling along here. I did my first smelt a week or two ago. I over heated my lead. Before melting any more lead I was waiting for my casting thermometer. Today I put it all together, heated my smelting pot up and checked my temps. Kept the pot around 600 degrees. I remelted all the dross I skimmed off on my first smelt. That dross seemed too heavy, I believed I skimmed off lead with the dross. I got everything melted and mixed, fluxed with sawdust (coarse) and skimmed the dross off with my newly acquired perforated spoon. Man was that a lot easier skimming lead than using a solid spoon as I did with the first smelt. This time after I skimmed the dross off, I let it cool and then I checked it. Seemed more like crunchy dirt to me, not much metallic looking material in the dross. A little, but not much. I was a lot happier with this smelt. Ladled out lead into my muffin ingot mould. After they cooled I coaxed them out of the mould, these ingots looked much better than the ingots from my first smelt. I should mention that my lead is very soft, supposedly near pure lead.
Because I overheated the lead on my first smelt, is there any reason I should remelt all the ingots I poured in my first smelt? After sitting a couple of weeks, when I drop these ingots on concrete, they thunk, there is no ring when they hit the concrete. The point is I'm pretty sure the lead is near pure lead. I say that after checking the hardness of one of my small ingots with my Lee Hardness tester. The dimple measured .100 which is off the scale with the chart Lee provides. That puts this lead below 8 bhn, guesstimating I'd say in the neighborhood of 5-6 bhn. I'm guessing the ingots from the first melt are OK, but I'd like to know what you guys think?
Because I overheated the lead on my first smelt, is there any reason I should remelt all the ingots I poured in my first smelt? After sitting a couple of weeks, when I drop these ingots on concrete, they thunk, there is no ring when they hit the concrete. The point is I'm pretty sure the lead is near pure lead. I say that after checking the hardness of one of my small ingots with my Lee Hardness tester. The dimple measured .100 which is off the scale with the chart Lee provides. That puts this lead below 8 bhn, guesstimating I'd say in the neighborhood of 5-6 bhn. I'm guessing the ingots from the first melt are OK, but I'd like to know what you guys think?