? on re-melting bullets

[autopilotmp]

I picked up some lead bullets a while back and after some trial and error decided the bullets are too short to feed in my 1911. I figured I could just melt them down and cast different bullets from them but they are lubed and was wondering if I should throw these in w/ my wheel weights while making ingots or just toss them in the pot? Will the lube hurt my production pot or cause any other problems while casting?

[btroj]

I have melted many a lubed bullet in my casting pot. They are messy and stinky but hurt nothing. Think of them as ingots that have flux included.

[44fanatic]

They go back in the casting pot, lube, GC and anything else they picked up on the garage floor.

[dragonrider]

IMO do not put them into your casting pot, as said above stinky and messy and will coat the walls of your pot with crud. Toss them in with the WW's an smelt em.

[autopilotmp]

Thanks guys I think I'll just toss them in while smelting the wheel weights.

[cajun shooter]

There is not a problem with putting old bullets that are lubed back into your alloy pot. One thing that has not been said by our fellow posters is that as soon as you add them, have a long fireplace match or butane lighter lit over the pot. This will ignite the lube which is now a flux and stir while burning. You will be doing the same as fluxing so why the worry.

[btroj]

That is what I do Cajun shooter. Like I said, they are pre fluxed.

[jmsj]

I keep a container of undesirable lubed bullets next to my casting pot. I will throw a small hand full in the pot once it reaches temp. and use it as a flux. I use kitty on top of the melt and push the lubed bullets under the kitty litter. Between only putting in a small amount of lube, the kitty litter and the exhaust fan it does not smoke much and I have not been able to burn the smoke that does come off.
It seems to help some and lets me get rid of undesirable bullets.
jmsj

[Jim]

I throw unwanted lubed boolits back in my pot all the time. However, my casting bench is in a shed behind the house, so the smoke and smell is not an issue. Furthermore, my pot is a ladle pot, so there's no valve to get gunked up, either. I keep a box of kitchen matches handy and light the smoke when I dump the lubed boolits in the mix to burn off most of the smoke. When that's done, I just skim off the ash and trash.

[Stick_man]

One thing that has not yet been discussed is if you "picked up" these boolits from somebody else, do you know what the alloy is? If you have a bunch of them, throwing a lot of them into your pot (either casting or smelting) at one time may alter YOUR alloy enough to need some further adjustments. For example, if you have 10lbs of an alloy with 3% Sn in it, adding 5 lbs of pure lead would drop that percentage down to 2%. Now, most handgun alloys have at least some tin in them, so the variance probably won't be as dramatic. The point is just to check the alloy of what you acquired from somebody else and take that into consideration as you add it into your alloy.

It seems like a lot of people will throw one or two at a time into a pot simply for the fluxing effect. Sounds like a great idea to me. It doesn't take much to flux a small pot of alloy.

Happy Casting!