Cleaning up WWs

[EWOK]

I going to start melting down and making some ingots with WW and would like to know if a thermameter is a neccesary evil, if so were and which should I get, also is this the only good way to sort out the zinc weights(keeping pot at 650 and picking out zinc that floats to the top) that maybe be present or is there some way reconize them before they get in the pot. Thanks for your help.
Everette

[rmb721]

I recently bought a RCBS thermometer just for the purpose of melting WW's to keep from getting zinc contamination. The RCBS one cost more than some others, but their products are guaranteed better than most. So far, I found one weight that I think is zinc and doesn't look any different than other WW's. It would be a royal PITA to look over each and every WW anyway.

[FISH4BUGS]

I bring the temp up to the melting point of the leftovers form the last session (I always leave a quarter pot of lead to start up with). I add a handful of WW's and start stirring. The lead melts quickly, the zinc does not. I skim the unmelted ones and all the other crap out and flux. I add more WW's (two or three handfuls). Repeat. I drop the temp just a bit until the next load of melting WW's form a slushy blob, then up the temp just a bit. That is about 600 degrees more or less I would guess.
The down side is that you have to watch the pot all the time. It is a constant cycle of adding WW's, stirring, skimming, fluxing, ladling out the ingots, adding WW's, stirring, skimming, fluxing, ladling, and on and on.....but that is what we DO.
Maybe a thermometer isn't all that bad an idea after all.............

[snowtigger]

I bring the temp up to the melting point of the leftovers form the last session (I always leave a quarter pot of lead to start up with). I add a handful of WW's and start stirring. The lead melts quickly, the zinc does not. I skim the unmelted ones and all the other crap out and flux. I add more WW's (two or three handfuls).
.........

Man, that is a good way to get a visit from the tinsel fairy!!! There is too much chance of trapped water in the ww. It doesn't take very much water to get a steam explosion.
I always let my pot drop below the " freeze point" before adding more WW. Then, I fill the pot as full as I can get it. This lets the WW heat slowly and drive off the water before the ww melt. I just watch it, and when the ww are melted, I skim off everything that floats, including any WW that aren't melted. That's where you find the zinc .

[NVcurmudgeon]

Most WW with the clip riveted on are steel, I haven't seen a zinc weight so configred yet, but there was one I suspected about five years ago. I have found exactly four no-doubt zinc weights. They were all stick-ons with weights marked in grams, and clearly marked "Zn." May this laudable practice continue! I think we are starting at shadows. Sure, zinc has awful consequenses, but it is easy to avoid. My recent experience has been that out of three buckets (+/- 250 lb.) there was a TOTAL of two lb. of funny looking weights. This included zinc, steel, and one all plastic. it's easy enough, and small enough loss, to through out the oddballs before smelting. Then when you smelt, keep the temperature down below 650, as posted by others above. Many of us, including me for a long time, are or were reluctant to buy a lead thermometer. A thermometer, is very cheap compared to the possibility of ruining a good furnace or a favorite mould. Of course, we could buy known alloy, but that would cost more than the thermometer, too!

[Lloyd Smale]

if you melt on a turkey fryer you can just about run it wide open if you keep an eye on things. Just keep adding weights as the level goes down but do it when theres still a good layer of unmelted weights on top. When you about got your pot to the level you want force the last of the wws down into the melt. Doing it that way the temp never gets up to the point that the zinc ones will melt. Just after the last of the wws just melt skim the top off and most of the zinc weights will be right on top with the clips.

[VTDW]

I going to start melting down and making some ingots with WW and would like to know if a thermameter is a neccesary evil, if so were and which should I get, also is this the only good way to sort out the zinc weights(keeping pot at 650 and picking out zinc that floats to the top) that maybe be present or is there some way reconize them before they get in the pot. Thanks for your help.
Everette

Everette,

I don't see how you can hold 650 degrees w/out a thermometer.

Dave

[EWOK]

The thermometer gods must be with me, ran up on a free 400C stick type, think I can make it work, 650f= 343c

[Nueces]

By 'stick type,' do you mean an old laboratory mercury unit? Somewhere else herein, a member told of sheathing such a beast in copper tubing, with the lower end hammered shut, to avoid the possibility of a mercury spill under molten lead. Boy, THAT's worth avoiding, ain't it? Not trying to be nosy, just had the fuzzies on my neck stand up thinking about it.

Mark

[WHITETAIL]

So far I've been lucky. But the more I read the more it's time for a thermometer.

[Nueces]

Isn't it great that you can drop in here 24/7 and get into a bull session with these guys? It never fails to sharpen my thinking.

Mark

[TAWILDCATT]

lyman also sells a lead themometer.has any one seen a plummers elec pot.friend had one held 60 lbs. and while your at it get a kitchen spoon with holes to lift out the junk.

[leftiye]

Ta Cat I see them from time to time on ebone.

[Joey]

I melt mine on a propane stove. The clips float to the top. I then flex the lead, skim, then pour into molds.

I don't know what the temp. is, but it works whatever it gets to.:-D