Zinc in my alloy?

[acfixerdude]

I used my Lee electric furnace the other week to smelt down about 260lbs of wheel weights. I had it set on 10 the whole time and would at times go sit down inside and wait for a new batch to melt down, so I may have had a few zinc WW's melt down (I was able to catch a few when I was adding WW's to a half full pot of molten lead).

My older female roommate has since banned anything related to lead. Even from me doing it outside (where I did it originally). She is completely afraid that she or her dogs are going to get lead poisoning from just touching the stuff, ignorant to say the least.

So I can't really melt down my ingots and pour boolits to see if the cast well, and that's the only way I've read so far on telling if it has zinc in the mix. I also read something about an oatmealy texture... I got a slushy type texture in my mix but that was only when I added cold WW's to it and then it went away after it heated up.

Reason I ask is because I'm thinking of selling the ingots (217lbs worth) and don't want to be selling useless lead/zinc alloy.

Any tips?

[runfiverun]

try some muratic acid on a few spots if it bubbles you have zinc.
zinc is soluble in lead and causes no problems,up to about 1.5%.
it will add hardness and a clink to the alloy when air cooled.
zinc is also lighter than lead.
if you got much in there you'd know it by the oat meal in the melt.

[acfixerdude]

try some muratic acid on a few spots if it bubbles you have zinc.
zinc is soluble in lead and causes no problems,up to about 1.5%.
it will add hardness and a clink to the alloy when air cooled.
zinc is also lighter than lead.
if you got much in there you'd know it by the oat meal in the melt.

Thanks, I'll check that out.

[acfixerdude]

Ok, I scraped off a spot on each muffin ingot to remove any oxidation and put some "safer" murietic acid from Lowes. No reaction that I could see. I put a zinc ww into a cup of the acid as a control and that reacted pretty well where I scraped off oxidation.

Will the alloy react if there is ANY zinc in it or only if there is more than a certain %?


BTW, I have a crapload of this acid left (smallest quantity I could find was a gallon) if anybody around Lubbock, TX needs any of this stuff.

[gbrown]

I use bottles of hydrochloric acid testing kits for pools (labelled OTO, yellow cap) from Walmart. If there is a goldish corlor to my ingots, I put a drop of this on them. They will bubble, slightly, and the goldish color disappears. I have not seen a crumbly or oatmealish texture to my alloy--seems it is there, but in very minute quanttiies. Like someone else use a bad mix.

[acfixerdude]

Just gonna have to hope for the best I guess. Have my lead pot thermometer coming and a turkey fryer burner I can borrow so I can melt some more down. Just got to get me some more raw material.

Figure I'll do as much soft lead batches as I can so i don't have to worry so much about the zinc.

[runfiverun]

it will clean a garage floor pretty good.
it reacts with zinc, i don't know if there is a percentage cut-off.
i'll bet you are okay.
temp control will help a ton, a quick pre-sort will help too.