Question on smelting

[krallstar]

Ok, so if you first smelted your lead into ingots. If some how some zinc got melted too, would a lower melt in a melter allow the zinc that was once melted in it to float.

[btroj]

To a certain level, yes. Enough, no.
Get the melt just hot enough to melt and skim all the dross off the surface. That will reduce the zinc but will also remove some Sn and Sb too.

Best way to handle low zinc level is to dilute em further until they are no longer relevant. Even better into avoid the zinc in the first place.

[krallstar]

This was my first time smelting WW. I would melt some and skim the clips and junk out. Doing this on a coleman stove in a cast iron skillet. Added a handfull and the melt would get kinda slurppy looking. Let it get alittle hotter till slurp was gone then skim some more. I ended up with about 35lbs of this stuff. Only got a handfull of other types of clip on weights. Tried to use my thermometer and it seemed it never reached 600 degrees.

[Defcon-One]

Way too cool for melting Zinc, so you are OK!

The slush that you saw when you added new weights was just the lead going from the liquid to solid phase because the temp dropped slightly below the melting point. As you added heat it melted back to a liquid.

If you did get Zinc in it, you would know. It will look wrong and stay wrong, sort of like fine grained like oatmeal. I did it once, you only do it once!

You can't get the Zinc out of the lead once you get it in. Some say that sulfur will work, but it would be more work than it's worth. I have never seen it done, but I would suspect smoke and time would be the biggest problems.

I used my small batch of bad lead for fishing weights!

[WILCO]

This was my first time smelting WW. I would melt some and skim the clips and junk out. Doing this on a coleman stove in a cast iron skillet. Added a handfull and the melt would get kinda slurppy looking. Let it get alittle hotter till slurp was gone then skim some more. I ended up with about 35lbs of this stuff. Only got a handfull of other types of clip on weights. Tried to use my thermometer and it seemed it never reached 600 degrees.

Sounds like a temperature problem all the way around. Smelt in smaller batches, use a lid on the skillet or go to a bigger heat source in general. All of my smelting is done on a coil wired hotplate with a small skillet and lid. Last time I had the trouble you speak of, my heat source was insufficient.