Ivory+sawdust

[Whitespider]

I was smelting WWs yesterday, pouring into 10# bricks for storage, using a mold I made. I add more WWs to the pot while I’m waiting for the brick to cool and release from the mold. Still, there’s a bit of idle time, but I’m in no hurry.

I’ve been fluxing with sawdust (oak flakes from a chainsaw) and that’s been working well enough, but I get quite a bit of carbon and dirt sticking to the pot and spoon. I flux, stir and scrape, stir and scrape and scrape and scrape and skim and scrape and scrape and scrape and skim and scrape.......... Well anyway, I’d just filled the pot again, removed the clips and was reaching for the sawdust when I noticed the bar of Ivory Soap sitting in the window. I thought, what the h..., and tossed a large pinch of grated Ivory in the pot. After it melted I added the sawdust and stirred the heck out of the pot, let it sit a minute and skimmed off the ash and crap. I started to scrape the side and bottom of the pot, surprisingly it felt clean, and just a tiny bit of crud floated to the top.

It appears that Ivory+sawdust works better than sawdust alone, the pot and spoon stay considerably cleaner. Just thought I’d pass this on to those who care about such things.

[leftiye]

I think that Ivory has stearic acid in it (a lot in appearance to wax flakes). May well just be the end-all as far as fluxes are concerned. IIRC Felix lube uses Ivory for this ingredient too. May be the "secret" there too? Maybe a good flux would be stearic acid, rosin, beeswax, and saw dust.

[Cayoot]

I'm gonna have to try adding Ivroy Soap. I wonder if I have to grate it though? Why not just cut a hunk off with your knife if you are going to let it melt anyways?

[Ricochet]

I was going to suggest Ivory Snow, but that's now a detergent. They quit making Ivory Soap Flakes years ago, so you do have to grate a bar. A cheese grater ought to be a handy way to do it.

[Cayoot]

Please be patient with my ignorance, but why do you have to grate it?

If it is going to melt anyways, why can't you just slice off a chunk with your knife and drop it in?:confused:

[Ricochet]

If it indeed melts and spreads out easily at casting temperatures, go for it. I haven't tried it. Thought grating into small bits would work better.

[Whitespider]

Cayoot,

It doesn’t have to be grated. I had an old cheese grater lying by the soap bar because I’d last used it making bullet lube. You could break or cut off a hunk and toss it in the pot, it’d just take a bit longer to melt.

If any of y’all try it, let me know how it worked. I’m curious if it’s all in my head of not.

[454PB]

I've been using Ivory for a while. It happens to be what I use for showering (none of that girly liquid stuff in my shower!) and I save the bar ends for fluxing when I have good ventilation. I use a pair of pliers and just break off a chunk and throw it in the pot. It takes a lot longer to melt and break down than wax, but seems to do a better job cleaning the alloy. It does put off a light smoke that will irritate your eyes and lungs, so stay away from the vapors.

[ace1001]

What's wrong with a piece of potatoe on a fork. Swirl it around and drag the crud off with it. Works great! Ace

[Ricochet]

How about a French fry? The oil ought to help. :mrgreen:

[leftiye]

That Potato Doesn't Shower You With Hot Lead When The Water In It Explodes?

[Underclocked]

I would probably forget what I was doing and eat the tater.

[ace1001]

No it does not explode. It does sizzle and smell like fries. The starch fluxes the lead. I have a friend fluxing several crucibles that are several hundred pounds each with half a potatoe on a barbeque fork. Try it. Ace

[leftiye]

On another of Felix's posts he said that (if I read it correctly) Commersial stearic acid was only about 60% pure, and that Ivory was about 60%stearic acid too. Guess I wasted my time chasing down stearic acid and ordering it huh? But no doubt this makes the soap as good as the "pure stuff".

[leftiye]

I know how this will sound, but this afternoon I finally got around to actually using the stearic acid that I bought about a month ago. I heard about it here in a post a guy wrote on a thread about fluxing. He recommended stearic acid, said a guy who cast commercially (figurines I think) had told him it was the only thing to use.

He was right. I've done a lot of studying on fluxing and fluxes since I've been reading this forum, and tried out anything that sounded good. Best before stearic acid was 50/50 lube (beeswax), then rosin (better still, use both together). Wood stick is the thing to stir with PERIOD. Sawdust or wood shavings are pretty good followed next by everything else.

What we're actually talking about is reducing the oxides, fluxing is more correctly getting dirt out of the alloy, and a spoon will do that. I know, some things like boric acid and Marvelux help separate crap from your melt. THEY are fluxes. Problem is they coat your pot too, and won't come off. I've got two 5 Lb cans of marvelux , nearly full now for 20 years.

So, the stearic acid has finally gotten out the impurities (probably oxides) that I've been having problems with since forever. Got wheelweights that won't make shiny boolits, and have little grainy inclusions in the surface? I USED TO! I don't know what else is in Ivory soap, but I'd guess it wouldn't make a big difference. I'll have to get some just to see!

[Ricochet]

Ivory is "99 44/100% pure" soap. What's soap? Sodium salts of fatty acids. Stearic acid's just the most common fatty acid in animal fat. (Stearin is hard beef fat.) A straight saturated hydrocarbon chain 18 carbons long with a carboxyl group on one end. The other common fatty acids of 14 and 16 carbon lengths should work just as well. If you want the fatty acid, you can reclaim it from the soap by acidifying it with hydrochloric acid and letting the low-solubility fatty acids form a scum on top of the solution and skim it off of the salt solution that's left. But if the soap works, why bother?

[OeldeWolf]

Ricochet:

You must be another chemist. I was thinking the same thing, and thinking of getting some rendered beef fat (tallow) to try. But I am betting that the length of the chain and the =O at the end are the active portions, any bets? I am thinking that the lack of branching may make the C more accessible, as we are looking for O scavenging, not the greater energy release that double bonds yield?

[Bullshop]

OeldeWolf
I dont have a clue what yer talkin about there, well maybe a slight clue. If yer wonderin how fat works for flux I can tell ya that, its good but way smoky.
I use rendered moose tallow for fluxing the smelting pot outside. It coats the clips and makes them slick so the lead dont stick. When it gets smoking real good I ignight it then while its burning skim off the clips. This way there is almost no metal lost. I use about a golf ball size lump to clean up a 100 lb pot. Renderd is better than raw fat as it melts and covers the entire surface faster.
BIC/BS

[Ricochet]

I think it's the straight hydrocarbon chains working directly to reduce oxides. I doubt there's a huge difference between carbon chains in this length range.

[fatnhappy]

I think it's the straight hydrocarbon chains working directly to reduce oxides. I doubt there's a huge difference between carbon chains in this length range.


Sounds like a productive way to recycle plastic grocery bags. :drinks:

[leftiye]

F&H, Except that burning plastics are toxic (some pruduce nerve gas!).

[Ricochet]

Overheated PVC makes phosgene, which is rather toxic. Makes hydrochloric acid when it contacts water. Polyurethanes make hydrogen cyanide. Not good to breathe. Polyethylene releases cracked hydrocarbons not too different from what you get from boiling oil. Stinky, but not as nasty as some of the other stuff.

[bigborefan]

leftiye,
I bought a bar of ivory soap today to try it out as a flux for my alloys as you recommended. The ingrediants on the soaps packaging did not mention stearic acid as one of it's ingrediants. Does it go by another name?It mentions coconut acid, palm kernel acid, tallow acid and palm acid but not stearic acid. Do they make different different types of bar soaps?

[MT Chambers]

i don't know sh%t about carbon chains or phosgenes but im gonna' try the potatoe on a fork thing.....if I leave it in the melt long enough, I can eat while I cast, and the rest of you can smell like fruitcakes,imagine...putting soap in your lead pot...you yanks are something else!

[454PB]

Ivory soap is less foo-foo than some of those mood candles you guys steal from your wife for fluxing.

For any of you that haven't tried the Ivory soap yet, it does produce a mildly irritating smoke that makes your eyes burn.

[leftiye]

454, That's how I would describe the smoke from Stearic acid. Not really too irritating, but very pervasive. It WILL stink up your house.

BigBore, I've never actually used Ivory soap as flux. Felix lube has Ivory in it to use the stearic acid to prevent layering/separation of ingredients. I've seen other threads/posts where it was mentioned that Ivory was mostly stearic acid. Felix (IIRC) was the source that said it was about 60% stearic acid. You can buy Stearic acid off of the internet for less that $3 a lb.

I CAN AND DO say that it is the best flux going. It will reduce oxides the best of other fluxes can't make a dent in. This includes wood shavings (however full of pitch) Rosin (pitch itself) hardwood sticks, 50/50 alox/beeswax (a very good flux), and charcoal. Marvelux is correctly a flux (not a reducer) and cleans impurities from alloy , but does nothing for oxides, while coating all of your equipment with borax.

[felix]

Leftiye, the soap contains sodium stearate, which is the result of sodium hydroxide working on the native stearic acid. We actually can use the sodium type in lieu of the native because the sodium type raises the melting point of the lube without making it harder. Plain ol' stearic acid will do a glue job allright, but it will make the lube harder too, and might actually lower the melting point. ... felix

[felix]

BBF, those weird additives are used to make the soap bar do other things besides just clean your hands and feet. The additives are added to the basis fat/oils/wax before injecting the sodium hydroxide to convert the whole mess to soap. For example, coconut and/or palm makes the final soap produce a lather during use. The tallow (pig or whatever basis fat) is the bottom line for making soap, much like beeswax is the carrier for our lube. The other oils, fats, waxes are added to give the final soap bar have some nice and differing properties. ... felix

[bigborefan]

Felix & leftiye, Thanks for your responses. I was just curious that I didn't see stearic acid as one of the ingredients on the label. I did a little research on stearic acid and found out it is used as a hardener in soaps. So i'd imagine most if not all soaps must contain some amount of stearic in them. I am looking forward to using it since I've been plaqued lately with bad looking bullets need to look forward to casting again instead of dreading it.
Darrell

[Ricochet]

Like I said earlier, stearic acid is the main fatty acid in hard animal fats.

Soaps are made commercially from a mixture of fatty acids produced by reacting fats with superheated steam in a pressure vessel with a catalyst (nickel, I think.) They don't generally try to separate out the individual fatty acids. The valuable glycerin is removed and sold for other purposes. They react the fatty acid mixture with a sufficient quantity of sodium hydroxide to "saponify" it completely, making soap. The differing fatty acids in the mix do affect the qualities of the soap, but in blending soaps generally the names of the source fats or oils are used in recipes, not the fatty acids derived from them.

[Mojo^]

Yet another good use for Ivory soap. A sliver cut with a cheese slicer makes great catfish bait. Honestly. It leaves a nice oily slick in the water that will attract catfish. I've gotta try it for fluxing. Sounds feasible.

[454PB]

I did some casting yesterday and was able to open the window, so I used some Ivory flux. I did it a little different this time. Instead of just breaking off a chunk, I put it in a zip lock bag, then pulverized it with my brass hammer. This worked well, didn't puncture the zip lock bag, and seemed to allow the Ivory to work faster.