Noticed something odd while casting

[dippmaster]

Actually, ive noticed it for a while, it just became a problem recently.
I use a LEE bottom pour lead pot, 5Lbs I think. Its worked really good for my casting.
But, after about a year, I noticed something. In my casting, as the pot empties, I would notice a orange colored powder building up at the bottom of the pot.
Also, the inside of the pot would rust a bit, even though its full of hard lead most of the time.
Then one day I emptied the pot to try to get rid of this build up. afterwards my downspout seemed clogged.
Today I was casting the traditional way, and every few casts I had to scrape out the surface of the lead as a black and orange powder like substance built up on the surface.
as I neared the bottom of the pot I gave up casting, and was just continually scraping out the black and orange stuff that kept forming, I kept that up till the pot was empty.

On closer inspection the powder like stuff is mostly a orange-yellow color.
Is this rust thats causing my problems?

The lead I've been using is from wheel weights, and old lead 4 inch pipe.

[largom]

Are you smelting the WW in your pot? If so, don't. Use a separate pot. I would empty the Lee pot, remove the spout rod and then clean very well with steel wool.

Larry

[dippmaster]

Are you smelting the WW in your pot? If so, don't. Use a separate pot. I would empty the Lee pot, remove the spout rod and then clean very well with steel wool.

Larry

The Wheel weights are bought off Ebay, already cleaned and cast into ingots.
And I was looking at doing that. maybe a bit of oil as well.

[starmac]

Once you have cleaned your pot, I would resmelt and flux your supply of lead, before casting again. It sounds like you have some contaminated lead to me.

[cali4088]

dipmaster, you continuously have to scrap that stuff out of your pourer. A lot of it has to do with lead oxidation. Try fluxing your lead before putting it in the lee pourer. I melt most of my lead in a 50 lb cast iron high wall skillet. When i flux a dirty batch of lead AFTER i scrapped the crud off the top, I can scrap the bottom of the skillet and all this black powder will come to the surrface. The flux allows contaminates to seperate from the lead and most of the time it sticks to the bottom of the pan, in this case, your porer. I have a 20lb pourer as well and i just take a knife and scrap when the lead is hot. It scraps better than when cooled

[cali4088]

the cast iron skillet is heated on a turkey fryer and propane. i ladle out whatever is needed into the lee pourer and its all clean lead

[bangerjim]

You WILL get "stuff" in your casting pot. Lead, tin, and ant DO oxidize. That is why I use beeswax in the Lee 4-20's to reduce any oxides back in. All the lead I use had been fluxed 3 times BY ME when I initially did the ingots. Your stuff off Ebay could be any crapola!!!!!! Re-melt it, flux it a couple times with saw dust, and re-cast your ingots....but NOT in your casting pot!!!!!!!

I have various color oxides form at times. Too hot will cause them to from very fast. Beeswax takes care of any/all oxides I get. It works much better than candles and smells great! If you are at the correct temp, it will NOT flash up in flames like paraffin.

Your pot can/will rust, but you are not seeing FeO2 as the crud.

Once you empty it and clean thoroughly as Larry suggested above.....keep a FULL casting pot at all times! Do not let it even get down to 1/2 full. Leave it full when you shut down. Draw off a little 1/2# ingot, let it cool, check the hardness, and write it on the ingot so you will remember what soup you have in there for next time. Has worked for me for a long time.

banger

[dippmaster]

hmm, ill be honest, I hadent bothered with fluxing any of my lead, cause at first i didnt have these problems.

[cali4088]

When i first started casting i was using wheel weights. I was constantly skimming crud off the top but never fluxed. Pours were decent, Then i started pouring with linotype lead, around 400 lbs of it, and had no issues at all. THEN, I started melting down PURE lead. Thet stuff will NOT pour and settle correctly if you dont flux. Hours of research and i was back on track. Here is a tip.

When your lee pourer is still hot, take some welders gloves, pour out all the lead in it. Unplug, start scrapping with a knife to get that stuff out of there, Empty again. Do this continously until you have removed most of the crud. Then start taking it apart and clean the rod and the cavity where the rod goes into. get used to it because you'll need to do this every so often to keep your lead nice and clean. try and clean your lead seperate from your lee pourer. Liek i said, I melt all my lead on a cast iron skillet and make downriggers and ingots of various form. I know they are clean so if i ever need some for my pourer, i just grab and ingot and away i go

[ncbearman]

Keep your heat low when you smelt. Get a thermometer. This will keep the zinc and other contaminates from melting/breaking down. You will hear all types of ways to flux. Scrap candles from the house or Goodwill store will work and smell good but will flare up. It won't take much. Melt your lead, flux 2 or 3 times with wax/candles, flux again with saw dust. Stirring it into the mix each time you flux. As bangerjim said scrape the bottom as your fluxing to bring it all to the top. Then you will have very clean lead and no more problems. After you clean sir dripsalot. I use my 10#er to pour pure lead cores for swaging.

[dippmaster]

Ya, ill probrably do that.
to be honest, when I was using just the WW ingots I wasn't having any problems, Untill I started cutting up and mixxing in the some 40 pounds of old lead pipe my uncle had pulled out of some hundred year old house that was being rebuilt.

[dippmaster]

and I have plenty of old broken candles actually

[dbosman]

Red, orange, and white can be lead oxides, which are far more dangerous than licking boolits. Flux, scrape and periodically use an L shapped paper clip to clean the crud from the spout.

[dippmaster]

This is what my pot looks like right now
http://imageshack.com/a/img819/3088/nul4.jpg

[cali4088]

WW ingots arent the problem, Wheel weights that havent been melted down and are mixed with Zinc WW's are a problem when going over zincs melting temperature. If you bought some ingots from the bay, then they are clean to a certain degree, and shouldnt contain any zinc but can still contain arsenic and other contaminates such as iron which loves to oxidize and cause rust. You'd be suprised how much crud is in OLD LEAD, such as old piping and roofing sheets. Plumbers sheets especially oxidize a lot. I wouldnt worry so much about the heat because alloyed metals such as WW melt at a lower temperature than lead. Question: when you flux your lead, is it pouring properly? The reason I ask is that old lead pipes are almost entirly pure lead and pure lead doesnt pour right most of the time. Like someone said, keep your lead at a lower temperature, but not too low that it cools too much during pouring. And dont pour too hot because your bullets will come out in oxidized colors. If for some reason you have zinc in your alloy, then thats a whole other beast and requires sulfur.

[cali4088]

Just follow my instructions. Turn on heat, pour out all lead, scrap, empty out all the dust and associated garbage. Flux all lead before filling unless its linotype lead or WW lead. Pure lead is what got you into this

[dippmaster]

I may try that. right now im trying with your typical brass brush and other scrapping tools while its cold.

Now Ive never had bullets come out in any color but shiny lead, I find having my pot of setting 7 is a good temp for my pace of casting.

[cali4088]

The only time I have my lead shining is when there is a decent amount of tin in it or when melting antimony. Too much antimony and its a dull silver color, and with pure lead a coulpe days later its dull darkish gray. I do get my lead hotter that satans ball sack though since im using a turkey fryer. if the cold method doesnt work, try doing it hot. it will soften the oxides to a certain degree

[dippmaster]

alright, though I have a question.
What if I simply refill the pot, and spend a few hours fluxing with candle wax. would that pull all this stuff to the surface as well? I mean it seemed that some of this stuff was coming to the surface with time earlier today.

[bhn22]

You need to clean your pot from time to time. Most of what you see is water soluble. Fill the pot with hot water and scrub the inside with a stainless steel brush. Most of it will come out. Don't do this dry, or you're likely to put a bunch of potentially lead oxide bearing dust in the air. Another option is to empty the pot, let it cool, then have the inside beadblasted. After you get it home, rinse out the pot to remove dust from the glass beads.

[cali4088]

As soon as you flux in your pourer, all that black stuff will come to the top,HOWEVER, some will fill the rod cavity. Now you're back to square 1. I flux for about 3 minutes,stir for 1 min, skim off the top, flux again and let the flux stay on top it keeps the oxidation of the lead below to a minimum. Keep in mind this is on a turkey fryer and a cast iron skillet. Only clean fluxed lead goes in my pourer. Best bet is to get it all cleaned and start off new. When you do this, you learn what best works for you. Then you'll know exactly what to do next time something like this happens. The stuff that was coming to the surface is oxidation as well as dirty etc thats been attracted to that old lead. Ill post some pictures of my setup when i get home today.

[dippmaster]

hmm, point taken