Help!! What is this stuff?

[vandeusenps]

Guys,

Just started casting a few months ago. During the last few casting sessions, I've been getting this brown, sand-like stuff floating to the top of the pot. It accumulates almost constantly at the surface of the lead, and sticks to the walls of the lee production pot...I've already had to replace the liner once...

Did I use bad lead? What is going on?

97549

[vandeusenps]

Here's another pic of it in the pot, it is glowing orange.

97551

[vandeusenps]

Notice the brown rust-looking **** sticking to the walls...this is a brand new liner!

[Bored1]

Did you flux the lead while you were smelting it?

[vandeusenps]

Did you flux the lead while you were smelting it?

No, all the lead I have was purchased off of ebay. They described it as "100% pure lead", I mixed in 10:1 tin.

[Cmm_3940]

Looks like some kind of sand/mineral impurity.

[dilly]

I don't know what that is but I bet whoever figures your problem out will want to know the source of that lead.

[vandeusenps]

I'm betting you guys are correct. It seems like I was using some pure lead when making shotgun slugs with no issues...and I had some Lyman #2 alloy I bought years ago from ebay as well...and seems like when I started using this, I started getting the issues.

It looks like maybe it was lead from recycled bullets, that didn't get fluxed for sand/other stuff removal.

It's looking like I'm going to have to replace the liner again...

[Bored1]

Why replace the liner? Just scoop off as much of it as you can when it shows up. I would also try fluxing the remaining lead you have before putting it in the pot. I have a lee pot just like yours that had all sorts of crud in it. Just get off what you can and keep going.

[vandeusenps]

I have seen similar looking flakes of brown crud when I melted old plumbing traps, but normally it is removed during fluxing before casting into ingots. It appears to be sand, scale, and mineral deposits from the traps.

Perhaps the source did not clean his lead prior to making ingots, but as the flakes I described usually float on the melt, I would think it would be plainly visible on the ingots that vandeusenps had purchased.

PB

I can confirm that the ingots looked a little cloudy, but they were still shiny silver.

[Uncle R.]

Wow.
I have never seen anything that looked like that.
I've melted and used recycled berm lead - the sand and dirt would float to the top, especially after fluxing, and get skimmed off and the mix was left much cleaner than what I'm seeing in your photos. I can't imagine what that stuff is. I hope someone here knows.
<
Uncle R.

[swheeler]

A wire brush will clean your liner. I think I would smelt the ingots you bought and flux enough times until clean, then pour into ingots.

[Cmm_3940]

I wonder if someone tried to flux your lead with, well..., flux. Borax (powdered brazing flux) looks sort of like that when heated. It melts and glows orange, but finally burns off in the hot acetylene flame. We can probably guess all day at what exactly the impurity is, but it all amounts to improperly smelted/fluxed lead.

In a word, dirt.

Flux it again the right way, skim it off the top, toss it, and move on.

[runfiverun]

I'd re-melt the whole batch in a smelting set-up and get all that gunk out before I tried casting with it.
you could try turning the lights off and looking for a green flame on top of the melt.
if you see a greenish flame you have sulpher.

[lka]

I've had that stuff before, just clean it out. To clean the pot afterwards I just unplug it and scrape it with a large spoon every few mins then dump it into the **** bin.

Last week I was melting the dental x-ray lead from my FnL that stuff had been setting in the desert for years and was full of sand and ****, same orange **** and glow, I turned down the heat and fluxed it. I figured it got too hot because I was going through each little sheet of lead and dropping it into the pot, I lost track of time and realized the pot heat was on high. Ps the X-ray lead is a trip it takes a lot of volume to = just 1lb. I'm going to take it all back to the desert and smelt on my turkey fryer too much smoke to do here

[fryboy]

that glowing makes me wonder how hot you're running your pot ??? my newest one seems to run alot hotter than my older one and at 3 it's 820 F ( ye older one has always been 725-750 @ 6 1/2 )

[vandeusenps]

Thanks guys for all your help. I think the majority think it's just stuff left over (dirt, etc.) from improper smelting/fluxing. I guess I'll just have to be careful where I get my lead next time.

[lead-1]

I can say from my first shot at casting that my ingots, that had already been cleaned and fluxed, turned into what looked like red hot molten steel. When I turned the pot down I thought I had done ruined a new pot, then a yellow powder started to appear on top that looked just like sulfur. I skimmed it all off and started over, I am still using that pot but stuff like that can really throw off a new caster.

[bangerjim]

I agree with runfive.......remelt your ingots from Evilbay......and do not believe everyone tells you on there!

You probably have inclusions and crapola in there that was not fluxed out when the original owner made the ingots. Many people do not know the ins and outs of lead!

But you have a good out. Just re-smelt and you should be fine!

Good casting!

banger

[BNE]

What Banger and Run5 said.