Roof Lead

[MikeP]

I am melting some lead sheets that came off a roof, I am told. It is producing a lot of light ash-like sediment that I am skimming off the top, but can't get all of it. I'm just pouring the remainder it into ingots for later use.

My questions:

Should I keep skimming all of the ash off?

Why are some ingot batches gold, and (most) have a blue tint?

Thanks.

[powderburnerr]

flux it with some wax or candles and stir .. should help clean it the yellow blur is an indicator of pure lead and the yellow is an oxidized color of lead maybe cool it down a bit

...............Dean

[buck1]

Add sawdust to the wax and light it on fire, alloy
should be at about 800 deg. Bullshop helped me with that one!!
Also scrape your pot down well. ....Buck

[milkman]

MikeP, I tried everything I could think of to get rid of the blue stain on some sheet lead I had been given, then was told that it indicated pure lead. you live and learn. milkman

[MikeP]

Thanks for the help, guys. Now I know that blue and gold, the colors of the Fighting Tigers of LSU, are normal for pure lead. That's almost patriotic. So, I'm a happy camper. I melted down 100 pounds of the lead sheets today and got 93 pounds of pretty clean stuff. Does that sound normal? There were some adhesives, etc. on the lead, so I guess the 7% loss went to that. I may have skimmed too much lead off, trying to get rid of some of the blue.
Oh well, as was said, live and learn.

[buck1]

I melted down a lot of roof flashings a wile back and lost a lot of Wt from , glues , and tar (yuk).....Buck

[ddixie884]

I think that ash you are talking about is oxidized lead.