To Flux or not to Flux? That is the question.

[PepeLapiu]

So I started melting some scrap lead into my Lee 10 lbs pot while I await the rest of my equipment from MidwayUSA

I tried fluxing, and I tried not fluxing. I honestly see no differences in results aside from the flames, smoke and smell that the parafin wax generates. My Google search failed to provide a good well explained reason to Flux.

The wax will float and will only come in contact with the surface layer of the lead. So I really don't understand what fluxing does. Do you all flux your lead? Do you see a difference in results? Do you have a clear reason for fluxing your lead?

[kenyerian]

http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_textonly2.pdf. For an in-depth information on casting and the details of Fluxing I suggest that you read Glenn Fryxell's book :From Ingot To Target" Chapter Four covers Fluxing.

[MrWolf]

Basically just reducing metals back with the wax. Try using pine shavings, saw dust, etc. to flux with. I use pine shavings from Walmart. Cheap and lasts forever.

[mongoose33]

If all you have is lead, then it matters not much. But if you have alloy, then it does matter.

Tin has a minor influence on hardness but its major property is to allow better fill-out when casting.

At high temps, the tin wants to oxidize; the oxidized tin, being lighter than the alloy, floats, which means it gathers on top of the melt and thus isn't in the alloy. Too much of this and now your nice lead-tin alloy is increasingly a lead-tin alloy.

Fluxing reduces oxides back to metal; has to do with the carbon it produces when it "burns." In addition, sometimes the residue of fluxing creates a melt/air barrier on top of the melt, preventing oxygen from coming into contact w/ the alloy and thus preventing oxidation.

When you flux, you don't just let it sit on top of the melt; you stir it in. I like to use the small wooden paint-stirrers for this task. I figure the charring of the paint-stirrer only helps w/ the reduction.

PS: Read Kenyerian's link above for the complete info on fluxing.

[pworley1]

Flux,flux, and flux again.

[country gent]

Just adding some wax to the pot dosnt get the metal fluxed or rduced. You need to add your fluxing agent wood chips wax sawdust and then stir working it thru the metal or the metal thru it stiring and scraping the sides down well to loosen the crud sticking.

[bhn22]

Fluxing removes impurities from the lead that cause casting difficulties, and could actually damage your reloading dies and potentially even the guns if allowed to accumulate. It will still look like lead alloy when you're done. Is that what you mean by "not seeing a difference"? Fluxing also reincorporates and stabilizes the individual components in alloys that oxidize at different rates. If you really want to see a difference, fluxing with wood chips even seems to clean the walls of the pot over time.

[dragon813gt]

http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_textonly2.pdf. For an in-depth information on casting and the details of Fluxing I suggest that you read Glenn Fryxell's book :From Ingot To Target" Chapter Four covers Fluxing.

Best advice given. Read the book multiple times. It has a lot of information that you can't grasp in one read.

[PepeLapiu]

Okay guys.
Revisiting the thread now.
Thanx for all the info.

Now, according to FortuneCookie user on Youtube, fluxing will mix the antimony and tin back into the lead.
Now, correct me if I am wrong (wife does it all the time) but I thought lead alloy was desirable for full brass shell ammo such as pistol and rifle bullets. But pure soft lead is desirable for shotshell slugs bullets.
Am I wrong? (this would be a first.....ever :D)

If this is correct, wouldn't it make more sense not to flux when casting for slugs?

Not trying to argue against the information I have received here from you guys. It's just that I feel I am getting conflicting opinions.

[PepeLapiu]

And yes, I'll be getting that book next time I place an order from the USA.

[Hardcast416taylor]

An old aged shooter/reloader/caster told me about fluxing a long time ago and his wisdom still remains true. If you like your gun barrel and you shoot cast bullets thru it, then you better flux the lead or there is the possablity of grit in the molten lead will scar up the inside of the barrel. In other words, FLUX, even if you think you don`t need to!Robert

[Echo]

Pure lead for shotgun slugs and ML boolits - but you could still add a % or 2 of Sn to reduce the surface tension of the alloy, and thus provide better mold fillout...

[PepeLapiu]

When you say 1% or 2% of tin, you mean that per volume or per weight?
And what's a good source of tin?

[country gent]

Fluxing or reducing blends the mix back together when elements start to oxidize and seperate out. Fluxing is quick and simple to do and helps to keep alloy blended from start to finish. Another benifit is it helps remove impurities from the pot ( dirt, carbons and other cruds) binding them or helping the float to the top from the stiring motion used with them. Fluxing a pots stirring motion isnt just swirling it around but getting it to flow thru the fluxing agent and the avent thru it. A thourogh scraping of sides and bottom of the pot also help to clean everything and mix it.

[mongoose33]

Okay guys.
Revisiting the thread now.
Thanx for all the info.

Now, according to FortuneCookie user on Youtube, fluxing will mix the antimony and tin back into the lead.
Now, correct me if I am wrong (wife does it all the time) but I thought lead alloy was desirable for full brass shell ammo such as pistol and rifle bullets. But pure soft lead is desirable for shotshell slugs bullets.
Am I wrong? (this would be a first.....ever :D)

If this is correct, wouldn't it make more sense not to flux when casting for slugs?

Not trying to argue against the information I have received here from you guys. It's just that I feel I am getting conflicting opinions.

Not to take issue with your approach to gathering information, but what are the credentials of this "FortuneCookie" who posts to Youtube?

I'm going to be gentle about this, but you need to do some reading. Start with the stickies at the top of this section, read the FAQ, and that will help you with a lot of this.

Fluxing removes impurities (if there are any) and helps to keep all the elements of the alloy well alloyed (lead, tin, antimony, arsenic maybe, whatever). Virtually all alloys used in bullet casting are some form of lead alloy; a few play around with zinc but with lead relatively plentiful, no need.

Now, where do you want to get your information? Some dude on YouTube who said something in one video, or here, where people have cast 10s of thousands of boolits and learned how to do it and are willing to help others learn as well?



And yes, I'll be getting that book next time I place an order from the USA.

That book is a .PDF file you can download to your computer and read at leisure.

[JWFilips]

Best ever from our own Member!

"Boolit casters typically use dirty, contaminated scrap from whatever source we can scrounge up, and that sort of stuff needs special attention to make the best boolits. Clean alloy like nuclear medicine shields or foundry alloy doesn't require as much cleaning.


We need to do three things to our alloy: Clean, reduce oxides, and flux.


Cleaning is accomplished by mechanical action, stirring and skimming dirt, sand, steel clips, rust flakes, copper jackets, whatever. A slotted spoon is adequate.


Oxide reduction is next. We need to deal with the oxide dross formation on top of the metal, whether in smelting pot, or a freshly-melted casting pot full of clean ingots. Boolit alloy dross is very rich in valuable tin, so we need to turn it back into useable metal rather than skim and toss it. The opposite of oxidation is a chemical process called "reduction", so if we induce a reduction/oxidation reaction on top of the metal, we can save the scum. Combustion is a redox reaction. Anything that will burn will trade electrons with the oxidized metal, sort of "stealing" the oxygen and freeing the tin and other metals from the scum so they go back into the alloy. Grease, wax, oil, sawdust, anything like that will work to reduce oxides, and if your alloy is clean of other contaminating metals waxes work fine for this job.


Now, about Fluxing. This is the part that seems to confuse everyone. If your alloy came from wheel weights or other dirty scrap, it likely contains a bunch of other metals that don't cast very well and mess up the flow, or FLUX, of the alloy. This makes it tough to cast good boolits. Things we want to get rid of are zinc, aluminum, iron, calcium, and a few others. Since what we want to get rid of is all pretty much more difficult to reduce than lead, tin, and antimony, we can remove it through adsorption. With a "d". Things that work really well at removing the oxides of contaminating metals are molten borate glass and the carbohydrates in wood. Wax won't do it. The problem with borates (such as Marvellux) is that they don't reduce any of the oxides at all, including tin, they just adsorb them and remove them from the alloy. If you want to save your tin/antimony/bismuth/lead oxides, use sawdust because it saves the good stuff and adsorbs the bad stuff so it can be skimmed and thrown away with the ash when it has finished burning.


So again, sawdust, being a hydrocarbon, will also reduce tin/lead/antimony oxides we want to save while adsorbing the remainder of the junk we want to remove and capturing it in the ash. Two for one, so to speak. Resiny, pine sawdust, particularly sappy yellow pine, is one of the best reducant/fluxes I have ever used because the resin is such a fine and quick sacrificial reducant, quickly reducing the good stuff so it won't get adsorbed, but leaving the oxidized trash metals for the carbon to soak up as the wood chars.


Sawdust and ash cannot get below the surface of the melt and cause problems unless you drag it down there physically so that it gets trapped below the surface tension of the alloy at the bottom of the pot. Carrying ash down there on the end of a fresh ingot, a handful of sprues, or by scratching around on the bottom of the pot with a wooden stick are the principle ways of getting ash junk on the bottom where it will migrate to the spout and cause inclusions in the boolits. Use common sense and it won't happen. A wood stick is the bee's knees for scraping all the stuck, baked dross off the sides of the casting pot, it reduces oxides on contact."


Gear

[1_Ogre]

Noticed that you referenced youtube. Be cautious of that site, there are some people on there that don't know their head from a hole in the wall but still publish. Not saying that everything there is bad, but it only takes one time to take something for granted when your reloading and it could end up being not so good. Just be cautious, you tube is like random phone calls to your phone, you never know what they are.
Fluxing is a necessary process in casting. Even if you have pure lead, do you know who made it or what's in it? Fluxing is our way of cleaning and mixing the components of our lead mixes so we can have stable reliable boolits, and not just a "THING" to do. Flux and you'll be amazed at all the "JUNK" that comes floating up lol

[twc1964]

Nit to pick nits but...you really should use a separate smelting pot to clean scrap lead. Some dont do this but why get all that mess stuck to the side of your casting pot? If using coww, range scrap, etc, get a heavy stainless pot or a cast iron dutch oven and set it on a gas turkey fryer or old coleman stove. This works far better and wont contaminate your pot. I have put dirty lead in my pot......once, and i got tons of junk in my boolits until i drained it and scrubbed it out good . Just my o2.

[PepeLapiu]

Yeah, I first bought a Lee 10 lbs pot and was melting my scrap lead into ingots with that.
When I realized how it was getting clogged up too easily I went out and got a stainless steel pot and a propane burner. Works great and doesn't get my Lee pot full of junk.

[1_Ogre]

twc1964 - I NEVER smelt in my casting pots. I have a 2gal cast iron pot and a fish cooker. They do just fine and when it's time to clean up, the lead will just drain out of the cast iron pot (kinda like a boolit out of a mould) and cleaning up the garbace from coww's and such is a snap. That way you don't get all that garbage clogging up your pouring spout, which we all know is fun to clean.
Just how I do it, and it works pretty good.

[twc1964]

S-3, i did that a long time ago and then bought a used turkey fryer and a cut in half propane tank. I scrubbed the 4-20 and never looked back. The only thing i put in my casting pot is lead ingots and bees wax. I found i was spending way too much time sticking a wire in the spout to clear it out from junk collecting in there and my boolits had inclusions on a lot of em. I resmelted my meager stash of ingots,( 250lbs) and recleaned it and have been good to go since then.