Wanted: Contaminated lead

[DLCTEX]

Anyone have some lead with zinc contamination. I need some to try for a project. Dale

[xr650]

I have some Zinc WW you can have.

[DLCTEX]

How many lbs.? I am trying to find a use for contaminated lead. DALE

[Trez Hensley]

I have about a one gallon bucket full of ingots that I think were contaminated. I have it set aside and have not used it for anything. I'm not positive that it is but it was WW and I got distracted during the smelting. It looked a lot like mush before it finally melted enough to get it out of the smelting pot. I'm not willing to chance using it as I have a lot of lead that did not have this caracteristic.

It's yours for the price of shipping if it might help in your study. You might add some of xr650's zinc to make sure. Don't ruin any good alloy to get what you want. Trash this batch. My e-mail address is trezandjolie@yahoo.com It would seem that your best use for this would be for ballist, dive weights, fishing weights and the like.

Either way, send me the $9 for flat rate shipping and let me know where you want it shipped to and it's yours.

[xr650]

I don't have a lot. PM me your address and I will send them to you.
I think some of them might be steel also. Wouldn't mind a second opinion on those.

[Orygun]

I don't have a lot. PM me your address and I will send them to you.
I think some of them might be steel also. Wouldn't mind a second opinion on those.

Easy to check for steel with magnet. :)

[xr650]

Oh so true. [smilie=1:

[Alchemist]

Dale,

I have a big chunk of what I suspect is zinc...looks like it's galvanized. It probably weighs about 8-10 lbs. It's also harder than linotype. PM me with shipping info if you're interested.

Cheers
Alchemist

[DLCTEX]

That should be enough to test with. I am going to try to cast some 4 oz. egg sinkers with it. They do not have to be pretty to work. Last year at the Florida Keys they were costing $4 each and it wasn't hard to lose them in the rocks. I bought the mold for $23 shipped on Ebay and it casts 6 at a time. At 1 1/2 pounds per moldfull it eats up lead in a hurry. If I can get usable sinkers with contaminated ingots I can lower costs considerably. I cast 70 tonight in about 2 hours, but it kills me to use up my lead that way. Thanks, DALE

[Jim]

4 oz. egg sinkers? Jeeesh, Dale, you havin' trouble with current?

[DLCTEX]

Yes, There are some pretty strong currents there. If you don't use heavy weights you will drift into rocks (coral?) and get hung up every time. The fishing is so good it makes the hassel worth it, though. DALE

[stubert]

Put your sinker inside of a wiffle ball. That keeps it from getting stuck in the rocks. Then use a lighter leader or a wire hook, if you get stuck, the leader will break or the hook will bend, but you still have your sinker. It works good. I use it for blackfish in New york.

[DLCTEX]

Can't have a bendy hook when you're catching 7 ft. sharks or 100 lb. Tarpon. Dale

[Alchemist]

Dale,

You have a PM...and a package in the mail.

Cheers :drinks:

[DLCTEX]

So far I haven't found any of the suspect lead to be contaminated. One batch was pretty gnarly, looked to be range lead that had been partly melted and mixed well with dirt , jackets, and whatever. I smelted it, fluxed, skimmed, fluxed, and skimmed. I grabbed the closest mold, Lee 38 cal, 124 gr. (ww) 2 cav. Dunked it for a slow count of 12, and cast beautiful boolits that shined, weighed 130 gr. and filled out beautifully. I hammered one flat and it flattened smoothly, no crumbling. No zinc there.
Next I dropped some ingot muffins in the pot that looked lumpy and a little rough on top, but smooth on the sides and bottom. I suspected that the smoothness indicated no zinc. The boolits dropped well filled and looking like my ww boolits. I judge them to be a little harder than ww due to depth of indentions made by an awl compared to indentions made on known ww boolits. I hammered one flat and it was smooth and flattened with no crumbling. Weighed 124 gr. on the nose. No zinc there.
I next tried to melt a large weight sent by alchemist that has a steel strap sticking out of each end. I ran out of propane, so I tried to melt it in my 20# pot. No joy, that sucker was wicking the heat away too fast. I'll have to get some propane or saw it up. I will bet it is not contaminated due to the smooth appearence of the weight. I don't think it would cast that smooth if it contained zinc.
I did recieve some zinc wheel weights that are definately zinc. Most of them are marked, all of them(except 2 stick ons) were too hard to indent with my Leatherman pliers, couldn't twist them with the pliers and my fingers, and stood up to hammering on the anvil like steel, which 2 sets of stick ons were. 2 stickons indented with the pliers and twisted with pliers and fingers easily. These went into the lead box.
I have been reluctant to deliberately contaminate good metal with zinc, but have decided to sacrifice a small batch for the sake of experimentation. This week end, God willing and the creek doesn't rise ( that's a Texan saying) I will deliberately melt some zinc into a known good batch of ww. I do not own a thermometer, never needed one, and want to do this without one so I can use the results to help guide the novice caster by observation only. Gotta get my tomatoes planted, they're 3 weeks late now, but I don't plant in the dark. DALE

[DLCTEX]

I cut the shiny weight sent by alchemist with a recip. saw and put a 2# chunk in the 20# pot and couldn't get it to melt. The rounded surface was not in good contact with the bottom, so I added some ww to melt and puddle around the chunk for better heat transfer. It took a lot of heat to melt it, but when finally melted it cast good sharply defined boolits that were hard air cooled. The weight was smooth and looked galvanized,it did not show any copper in the melt like the babbit I have melted in the past did. It seemed too heavy to be pewter, so I'm thinking linotype? I haven't had any in years, so I'm not sure. The boolits are hard in a 50/50 mix ww/mystery metal and will hammer flat without crumbling, so I think no zinc. I will mix some zinc with ww and see how it behaves. So far I have heard a little zinc will prevent casting good boolits and will remain slushy. I will see. DALE

[Ricochet]

Dale, I see you and I have pretty much the same hardness testers. Hammer, pliers, awl, knife, screwdriver...

[DLCTEX]

Ricochet: If you think about it, it's the same technical process. Which is comparing indentations in metal against a known metal's indentation. Doing it by hand just introduces the varible of how much pressure is applied, but you can get in the ballpark, which is close enough for my needs. DALE

[imashooter2]

Bad for you, but I find it somewhat encouraging that you're having such a hard time finding contaminated lead...

[xr650]

Good info Dale.
Looking forward to any further tests you perform.

[Ricochet]

Ricochet: If you think about it, it's the same technical process. Which is comparing indentations in metal against a known metal's indentation. Doing it by hand just introduces the variable of how much pressure is applied, but you can get in the ballpark, which is close enough for my needs. DALE
Exactly. I'd love to have a hardness tester, especially since I've reported some observations about heat treatment of very soft (when air cooled) alloys that just might fall under Molly's dictum of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof," but whenever I think about buying one I always come up with something more fun to spend my money on. I enjoy contemplating and discussing the theory, but my practical methods are pretty shadetree.
:-D

[DLCTEX]

Well, I'm going to have to retract my statement that the weight Achemist sent was not contaminated with zinc. Tonight I was going to empty the pot and start with new metal and add zinc to it. I had left the bulk of the metal from the weight in question in the pot and let it cool, It took forever for the approx. 4 lbs to melt, but I was standing there waiting, so didn't think that much about it. I was going to pour it into a mold, but decided to cast with it as I was low on 38 boolits. The pot was cranked up all the way and it took a lot of fluxing and stirring before every thing looked decent. The boolits were frosted in spots, but shiney on most of it, so I turned the heat down. The surface began lumping up, but the boolits were good from the bottom pour, so I kept casting. When there was about 1 1/2 lbs. left, the spout froze and I couldn't get it opened up until I cranked the heat back up all the way and waited for the melt to get hot. When the level reached about 1 lb. I couldn't keep it hot enough , the spout froze and the melt went lumpy. I dumped it out, lots of banging, and found a black layer of dirt? mud?,carbon? maybe 1/8 inch deep in the bottom, over a layer of yellowish powder. The ww I had added was clean and the weight looked clean all the way through when sawn through. Possibly the black is from the hardwood stick I stirred with?
OK, cleaned the pot and melted some known ww ingots (3 lbs), plus one pure lead. I cast a few boolits with it to see that it cast good boolits. It did, so I threw in a couple of weights I thought were zinc, as they were rivited and were hard. Wouldn't melt, so I tested them with a magnet swiped fron the wife's fridge, Shhh! They were iron. I said they were hard as steel. Most of the suspect weights were iron, but I did find three marked zn. Took a long time for them to melt, they floated like a cork. As they melted the melt remained on top in separate little rivlets., so I fluxed and stirred. Lube and hardwood stick were my flux. I could get it stirred in, but as soon as I stopped it began to separate again and lay on top in a lumpy scum. This was with the heat on the 10 lb. Lee all the way up. I skimmed off the grey scum, stirred, and in a moment more arose, so I skimmed again. I then began casting boolits and was casting nice boolits with the dull spots and shiney on most of it. I turned the temp down to try to stop the frosting and just as the frosting stopped the boolits started sticking in the mold. This also caused lumpy scum to form on top again. Turned the heat up and finished down to the last half inch when the spout froze. I dumped the rest and did not find the black or yellow layers. The frosty spots on the boolits are cosmetic only, if rubbed with my finger, they shine, but it's easier to shine them with a rag. The boolits poured when cooler showed some wrinkling. The boolits weighed 128 gr., spot on for this mold with 3 ww to 1 pure. The boolits seemed shinier than normal, but hardness was unaffected to maybe slightly harder, and when air cooled and hammered they flattened nicely with no fracturing.
My conclusions so far: Zinc does not want to alloy with lead , and will seperate if allowed to stand in a molten state. The zinc becomes lumpy on the surface at lower temps, most of it can be skimmed off fairly easily. Getting all contaminate out is hard to do, but good boolits can be cast from a bottom pour, I don't think ladeling will work with contaminated lead, as the bad stuff is on top. High temps are necessary and may cause problems with some molds that don't like high temps. I had to run much hotter than normal with this mold, and also hotter than normal with this pot. I did cast some boolits before adding the zinc with everything seeming normal,so no problem with residual effect on the pot or mold. Zinc weights are much less common than I thought, and float well after all wheel weights and lead has melted. A magnet helps ease your mind. More testing is in order, maybe with iron and brass molds. DALE

[NSP64]

Why didn't I think of doing this!!! Dale look at all the free lead you got.[smilie=1: Thanks for the attempt to contaminate lead. Maybe everyone won't be so quick to label it as Zn contaminated, when its just contaminated.:drinks:

[Alchemist]

Dale,

Very interesting thread here!

I wasn't positive about the "thing" I sent , but was fairly certain I didn't want to try making boolits with it. It wouldn't melt in my smelting pot (8# cast iron pot on Coleman stove). Looks like my suspicions on it containing some zinc were true.

Anyway, glad you're getting some research done! Tried making sinkers with it yet?

Cheers :drinks:
Alchemist

[Trez Hensley]

Dale,
It's good to know that the lead I sent will go to good use. Guess I have gotten a bit overly concerned about contaminated stuff. I have no shortage of lead since I am a first rate scrounger so it's no big loss to loose out on a couple dozen pounds of the stuff. What do you think was in there???

I may have been low on propane and smelting colder than I thought. This was before my thermometer. That might be all there was to the slushy mess I had at the time. I added a weed burner and got it all to melt but since I wasn't sure....

I have at least a ton of lead (probably more), that I know is good which includes lots of WW and soft lead, several hundred pounds of lino, 300 # or more of foundry type and 100 # or so of solder. Life in the world of lead collecting is looking better all the time. That is until I crack my cement floor[smilie=1:

Now if money would come to me as the lead seems to, I would go fishing with you down in Texas:-D.

Take care and thanks for the info,
Trez

[DLCTEX]

Alchemist: My guess is there was a good bit of zinc in taht weight. The appearence fooled me as everything I had read said it would not cast well' They must have had it really smoking when they cast it. I haven't tried to cast sinkers yet as I can't get propane on the week end here. I think that if it is really hot ( 1000+) it will cast fine, but that remains to be seen.
Trez: I think it was ww with a little extra tin. It makes good boolits, cast some more with it today. The range lead just never got hot enough.
DALE

[Trez Hensley]

Dale,
The range lead chunk had never been smelted :-D:-D, it is as it came off of the backstop. I just wanted to make sure (since I was using a one rate box) that you had enough lead to do your testing. It was a bonus.

[leftiye]

Dale, I had a 100 lb lot of "Linotype" that I'm convinced had zinc in it. Made mush like you describe. It would cast if you got it hot enough just like yours did. In fact, when I got it it was in block letters. I was told it was too much antimony, and contamination from printer's ink, but then a batch of wheelweights did the same thing (no ink, not enough antimony to be a problem).