Disaster at first ww smelt

[brassrat]

Well maybe just a zinc ww or 3. Boolets were a wreck and wasted hours until I figured it out, (if I did). Contaminated my brand new Lee #68 too. What should I do with my 40 lbs of junk?. BTW I REALLY prepped my new mold. whaaaaa:(

[10 ga]

check out the stickeys up this page on zinc removal.

AND hand sort all your WW and test with side cutter. No cut = zinc, cut = lead

10

[lightman]

Melt it all down again and flux and skim and flux and skim and flux and skim. Then add it to a much larger batch of uncontaminated material. Then read the stickies about sorting wheelweights. It happens Bro, just do like I said.

[BK7saum]

How do you know it is contaminated? You said it is a new lee mold. Really prepped the mold? Cleaned diligently and heat cycled?

I sort my wheelweights and still find a zincer or two when i smelt. Maybe a small batch is easier to overheat. I smelted some WW this weekend and found 6 or 7 weights. But I smelted about 600lbs. My pot holds about 400lbs at a reasonable fill. It is really hard to overheat as their is such a large mass there to absorb the heat.

Sorry, guess I'm not much help. Lead can alloy with about 2% Zn and still flow in the mold. I think extra tin is necessary to facilitate getting good bullets. If that was a new mold, don't give up on the first try. I've frustrated myself to no end with a mold the first time and next time it just seemed to cast better. Same alloy, everything. If there is ever a problem with getting good boolits usually more heat and faster casting is the solution for most of my troubles. Hope you get it sorted out.

Brad

[Bird]

Bring the lead temp to 600 deg. If there is zinc it will be floating on the top. Scrape it off. Cycle the temp and stir. Repeat a few times. 600 is the magic number.

[brassrat]

I had to be above 600* I used a SS pot and just dumped a bunch in and heated, not on high. As it melted, I added more and skimmed at the end. The bottom had to have a few Zincers that melted. I picked these from a 55 gal drum, one by one, and thought they were all lead. The boolets were all frosty and granulated with no fill out. The mold got scrubbed with Dawn 3x and I lubed the sprue plate and pins with a tiny bit of Kroil.

[BK7saum]

Starting out the smelt in am empty pot is the most critical part of the smelt. Once you have a layer of lead on the bottom, the lead weights melt and the steel/zinc will float. If the pot is empty, everything is trapped until it melts or enough lead melts to float out the steel/zinc.

[ShooterAZ]

Yep, I have a box of contaminated lead. Mine got ruined by some zinc dive weights. I'm not sure what I will do with it...I may just toss it as I have plenty of lead.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Well maybe just a zinc ww or 3. Boolets were a wreck and wasted hours until I figured it out, (if I did). Contaminated my brand new Lee #68 too. What should I do with my 40 lbs of junk?. BTW I REALLY prepped my new mold. whaaaaa:(
relax, you didn't contaminated your mold...or the lead pot.
Are you sure you have zinc contamination?
If so, and you have plenty of other non-contaminated COWW alloy, I would just add one ingot (or about 1 pound) of the alleged zinc contaminated alloy to a 20 pot of non-contaminated alloy.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?155778-my-first-Zinc-contamination-in-WW-smelting

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I had to be above 600* I used a SS pot and just dumped a bunch in and heated, not on high. As it melted, I added more and skimmed at the end. The bottom had to have a few Zincers that melted. I picked these from a 55 gal drum, one by one, and thought they were all lead. The boolets were all frosty and granulated with no fill out. The mold got scrubbed with Dawn 3x and I lubed the sprue plate and pins with a tiny bit of Kroil.

when you say "granulated", do you mean that they had a galvanized look...like the ingots in the thread I linked to, in the previous post?

[Plate plinker]

Flux with sulfur. Pulls out everything but the pure lead. Been there done that now I have a PID.

[gwpercle]

The only way to make 100% sure this doesn't happen again is to sit down with side cutters and a file and "test" each and every one....you will know which ones are soft and which ones are hard.
Some zinkers look exactly like lead WW's and have fooled me...they don't fool the side cutter or the file.

Do the remelt and flux then cast into small ingots and add one to every pot of good alloy, it will get used up.
You didn't contaminate your mould or pot....they are just fine. Carry on.

This hobby has a bit of a learning curve ...but you'll catch on with a little experience .
Gary

[Retumbo]

A few zinc ww in 40 lbs should not affect much.

[brassrat]

I have ten lbs of S on the way, will this flux my WWs? lol. The mold got heated and reheated, a bunch of times, but on a electric hotplate and ended up too cold and cast terribly. I guess too much going on and I forgot my usual heating on the Lyman pot. After reading (again) I see that Zinc looks like a grey oatmeal, that I didn't have. When describing as granulated, It is as a Sb alloy will look. At least my mold is clean of lead everywhere and I epoxied, two, Lee, loose handled molds. I also did a pewter remelt and found my H+G mold had rusted, along with an old Lyman. They are also, super cleaned up, and will get a, new, airtight home. I plan on a Xray of some samples as well as this stuff.

[MyFlatline]

Add some copper sulfate ,,there is a lot of info on that here.

[triggerhappy243]

test your supposedly bad lead with muriatic acid. if it fizzes, there is zinc. this is the only true test for zinc.

[PBaholic]

I don't do a lot of WW's anymore, as I hate the smell. That and I've worried about the arsenic in COWW's.

One good way I have used to make sure that I don't get any zinc is to melt in a covered dutch oven on an electric hot plate. It can not easily reach the temp to melt zinc. I still sort, but every once in a while, I come up with a few that aren't melted.

[Plate plinker]

test your supposedly bad lead with muriatic acid. if it fizzes, there is zinc. this is the only true test for zinc.


This to I forgot about hydrochloric acid test.

[brassrat]

I actually got some last week

[Oklahoma Rebel]

when you are actually casting boolits, what is your heat source, I am not sure that you are getting it hot enough, both the alloy and the mold. do you have a thermometer? zinc ww's will float around for quite a while, even if you fill the pot with ww's before you start heating. I did that a few weeks ago, and I had missed 3-4 zinc weights.