? About smelting reclaimed shot

[igolfat8]

I was given a bucket of reclaimed shot from an indoor turkey shoot range. I smelted it today and fluxed it multiple times with sawdust. What is the goldish brown skin layer on top of the lead? As I skim it off another gold brown skin layer immediate covers the surface of the lead no matter how many times I flux or skim it off.

[john.k]

Yellow lead oxide?

[D Crockett]

my guess is your pot is to hot turn the temp. down D Crockett

[Retumbo]

Too hot. You are stripping out the antimony/tin

[osteodoc08]

Turn your temp down. It’s oxidized goodness. Let it cool and start over. You’ll want to attempt to reduce it back in.!

[igolfat8]

Hmmmmm, I smelted range scrap earlier at same heat and it didn’t have that brown skin on it? This morning I measured the ingots hardness at 58 (9 BNL) for the shot and (68) for the range scrap, using my Cabine Tree tester. I’ll measure it again in a couple weeks after it hardens up.

[Dusty Bannister]

Different alloy, will likely produce different results when heated. You are working with low tin on the one hand and then no tin with the other melt. Perhaps some other contamination to the shot when it is recovered. I would suggest that you cast some WFN bullets for hardness testing and not expect the hardness of an ingot to be accurate. Good metal though, with a little tin added. Dusty

[RedStar Raider]

I experienced that same thing when I bought a bunch lead shot, almost looked like gold on top in my pot.