Zinc is immiscible?

[DanishM1Garand]

https://youtu.be/MU8dnNm2tNY
This guy uses Zinc to remove the silver from the Lead from the Galena he processed.

I spend hours sorting zinc from lead wheel weights and this guy adds it and it seemed to be immiscible (not able to mix). What am I missing?

People were roasting him as he only recovered 30 bucks worth of silver and it cost 50 bucks. I reminded them that that 50 pounds of lead is worth something as well. Rather like the copper recovered from Butte Montana that is “polluted” with 3 percent non copper. It’s ok as that 3 percent is gold. You need to look at the entire process and what you get out.

[Winger Ed.]

I spend hours sorting zinc from lead wheel weights and this guy adds it and it seemed to be immiscible (not able to mix). What am I missing?

People were roasting him as he only recovered 30 bucks worth of silver and it cost 50 bucks. .



The personality of any of these forums is determined by the older, 'regulars', and what the moderators will tolerate.
I've quit all the other forums I used to hang out on after so many of the regulars seemed to be mad all the time,
used every opportunity possible to spread around their misery, and the moderators allowed it.

Oh, if you bring your pot up to temp. slowly and stir it around a lot--
any Zinc stowaways will float up since they melt at a noticeably higher temp.

[RKJ]

I watched that video on another forum and found it interesting but thought it was a lot of work for the amount of silver he got. He did get a lot of lead though. I sort WW also but I've had quite a few slip by that were zinc and as Ed said above they float on the surface and I pull them out. I don't worry much about zinc contamination now.

[bangerjim]

Zn contamination is over-rate/over-worried! I have contaminated up to5% Zn in castings with no degradation an anything except the boolits may be a tad lighter....a VERY small tad.

A little Zn does not ruin your alloy as always claimed by some on here.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

Look at the heat needed to flux/seperate the zinc out of the lead though. Like 1700 deg. Iirc? The lead,would be quite vaporous and dangerous at that temp. And he got 100 grams of silver total which would have been about $100.00. Plus 65 lb. of lead.

[dimaprok]

Zn contamination is over-rate/over-worried! I have contaminated up to5% Zn in castings with no degradation an anything except the boolits may be a tad lighter....a VERY small tad.

A little Zn does not ruin your alloy as always claimed by some on here.Also Zn makes lead harder.

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[dimaprok]

If you bring your pot up to temp. slowly and stir it around a lot--
any Zinc stowaways will float up since they melt at a noticeably higher temp.

Correct, not 1700 as Charlie mentioned, however the window is quite small. Zinc alloy ZAMAC used in WW will melt at upper 700F, I know that because I cast Zinc bullets at 800F but tried lower temp too. Many times I used my Lee pot to make lead alloys and temperature would run away higher than 800 even on thermostar setting 5 only. PID is a must.



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[Scrounge]

Also Zn makes lead harder.

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Not from boolit casting experience, but from playing with old machine tools. It's more likely that the lead is immiscible with zinc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_pest Ran into it reading about ZAMAK alloys used in cheap machine tools, like my Atlas TH42. Lead was sometimes added to the pot metal mix to make it flow better, but has bad long-term effects, particularly in stuff that is used in a humid atmosphere. Another place it's widely known is old carburetors. You get intergranular corrosion around the lead crystals that form in the zinc-aluminum alloys. ZAMAK is a series of specific alloys, but pot metal was whatever they happened to have laying about. A bit of zinc, some aluminum scrap, etc. ZA12, one of the popular alloys, was used to make gears for my lathe, IIRC. Some of the gears people have found were apparently not make from the proper alloy, and tend to disintegrate. The right stuff is just about as strong as cast iron, and about a third the weight. It's also much lower melting point alloy, so much cheaper to manufacture.

Bill