Need Advice For First Smelt

[~JM~]

I have been lurking & reading as I collect materials & equipment to begin casting. Found a scrap yard that had some lead available & this is what they had.

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Not knowing a whole lot, I selected these items & dragged them home.

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I also have these.

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[~JM~]

As far as my equipment. I have a yard sale turkey fryer, a large cast iron Dutch oven & a yard sale ladle.

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I plan to use these as my ingot molds.

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[~JM~]

I had originally intended to mix all the lead together. It was recently suggested to me that I might try to identify & separate my lead into different lots in case there were any contaminants such as possibly zinc in some of the fishing weights, etc. I do have a thermometer & one of those IR temperature guns to monitor temperature with.

I'm hoping some of you might look over what I have & offer some advice on if my equipment appears capable & how I should proceed.

Thank you.

[MOA]

Looks great JM. Get some sawdust an a pariffin candle for fluxing. Use the thermometer to get your lead just above its melting point an you shouldn't need to worry about zinc. Zinc melts at a higher temp and any zinc should still be floating and can be skimmed off. Looks like mostly pure lead except for dive belt weights an possibly the sinkers.

You might think about using a specific mold just for pure lead. Then another for just wheelweights. And so on. This way you will know what the
hardness of the ingot is by looking at its shape. When you get lots of lead in ingot form it can get confusing if you don't have a established system.

[country gent]

Dont forget the safety gear Gloves, heavy pants, heavy long sleeved shirt, boots, safety glasses , a hat with bill. When setting up leave plenty of room so if something does happen you can get away.

Work slow and pay attention its not overly dangerous but molten metal isnt forgiving. Work in a well ventilated area and think things thru. You will do fine

Remember those pretty shiny ingots are still hot, a lot longer than you think

[Jim22]

And for hardness testing try the pencil method. I bought a scientific tester but the pencils are easier so I use them. I bought a set of one each of pencils with different hardness.

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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0014E2S0Q/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

How to use them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS9_f8mItr8

Jim

[~JM~]

The dive belt weights have been in the family since the mid 1960's. I have some letter stamps that I can use to ID ingots. Have some small candles, but do not have any saw dust yet.

Have most of the safety gear. I would like to pick up a couple more pairs of gloves & some welder gloves. Did some aluminum sand casting in High School, but that was a long time ago. Still remember most of the process.

I have a set of these pencils: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071Z1CSTP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I need to locate & print out the conversion chart though. The pencil technique looks much more user friendly than the Lee hardness tester, etc.

I used a small pair of side cutters & pinched each piece. Maybe a few feel slightly softer than others, maybe I can just apply the tool to the shape easier, not sure.

I've been trying to decide if I should buy more lead from that yard before I start. I'm close to 100# so far. The yard charges $1 a pound.

[The Dar]

Your muffin pans look to be aluminum, no problem there. Your mini loaf pan needs to be rusty for good release. I'd hit that baby with a propane torch and let it rust before using. I leave mine outside in the elements and have a good rust "patina", no problem with releasing ingots.

[kevin c]

The loaf pan looks like it has a non stick coating that will off gas as it breaks down from the heat of the melt: your ingots will look like they have really bad acne scars until that stops when the coating burns off.

You can speed up the process by deliberately torching the pan as suggested, but DO NOT inhale the fumes or the fine powdery residue.

Aluminum or steel muffin or cupcake tins work well if they are stamped out of a single sheets of metal. Some cupcake pans have the cups crimped into the top, and the heat of the lead can make the cup separate from the top. The cups can dent, which might trap the ingot after it hardens. I had that happen mainly with aluminum.

Don’t use real tin plated muffin tins: the ingot will weld itself to the plating and will only come out it you remelt the surface that is bonded to the cup.

[414gates]

Fire it up and go.

Melt it all together, make your ingots, then test hardness.

Label the container holding the ingots with the lead hardness for future reference.

That way you know how to proceed if you need a harder alloy.

Don't worry about sorting the lead first, your supply is mostly pure lead. If you had buckets of wheelweights, then you'd need to sort.

[Dusty Bannister]

I am with the sort by appearance group. Sheet lead as one batch, marked ingots like the Kirk and Hex shaped ingots,as a batch. Fishing weights as a batch. Dive weights can be anything as those I make are usually contaminated lead. With cast ingots, the important part to show is the open part of the ingot. That will show color, luster, and voids of the as cast alloy. If you have time, tap those unknown chunks with a light hammer to see if they thud or ring and sort accordingly. Those small square ingots might be something other than just lead. Test those for hardness if you can. Nice selection but do what you have time to do. About any method of mix or match will work. But ingots marked pure lead do not really need to be tested so set them aside. Good luck, nice find.

[Land Owner]

Check the current price of a set of Dive Belt Weights (quick search ==> $19 for 4#; $10 for 2#), which may give you pause to consider selling/trading those rather than melting them.

I have a set of four (4) one-pound each, clean and richly sculpted, Old English-style, Pub scenes, pewter (95% tin) goblets ($15 for all 4 at a flea market that have similarly sold for $60) and a single five (5) pound pewter (95%) flower vase ($20 at a consignment shop).

On the vase my spouse has demanded leniency from melting. On the goblets I can't commit to melting them (yet). The prospect of "losing" $45 by not selling them does not put me off. I scored in purchasing inexpensive pewter for making an alloy with lead.
They are "nice" to look at and it seems "an injustice" to melt them. I am hoping that will pass...

The First Three Axioms of melting lead and pewter are:
1. Avoid tentative play.
2. Do not get "emotionally involved" with the material.
3. Once melted, everything before is forgotten.

[lightman]

It looks like you have a good starting place. Most of your lead looks to be soft. The wadded up sheet lead and roof jacks will be soft. The factory ingots are probably soft too. The dive weights and fishing sinkers can be nearly anything. I would keep the soft lead as a batch and the other as a batch.

Think about buying a set of cheap steel stamps from Harbor Freight to mark your ingots. I use the letters PB for soft lead, WW for clip-on wheelweights, ect.

Proper dress is important, as is good ventilation when melting lead. I have one major rule, I NEVER add solid lead to a pot of molten lead. If you get a drop of water under the surface you will get a visit from the Tinsel Fairy. Not fun!

Good Luck with your first smelt.

[Chaparral66]

~JM~
You will be surprised how fast 100 pounds of lead or alloy will disappear once you start casting, reloading and shooting. Caliber dependent of course. Keep the word out with your contacts that you are looking for lead (think flashing from a roofer), clip on or stick on wheel weights or medical lead shielding. Also look for pewter (high tin content), electronic solder (particularly the new lead-free solder - also high tin content). Search here on Castboolits for the alloy calculator that is an Excel spread sheet that will help when you get farther into casting and mixing materials for that sweet alloy your guns like.

Patience... think twice before doing something new, read through the posts on this forum and if you still can't find the answer post a question. Learn from our mistakes and experience.

My order of preference is smelting, casting, reloading and finally shooting. Good luck!

[Bazoo]

If you’re handy around me, I’d be glad to offer my knowledge in smelting to get you started.

[bangerjim]

Good start. But Pb goes fast! A good shooting day for me is over 100#! I shoot a lot of big 45LC slugs and they eat Pb real fast. Many start out with tiny 9mm or 38's which are pretty light weight and you can get a bunch of boolits out of a 100# batch.

Good luck. Keep looking for sources of lead. I've paid a buck a pound for the last 10 years at my local yards. In there was also 25# of pure SN, solder, low-temp alloys, COWW ingots, pure, and a few pewter pieces. The treat it all as lead.

Once you start getting more, you will definitely want to re-melt and ingotize them separately.

And you will need some Sb & Sn alloys to mix with all the picture pure Pb stuff. Unless you are shooting black powder RB's

[slim1836]

It would be nice to know where you are located, someone close to you could show you the ropes.

Slim

[~JM~]

It would be nice to know where you are located, someone close to you could show you the ropes.

Slim

North central AZ

[~JM~]

Performed some quicky pencil hardness testing after dinner. I purchased a box of ingots from one of the board members that was advertised as 95% lead & 5% antimony. That took a B pencil to scratch.

My dive belt weights were difficult to produce a consistent test, but looks like a 4H pencil. (Chart doesn't show 4H pencil)

The roof flashing = 4B

The octagon shaped stamped with a Q = B

The ones stamped KIRK = B

The odd round/dome shaped = H

The squares above the sinkers = 3B

The largest sinker = 2B

Rectangle sinker = B

Random sinker = H

Didn't go through the rest.

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[BJung]

Welcome to the club. I had problems with the muffin pans. The lead wouldn't release so I rely on my Lee ingot mold. I don't know what North Central AZ is like but aren't there ranges there to retrieve range lead? I did a quick search on lead wheel weight prohibitions and AZ is not on the list. Collect as much lead wheel weights as possible! Some have said that you can identify the Zn weights by the sound of the wheel weight when dropped. Are there no ranges nearby to find range scrap?

[~JM~]

Learned a few things today.

I melted the roof flashing & the Kirk/Hex material together. I ladled that into the molds until the level was too low to scoop any more out, then I added all the sinkers.

https://i.imgur.com/jky1DV9.jpg

My mini loaf pan did off gas & create rainbow colored pock marks. I only used one of the loaf pans. If I were to do it over, I would buy the smaller version with less cavities. Too heavy when full.

https://i.imgur.com/YHwGmO6.jpg

I kept the two batches separate & then checked the hardness with the art pencils. I'm somewhere between a 4B & 6B pencil. The 4B cuts easily. The 6B provides about 50% gouge & 50% pencil lead sticks to ingot. Both batches seem the same.

https://i.imgur.com/dGex4E1.jpg

Bucket weighs 80# on bathroom scale.

[~JM~]

I kept having a "skin" form across the surface of the lead. I used my Skil-Saw on a 2x4 to create saw dust to flux with. Also had a package of Dollar Store votive type candles. Stirred the saw dust into the pot several times & skimmed the surface clear, then dropped chunks of the candle in & repeated the process. Still developed a skin. My idea of using an IR temperature gun didn't work. I also have a lead thermometer. The gun would read the surface at +400 degrees & the thermometer was +700 degrees. I initially had the pot too hot up to 900 degrees. I was able to dial down the temperature & mark the regulator on the first batch before introducing the sinkers.

[~JM~]

What is typically done with the material that is skimmed off the surface? The first few skims were obviously trash. Afterward it looked like some of the material might be useable.

[~JM~]

I have a new appreciation for the pictures I've seen of nice shiny fully filled out ingots.

[farmbif]

its great to see a new caster having success doing things right learning what to do to get the results you want

might want to bring those folks at scrap yard a box of doughnuts or case of beer and buy up all the good stuff as you can afford it. fewer and fewer scrap yards are willing to let anyone buy or even look at anything they have.

[~JM~]

its great to see a new caster having success doing things right learning what to do to get the results you want

might want to bring those folks at scrap yard a box of doughnuts or case of beer and buy up all the good stuff as you can afford it. fewer and fewer scrap yards are willing to let anyone buy or even look at anything they have.

Thank you. Can't say that I qualify as "doing things right" yet, but I'm trying to learn. I was thinking about going back to the yard tomorrow morning.

[~JM~]

https://i.imgur.com/gAltehv.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/8fmKTsy.jpg

[lightman]

It looks like you are off to a good start.

[Walks]

I like cast iron for ingots. Heavy aluminum works too.

I got nothing to say about sheet metal pans, of any kind.

[lightman]

What is typically done with the material that is skimmed off the surface? The first few skims were obviously trash. Afterward it looked like some of the material might be useable.

I usually add this material to my next smelt. I'll move it from one pot to the next until I'm finished for the day then I add it to the outgoing trash after its cooled off. Sometimes you may milk a little useful material from it and sometimes not.