WW Melting Yield?

[22lover]

Admittedly, I'm new to casting. My first experiences have been casting ingots in a muffin pan. I'm using parrafin to flux, yet still get some trash on the tops of the ingots despite my best efforts to ladle it off in the pot. I guess improvement comes with experience.

Anyway, how much useable ingot should I expect from a 50lb box of WW? I'm getting about 30 lbs. I'm considering throwing the massive pile of clips with residual alloy back into the pot to see if I can get a few more pounds out of it, but I'm wondering if a 60% yield is about what I should expect.

Thanks,

Bill

[imashooter2]

80 - 85% is pretty common. There shouldn't be any lead on the clips.

[armyrat1970]

Admittedly, I'm new to casting. My first experiences have been casting ingots in a muffin pan. I'm using parrafin to flux, yet still get some trash on the tops of the ingots despite my best efforts to ladle it off in the pot. I guess improvement comes with experience.

Anyway, how much useable ingot should I expect from a 50lb box of WW? I'm getting about 30 lbs. I'm considering throwing the massive pile of clips with residual alloy back into the pot to see if I can get a few more pounds out of it, but I'm wondering if a 60% yield is about what I should expect.

Thanks,

Bill

Newer wheel weights are different than older. I have learned this the hard way without having a full understanding of the content of the weights. Some contain Zinc and some maybe steel. Read some other post here about casting with wheel weights. Either Zinc or steel will mess up your casting alloy. If you have clips with as you say is residual alloy it is probably zinc left on the clips and you don't want to throw them back in the pot. That will cause many problems. Skim them off and throw them away.
Do you have a casting thermometer? Again read some of the post here about casting with wheel weights. You need to keep below a certain temp and skim off the zinc. I believe a safe temp to smelt the lead and be able to skim the zinc is between 680 and 700df.
And another thing I have learned is you don't smelt your alloy in your casting pot. Use a cast iron pot or something simliar to smelt and pour your ingots and put your pure, as can be, ingots into your pot to cast.
Check out shooters forum.com. A lot of info there about casting with wheel weights. It's not always as easy as it seems to be.

[22lover]

Thanks guys,

Yes, I'm using a cast iron pot to smelt. I don't have a thermometer so I'll need to get one. I do skim off the zinc and such as it floats to the top pretty rapidly with the clips. I just weighed the ingots I've made from 3 50lb boxes of WW and it came in at 90lbs on the dot. I'm using bathroom scales but I'd assume they're close enough.

Thanks again.

[Tom Herman]

armyrat1970;501377]Either Zinc or steel will mess up your casting alloy.
Steel won't mess up your alloy, as it will not melt. If you carefully watch the pot, zink wheel weights melt at a higher point than lead does. Any wheel weights that float and don't melt in a timely fashion should be fished out and discarded as they are either steel or zink.

If you have clips with as you say is residual alloy it is probably zinc left on the clips and you don't want to throw them back in the pot.

No. Some lead will stick to the steel clips. If you are careful and catch the zinkies before they melt, you will only have lead sticking to the clips. I use a slotted spoon and shake the clips up and down, and it does a fair job of pulling most of the lead off.


Happy Shootin'! -Tom