.22 Lead smelting losses

[Dogchaser]

I tried to smelt some ingots from .22 lead from the indoor range this week and got strange results.

About 1/3 was a loss of what appears as a gray dust like skim from the pot.

I asked local guy and he said it must antimony. Another guy said he smelted some of the same lead and had almost no loss.

Any clue what I have going on here?

Thanks.

[sagacious]

Are you up on how to flux the melt properly? Without fluxing you're likely to experience a lot of loss to dross formation-- that's what the grey powder is. Fluxing will return most of that dross to the melt as liquid metal.

1/3 loss sounds like the melt wasn't fluxed at all. The other guy who said he had little loss is probably fluxing his 22 range scrap. Makes all the difference.

Hope this helps, good luck!

[windrider919]

A couple years ago I got several hundred pounds of indoor range scrap that had a lot of .22 in it. I noticed that they melted strangely, like you described. It turned out that the funny .22s were some foreign bulk brand sold cheap to the range for their customers that was bismuth, not lead.

[Dogchaser]

I fluxed it to death with beeswax and stirred it like crazy.

Most .22s I've seen people use at my range use either cheap American Federal or highend target stuff.

[windrider919]

Hello!

If its not lead or tin or antimony or zinc it might be something that will not alloy. Like I suggested above.

In a case like this: Is it really worth truing to salvage some mystery metal that you could never duplicate the mix/alloy again. Sometimes its just better to cut your losses and pour the sh*t out on the ground and start over with known, good metal.

Nuf said.

[Dogchaser]

Hello!

If its not lead or tin or antimony or zinc it might be something that will not alloy. Like I suggested above.

In a case like this: Is it really worth truing to salvage some mystery metal that you could never duplicate the mix/alloy again. Sometimes its just better to cut your losses and pour the sh*t out on the ground and start over with known, good metal.

Nuf said.

I just find it strange that it was alloyed in commercial .22 ammo and I can't get it to alloy after it hits the bullet trap.

As hard as lead is to get these days I'm trying to ration my stock of WW lead.

[windrider919]

think mixture instead of alloy

The 22 bullets I had problems with were not an alloy of lead. IE: not melted in together.

The bullets I got were 'frangible' bullets for low damage to indoor range backstops, made of powdered lead and bismuth, swaged into a bullet. So the elements were never melted together in the first place, just combined into a compound mixture.

As per why someone else had no problem, I would expect he got scrap from a different shooting station that had not had the frangible bullets fired at it. You did.

[Gunslinger]

I melted down a 3gl. bucket of indoor range scrap the other day. There was a lot of dross, bus as I only yield 40lbs of lead from a 3gl bucket, the obvious is that the dross was small pieces of paper.

And YES I think it's worth it to work with an alloy you don't know what consists of. I always just mix it 50/50 with clip-ons and see where it gets me. It usually works out quite fine....

[runfiverun]

you got oxides going on and they are hard to get back in as the composition of the metal has changed.
from pb to pbo. pbo is used to make ceramic products like the little ignition thingy on your bbq, that makes the spark for your burner when you push the button.
try getting that to melt.

[Dogchaser]

you got oxides going on and they are hard to get back in as the composition of the metal has changed.
from pb to pbo. pbo is used to make ceramic products like the little ignition thingy on your bbq, that makes the spark for your burner when you push the button.
try getting that to melt.


Are these oxides generated from the heat of the bullet hitting the backstop?

[sagacious]

Are these oxides generated from the heat of the bullet hitting the backstop?
Proper fluxing can and will return lead and tin oxides back into the melt.

The gray "powder" you found may just be soot/crud/dust/etc. That sort of stuff accumulates at the end of a shooting range and gets mixed in with the lead. I've melted down many 5gal buckets of 22lr range lead and never experienced a 1/3 loss to dross.

Bismuth will alloy just fine with lead. It's addition won't usually be noticed unless the percentage is very large. That wouldn't happen in the case of 22lr range-salvage lead. Lead oxides are almost surely not the cause of 1/3 losses to dross. Fluxing would fix that.

Since another person melted and recovered some of the same range lead with little loss to dross, it seems unlikely that a unique and novel problem has presented itself in your instance. Since the lead is the same, the variable is the person who melted the lead. The fix is most likely to be one of technique. If one overheats the lead during melting/recovery, there is likely to be more loss to dross.

Since you did not detail your "smelting" methods and procedure, the most that can be given in a response to this problem is a flat-out guess-- and since many guesses are likely to be in error, you'll generate more error-prone solutions than viable soutions. If you can detail your melting/fluxing procedures and include more info, I'm confident that I or others can pinpoint the cause or solution to the high losses to dross. Otherwise it's all guesswork.

Hope this helps, good luck.

[Dogchaser]

Proper fluxing can and will return lead and tin oxides back into the melt.

The gray "powder" you found may just be soot/crud/dust/etc. That sort of stuff accumulates at the end of a shooting range and gets mixed in with the lead. I've melted down many 5gal buckets of 22lr range lead and never experienced a 1/3 loss to dross.

Bismuth will alloy just fine with lead. It's addition won't usually be noticed unless the percentage is very large. That wouldn't happen in the case of 22lr range-salvage lead. Lead oxides are almost surely not the cause of 1/3 losses to dross. Fluxing would fix that.

Since another person melted and recovered some of the same range lead with little loss to dross, it seems unlikely that a unique and novel problem has presented itself in your instance. Since the lead is the same, the variable is the person who melted the lead. The fix is most likely to be one of technique. If one overheats the lead during melting/recovery, there is likely to be more loss to dross.

Since you did not detail your "smelting" methods and procedure, the most that can be given in a response to this problem is a flat-out guess-- and since many guesses are likely to be in error, you'll generate more error-prone solutions than viable soutions. If you can detail your melting/fluxing procedures and include more info, I'm confident that I or others can pinpoint the cause or solution to the high losses to dross. Otherwise it's all guesswork.

Hope this helps, good luck.

Today I weighed my loss and and it appears I lost around 10# out of 50-52#.

I also talked with the other guy that also smelted some of this lead and his loss was about the same persentage.

My process is starting with about 1" of previously cooked W/W metal in the pot I add the range lead abot 1/4 of a coffee can at a time after the base metal is liquid trying to keep the pot at 650*.

I am fluxing with bee's wax and stirring like a mad man each time the pot reaches 600-650*.

I'm affraid to go hotter with all the zinc W/W I hear about.

Any tips to improve this method are welcome. I can take a beating.:grin:

PS I'm using an IR thermometer.

[sagacious]

OK, thanks for that. That makes more sense. No beatings necessary or intended! :)

You should be able to detect any zinc ww's at that scale and temp. Heat the ww's until most are melted, with a few remaining unmelted on top. Then add an acorn-sized lump of paraffin or beeswax per 5lbs of metal, wait for it to melt, and then light the smoke by tossing in a match. Caution: Yes, there will be significant flames. Do this somewhere that smoke or flames will not present any safety hazard, and be sure to wear eye-protection at all times while melting lead.

With the flux lit, stir the melt with a long-handled spoon or other long stirring implement. You will notice small beads of molten lead form on/in the dross as some of the oxides are reduced to metal. When the flux has burned off, all the ww clips will be separated from the liquid metal. "Flame fluxing" is more effective than not lighting the fluxing smoke, adds heat back into the melt to prevent overheating from below (a small zinc ww could be melted by overheating from below-- this method prevents that), and increases the metal revovery.

Skim off the clips with your long-handled spoon. A slotted spoon works well for this-- I have a couple long-handled large spoons that have been screwed to short pieces of hickory to increase their length to about 2 feet.

Then add your 22lr range lead. Allow to melt as before, waiting until it's about 90% melted and then flux as described above again.

Continue that process until you have enough lead to pour your ingots, and then start the process all over again. This should give you the highest recovery rate. There will always be varying amounts of dust and ash present in your range lead, but fluxing at each step will ensure maximum recovery.

Hope this helps. If you have questions, just ask.

[largecaliberman]

That gray stuff is most likely bismuth. Bismuth is ok and you could turn up the heat a little bit and flux it into the mix. If however the gray stuff looks more on the whitish side, I would skim it off and discard.

[sagacious]

That gray stuff is most likely bismuth. Bismuth is ok and you could turn up the heat a little bit and flux it into the mix. If however the gray stuff looks more on the whitish side, I would skim it off and discard.

Not likely to be bismuth. If it somehow was bismuth, high heat would quickly ruin the bismuth. Bismuth needs to be kept at a low temp when melted, or it forms oxides and dross rapidly. Been there done that with bismuth alloys. High heat during fluxing causes dross formation problems-- which counteracts the purpose of fluxing.

Skimming off the "white stuff" may remove some tin from the melt. Better to flux properly, and then the remaining dross will be a black powder of oxides and carbon compounds, and the tin will be restored to the melt.

High heat is often not the solution-- like when something is broken, and the first suggestion is "get a big hammer and whack it!" Usually the best course of action is to stop and figure out what you're doing wrong-- and only if that fails, then go get the big hammer.

:) :drinks:

[runfiverun]

650 is plenty for melting.
i do a bit different thing as i use two pots at a time when smelting.
i smelt and skim the clips,then i turn up the heat while filling the first pot with more alloy.
i then turn down the heat while i stir and flux,letting the clean melt lower in temp,while i fuss with the melting one some more.
i then start to pour ingots,stiring and fluxing as the pot goes down.
silly i know but i throw a lot of dirt and junk away and not so much dross.
it also makes a mush of zinc [if i get any] as it cools down.
and yes i sometimes have to turn the heat up a bit as i pour my ingots.