Question about smelting "leftovers"

[atom73]

I have been smelting wws and after about 30#s I have this leftover stuff that is about the cosistency of dirt with shiny bits of lead mixed in. I have been saving what is left in each pot and keeping it cause it had bits of lead in it. I tried melting it all in one pot but it really wouldnt pool up and come out of the junk so I could pour it. I tried adding an ingot and melting it with the leftovers hoping it would "pull" the lead out of the junk, it didnt. I still have it, but it isnt much and I wouldnt feel bad about throwing it out. Just wondering what it was and what to do about it as I am sure you have dealt with it before.
Mike

[rob45]

I save my leftovers also. If I'm melting a batch of "mystery lead" like range scrap, I usually add a bit of the previous "leftovers" to it.

For best results, start with a pot of already molten lead. Add a little bit of your leftovers, let it melt in, skim off the dirt, and add more. If you add too much at one time, the dirt acts as a heat insulator and the lead remnants cannot melt into the liquid lead beneath.

[montana_charlie]

When 'smelting', my only goal is to get the metal poured into clean ingots. If that means a small amount of lead gets 'wasted', so be it. Even if the waste totaled an entire ounce, that equals less than one bullet.

Once cleaned lead has been alloyed with pure tin, I become much more picky about any metal getting pulled out of the pot.
CM

[canebreaker]

Don't worry with the little bit of lead in the trash.
Add it to your scrap pile or throw it out.

[finishman2000]

same...not worth the extra propane and fluxing to get that little bit left.

[Edubya]

Flux often. Stir thoroughly. You will have less lead hanging onto the garbage.
EW

[HammerMTB]

As others have said above, I don't worry over the little bit that is lost when smelting. I smelted 120 lbs yesterday. Sure, there's a bit of lead and good metals in the scrap, but the effort is not worth the return of a few ounces. I let it cool and send it to the landfill :redneck:

[docone31]

I keep melting with that residue in the new melts. When I am doing wheel weights, the oils, and greases, it helps to reduce the mass leaving the lead.
If I get a lot of it, I put some Kitty litter on top of the melt and leave it for a bit.
After that, what is left, goes out with the trash.
It is just too hard to get so little.

[Shiloh]

I pitch it. Not worth the trouble.

Shiloh

[clodhopper]

Pitching it bothers me, here's an idea. I have a portable fire pit with solid metal bottem. There's some wood scrap laying around the yard that needs cleaned up.
It just can't hurt to start a fire and dump a coffee can full of dross right in the fire and see what's in the bottem of the pit when it cools off.

[rob45]

I suppose it all depends upon how much you're talking about.

My leftovers are saved in a 5 gallon bucket.

Yesterday I melted 800 pounds of recovered range lead. After skimming out the jackets and dirt, I grabbed one of the buckets of "leftovers" and proceeded to add a little bit, stir in, flux, skim off the dirt and put that dirt into a different metal 5 gallon bucket. Added a little more and repeated the process until the original bucket was empty. The whole process took an extra 45 minutes, but remember that this was a full 5 gallon bucket of "trash" being added to 800 lbs of lead. The new leftover dirt (remember that it was put into a different same-sized bucket) now barely filled half a bucket. That dirt was truly "dirt" that goes to the landfill.


So I have two questions.
1. Can anyone explain where the other half-bucket of "trash" went?
2. It is widely known that tin is the first thing to oxidize, followed by antimony. So how valuable is half of a 5 gallon bucket of "trash"?

[clodhopper]

If you dump waste into a wood fire burning in a tight metal bottem there will not be a lot of oxygen avalible for the metals to oxidize with plus there will be plenty of carbon to bond with the oxygen in the alloy.
Going out to start up fire pit now results later.

[docone31]

I hate to say this, but with wood fires, your temp approaches vaporization of the lead. I have melted steel with wood fires.

[mold maker]

If the beads of melt your skimming bother you, get a gold pan and rubber gloves. You can concentrate the lead leftovers to remelt after drying. Panning it in water will eliminate the airborne lead oxide dust, and make it safer to dispose of.
Use a kitchen dipper made of 1/4" hardware screen( Wally World $4.) to first remove the jackets and rock from the floating dust in the smelting pot.
By adding back only the panned (dried) concentrates, and fluxing, your gain will be greatly improved.
Besides you'll gain the primary know how, to pan for gold. That gives you a great reason to play in a creek prospecting.

[mold maker]

If the beads of melt in the skimming's bother you, the old 1849 gold prospectors had the answer.
First use a 1/4" screen kitchen tool, (Wally World $4.) to remove the jacket material and rocks from the surface of the Melt. Then skim and cool the dross as usual.
Get a gold pan, rubber gloves, and a tub of water. The water will keep down the lead oxide dust making it much safer to deal with.
Pan out the heavy alloy concentrates, beads, etc, and allow them to completely dry.
Adding this concentrates back to the next smelt, and fluxing well, will improve the gain greatly.
Besides you'll learn a lost art (gold panning) that was the reason the West got settled so quickly.

[clodhopper]

Well my little experiment just reinforces the thought of it's not worth the trouble.The scrap came from an indoor range, Bought 100 lbs @ 20 cents per pound.Melting it down left 66 pounds of ingots, and 32 pounds of waste.those 32 pounds were in a coffee can that seemed pretty heavy.
with a wood fire not well oxygenated and wet wood from around the yard the scrap went into the fire pit.
The metal pan was sitting at an angle and lead pooled in the lower portion. As the fuel ran out semi hard lead ingots were fished out of the bottem and more fuel added. The waste was agitated to help beads join together and more lead pooled at the bottem of the fire pit.
Not counting the time for gathering fuel and getting the fire going it was about an hour fooling around with the lead. (burning that stuff was charged to landscaping)
Result was 5 pounds 3oz
at 30 cents a pound the work netted $1.50 per hour!
Maybe try this again when lead goes a little higher?

[bohokii]

i got a 2mm sieve i use indoor range scrap and whne i am done i use have all my skimmings in a 5 gallon bucket of water i transfer all the stuff in to another bucket and shake i then have a bunch of lead kibble and jackets and a bucket full of what looks like grey black sand


then cooked it

see if you can siv it out i say anything under 2mm isnt worth the hassle