A lot of help needed!

[Baron von Trollwhack]

I have a lot of casting gear loaned out to help someone so I got ready to use my little Lee electric for some small lots. I borrowed a ladle, melted lead from my ingot pile, fluxed with a bit of bullet lube and started to mold when the pot got really hot. Pure lead. There was a purple /gold sheen I've seen before from foundry lead, but my ingots were good just before this. but then it got totally golden and started to sludge up with a sticky mushy, clogged ladle pour, no particular smell, the molten liquid looked normal but the sludge kept forming every three dippers or so. The borrowed ladle started grey & crusted cold but I had wire brushed it outside before I started and the bullet lube was beeswax/tallow with a bit of lee case sizing lube in it, that I had never used before for flux. I dumped this mess, scraped the pot, wire brushed the mold and bought a new ladle and got the same results with more lead less the old flux. The pot and ladle were a powdery yellow underneath the scum when I cleaned them and the scum was golden till it cooled and splatters looked like miniature grainy cornflakes. What in the world kind of contamination have I got and how do I clean up the gear. I have never had this problem in 40 years of casting. It looks like a scraped pot and ladle interior are enough to contaminate previously known good lead. Help!

[versifier]

The powdery yellow stuff is lead oxide and rather toxic. It sounds like the problem was not contamination, but either low temperture and/or wrong flux. The strange blue & gold colors are normal with the pure metal. I suspect that you may have been running the pot too cool. I generally flux with either parafin or beeswax when working with pure lead. If you are getting lead oxide, the flux is not working as its job is to prevent oxidation.