goon
08-04-2010, 01:27 AM
So I finally got enough stuff together to smelt some lead down today. I still don't have everything to cast any bullets, but I'm OK with taking my time.
Anyhow, I got about a hundred and fifty pounds of sheet lead a couple years ago from a retired chiropractor who'd had it in his X-ray room. Now that I have a good cast iron pot and a ladle I picked up a couple weeks ago I figured why not build a fire in the fire pit and see what I could do with it.
Long story short, I did get it hot enough to melt and I poured some muffin-pan ingots out of it.
First, I'm seeing some bluish case-hardening looking pattern on my ingots. I read on here that this coloring is from overheating the lead. This isn't a surprise because I have basically no temperature control at this point. The lead is still easily scratched with my fingernail and I've read the bluish color will go away if I flux at the right temp and mix it back in, so I'm not real worried about it. Should I be?
Second, I'm noticing a lot of dirt. It's kind of reddish and almost looks like rust or something like that. I'm fluxing with old candles I had around, then stirring the flux down into the lead with a piece of thin oak I have, then skimming the dirt off with my ladle before pouring the ingots. But there is an awful lot of it. Is this normal?
Anyhow, I got about a hundred and fifty pounds of sheet lead a couple years ago from a retired chiropractor who'd had it in his X-ray room. Now that I have a good cast iron pot and a ladle I picked up a couple weeks ago I figured why not build a fire in the fire pit and see what I could do with it.
Long story short, I did get it hot enough to melt and I poured some muffin-pan ingots out of it.
First, I'm seeing some bluish case-hardening looking pattern on my ingots. I read on here that this coloring is from overheating the lead. This isn't a surprise because I have basically no temperature control at this point. The lead is still easily scratched with my fingernail and I've read the bluish color will go away if I flux at the right temp and mix it back in, so I'm not real worried about it. Should I be?
Second, I'm noticing a lot of dirt. It's kind of reddish and almost looks like rust or something like that. I'm fluxing with old candles I had around, then stirring the flux down into the lead with a piece of thin oak I have, then skimming the dirt off with my ladle before pouring the ingots. But there is an awful lot of it. Is this normal?