re-smelting the clips and dross?

[10 ga]

Well have finished culling and sorted the cache and smelting all into ingots and labeled. Now I have 2 - 5 gal buckets of clips (I figure 3700+)and dross. The lead was pretty dirty, typical WWs, the pipe mostly came from the ground, the sheathing was old and stored in a junk pile by the donator, The rings from the old cast iron pipe joints were especially dirty as they all came from sewer pipes, the battery cable ends were old and had been in some of the cars for decades etc... Seems there was a lot of dross of a multitude of colors but all seems pretty heavy and the ww clips each seem to have a piece of "tinsel" on them. How best to extract the goodies from that stuff? Even tho I was fluxing there seems to be some lead and tin to be extracted from the leftovers. How to? It should be especially "rich" in desired alloy goodies. Thanks, 10 ga

I use a 5 qt. dutch oven on the fish cooker for smelting and #10 cans on the 2 burner coleman for preheating the "ore". No bottom pour smelter yet.

Oh yeah, I discarded all the ww floaters, the zinc and iron weights, did a hand sort and caught most of them but did a slow melt and got the few I missed out.

[Rangefinder]

Honestly, for the amount of effort involved, you'd be better to not bother. The amount of crud you'll be resorting, smelting, fluxing, scraping, fluxing again and again, you won't see enough return for the trouble--a few ingots of good alloy if you're lucky... Let it go and hit another tire shop for a new bucket of weights.

[357maximum]

Agree with the above, but....but......but if you simply must try to reclaim this.

Build a real good hardwood fire and let it burn down to coals.

Make a very slight depression in your heavy bed of coals.

Add the buckets of clips on top of that bed of coals in a pyramid shaped pile.

Build the fire back up while ensuring you do not agitate/dislodge your pyramid.

Keep the fire burning until you "KNOW" all the clips are red hot.

Let the fire burn out and come back a day or two later to claim yout nasty lump of lead in the bottom of that nasty pile of clips.

Resmelt that lump or "lumps" that you collected.

In the end...alot of effort for what you will get back.



Now for the bad news:

Proper heat and fluxing would have prevented this in the first place. If you are 100% sure there is no "zinkers" in you pot you can run the pot up to a temp that simply will not let any of the the lead stick to the clips.

A good fluxing backed by another good fluxing should only leave "dust" on top of your smelt that you need to remove. If you are getting more than just dust on the surface you need more heat.....crank it up.

Good Luck,
Michael

[sagacious]

I agree with 357Max, proper fluxing will separate all the lead from the clips during the first refining melt. Remelting your clips and dross seems like a lot of work for little gain.

I heat the ww's until about 90% are melted, then add a generous amount of paraffin flux, and light the wax, and stir the melt. The heat from the flames melts any remaining unmelted ww's very quickly, and the lead beads up immediately and separates from the clips. Skim the clips with a slotted spoon, and you'll maximize your recovery. Good luck.

[finishman2000]

sooooo not worth it. what i do as i smelt down i stir with a 1x2 strip of wood. then with all the clips on top i'll hit them with a plumbers torch quick (super heating the clips) and then restir. it will get almost all lead off the clips. you will never get all the lead.

[jmsj]

When I started smelting I also re smelted my dross, a lot of work and cost (propane) for little return.
After I read that the most dangerous part of smelting(other than getting burns) was handling the dross, I decide it wasn't worth it.

[10 ga]

I'm retired and live in the country. Plenty o time and wood. 10

[Recluse]

I'm retired and live in the country. Plenty o time and wood. 10

OK, no need to get ugly and rub it in as far as your good fortune. . . :)

I use a torch on my clips right before I scoop them out with the slotted spoon. That pretty much gets off any remaining bits of alloy.

As far as refluxing the dross, been there/done that and it will be a rather chilly day in Kenya before I do that again. Simply was not worth the effort.

I keep my clips and steel and stuff separate, along with a separate tub of brass I can't use (berdan primed, .22, junk brand brass, split cases, etc) and when it all piles up enough, I take it to my recycler for credit against what WWs or lead I buy from him.

I call it my annual metallurgy enema seeing as how what the tightwad SOB gives me for it versus what he (initially) tries to charge me for WWs feels like I'm getting it up the old wazoo.

:coffee:

[geargnasher]

Waste of time, and if you use some sort of flame in the pot when smelting, it will melt off all the tinsel from the clips as you strain them out. I just pour a little dirty diesel that I collect from work over the clips as I'm smelting and light it. Does a nice job of preheating the lead, saves time, and makes sooty flames that reduce oxides the whole time I'm smelting.

Gear

[zxcvbob]

When I collect 5# or so of dross and the *heavy* black sand left over from breaking down WW's and firing range scrap, I put it in a steel pot with a tight-fiting lid and stir in maybe a half ounce of old motor oil. Put the lid on and cook the heck out of it on an electric burner for a half hour or so. Every so often I give the pan a shake. I usually get 2 or 3 pounds of good lead, and there's still more that I can see in there but the droplets are too small to separate out.

I don't know if it's worth the trouble or not, but I feel better about not sending so much lead oxide to the landfill.

[evan price]

I saved an entire 5-gallon bucket of dross and resmelted. I got about 5# of lead out of it but it took as much propane as smelting a bucket of WW would have used.
Now, I save all the dross and clips and stuff and send it off to the scrapyard along with my sheetmetal and junk. At least I got $225/ton for it last week, right?