Originally Posted by
Eywflyer
Hi Folks! I’ve been reloading for 35 yrs but am new to casting and this site. I have a large stock of pure lead in the form of large bars that need to be reduced to smaller ingots so I can start attempting to make a suitable alloy for a 50-70 Sharps I own. I started melting with a heavy gauge stainless sauce pan that worked great. One dash of saw dust to flux produced nice shiny clean lead to pour. I switched to a used cast iron Dutch oven to increase volume. I took a wire wheel to the inside to get it down to the bare cast iron and cleaned it out with brake cleaner. The problem I have now is that even after repeated fluxing, I continually get ash rising to the top. Just to be sure it was the cast iron pot and not the lead, I took a pot of clean molten lead from the SS pan and poured it into the cast iron pot and there came the ash again. I know cast iron is used all the time for this, so could it cheap cast iron? Or, do I need to put the Dutch oven in a fire pit and bake the **** out of the cast iron? Can you point me toward a thread that may address this issue? Thanks for the help,