Bought 2 55gal drum size bags of pine sawdust for $5/each. They come in heavy duty clear bags. If you're near Galien Mi check them out.
http://krumriesms.com
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Bought 2 55gal drum size bags of pine sawdust for $5/each. They come in heavy duty clear bags. If you're near Galien Mi check them out.
http://krumriesms.com
How much fluxing can one guy do? Wow, 110 gallons of sawdust!
Anyone in my area need sawdust message me. Bring your own box.
I'm new to the game so figure get as much as I can now of everything casting wise before 2020. I got plenty of reloading stuff to last me 3yrs but want to focus on primers and powder come Nov. Some of the dust will be used for rabbit bedding.Quote:
Originally Posted by BNE
I use sawdust for flux when melting weights into ingots. It seems it helps remove the garbage. I don't scrimp on it, maybe use 1/3 of a coffee can of sawdust for 40-50 pounds of weights. Then I flux with wax after the initial sawdust fluxing.
That sounds like a lot but if you have the space to store it the price was certainly right. I would probably try to find some metal barrels or trash cans to put it in to keep mice out of it.
I, too, am a sawdust user, gleaning mine from under one of my table-saws. I simply dropped a piece of surplus plastic window material atop stand opening, and the 'dust accumulates at a rate pretty close to my fluxing need use.
The reason I'm posting this is to add that LOTS of wood nowadays isn't "pure" wood. Sawdust from Wolmanized wood (aka, "pressure treated") uses a copper azole process making its fumes -- when heated/charred/burned QUITE TOXIC to breathe. Also, several repetitive saw cuts on many different painted wood pieces sawdust will also produce toxic fumes if/when used atop the lead pot.
I know, way back, I never gave this a thought -- hence, this post, to give a "headsup" to others.
(It is for these reasons I exclusively use ONLY dust from my table saw and planers.)
BEST!
geo
I made my own sawdust with a miter saw.
I hooked my cleaned out shop vac to the collection port and took a 2x4 pine stud and started taking very shallow cuts off the end. Just the thickness of the saw blade.
It makes a lot of sawdust very quickly.
I did also pick up 20 14gal plastic containers from a local teflon tape manufacturer for a buck fifty a piece. They came with screw on lids. Just had to wipe out the ptfe powder residue.Quote:
Originally Posted by lightman
I have a saw mill and give saw dust away by the trailer load.
Yep, the one I picked up for free from Home Depot is like that, it doesn't smell nice like real pine or whatever and what I do is sprinkle the layer in the pot before I start casting to prevent oxidation and used to endure unpleasant burn smell until it fully chars and then one day a realized I can speed up the process by just igniting with lighter and the whole thing burns out pretty quickly and whats left is what you want.Quote:
Originally Posted by georgerkahn
I use the shavings out of our pencil sharpener . No sweat to make it , nice cedar wood smells good , has a bit of fine powered graphite in it already ... It's great for fluxing and puts to use something that normally gets thrown away.
Best of all it's free and you don't have to drive anywhere to get it .
Try it some times... you might like it .
Gary
Anybody that has a wood-mizer type saw mill setup is glad to give sawdust away. Fella I get mine from cuts on a daily basis and usually spends half an hour with a snow shovel per day. Fine dust that chars quickly compared to shavings and chips.
A table saw with a dado blade works even quicker. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Burnt Fingers
Something I've always wondered:
The slot one makes in a piece of wood whilst cutting is called a 'kerf'.
Why is the detritus from the cut called 'sawdust', and not 'kerfwaste' ?
Has anyone else ever wondered about that ?
The dust from a saws teeth is called swarf. Wood dust in general is sawdust for some reason.
Sorry; I'm not sure what you picked up at Home Depot but if it was sawdust there's a virtual certainty that it has plywood/particle board shavings loaded with glue and it may have pressure treated wood shavings as well. All of those are bad things.Quote:
Originally Posted by dimaprok
Did my first casting using the saw dust. It definitely is pine and out of the lee ingot mold majority were shiny ingots albeit rippled. Ended up with 60lbs of soft lead ingots in almost 7hrs of casting with a lee 10lb bottom pour. Now to get a hotplate.
Just remember, you're going to use sawdust to smelt and smelt alone! By the time you're alloy is clean enough to make ingots and start pouring bullets, the ONLY stuff you're going to want flux with in your casting pot is a bit of candle wax.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1775usmarine
If you're using a bottom pour pot, you will tear your hair out getting all the ashy crap out and having it block the orifice! (I do use a bit of flux core solder while casting, but that is for the solder, not the flux.)
Do yourself a favor, no kitty litter, no crayons, nothing but a little candle wax for casting, but by all means, avail yourself of the sawdust for initial smelting and cleaning,,,,,.
I've got a bunch of candles in the garage so I should be set on that. I've been reading up on here almost everyday about something. Got the alloy calculator working on my phone so I can mix my stash of 30/70 solder and pewter into the soft stuff and clip ons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hamish
It's easy to see you've been reading the older stuff and paying attention. Keep thinking about why your cast bullets are doing something when this or that happens, and then look in a search for as much as you can find on it, then the question you just cannot find an answer without a jump in knowledge, try to replicate your hypotheses in Mr. Gun and see if what you postulate asto the results of changing a variable in the equation.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1775usmarine
Then, come here, report, and seek comments. You will be amazed how quickly the basic mysteries can be solved by doing an Internet search for cast/firearm/loading question you have is utilised. You've got access to most of the information on the planet, why not use it?
Yes, you are going to find the info that is NOT true, or HALF true, but after a while it will have a smell about it to the point of having a category of multiple stories for each of the three categories. It's quite funny how basic it all is now, with over fifteen years information from folks from all over this world who shoot, and used to shoot ALOT. Who have shared for many years.
RIP for those of our casting and shooting brethren, far too many have shuffled off this merry-go-round, and thank you to those who always spoke the truth, no matter which way the cards fell.
Amen.
You know, I've got to apologise. I don't post much anymore, but every once in a while, when a new caster shows that they have really been paying attention, I will sometimes post encouragement and a very light rebuke on some information you may have posted on. If a guy can stay in the rythm of the thread without having a hissy and replying back how his info is right and who am I to question his information/training.
Those folks are tougher to unlearn, they've already got misconceptions and bad habits. I don't mean to say it's majically better for those who have tried to educate ourselves in the mysteries of the vagaries of this pursuit of excellence in Pb. It's just that we know that with changing the recipe for the alloy to conform the requirements that you have for the bullet, SO much more than most of conventional wisdom would believe is absolutely undoable at velocities at the upper end of jacketed loads, alloy soft enough to mushroom well at very modest velocities, yet still hold less than ideal riflings that can be made to skid with jacketed at well below top end. There is a mountain of priceless information buried in this site.
Anyway, sounds like you'll have interesting results to post!
Can't stop laughing...Quote:
Originally Posted by pworley1
With that in mind, sawdust can be used for other stuff too. Oil spills. Kitty litter? I just love the smell. especially pine. Like to have some laying on the shop floor for the smell .
Thanks I would take a break every 3rd ingot mold filled to look up something that may of happened or if others did something I did like covering my pot with the ingot mold before filling to warm it up some. I was a bit worried when I got sucked in to the forum and let my pot go over 750. Then I remembered Im using stick ons and had removed the few zinc that floated before it got too hot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hamish
I had about 26lbs of ingots that looked rusty that I had made a few months back fluxed with beeswax that I remelted. Just my observation but if I filled a mold and left the pot half full I would add some dust and then add 2 1lb ingots and let it dropp to 610 and rise to 650. Then add the 2 .5lb ingots and let rise back to 650. Add more dust and mix. Doing that I had a good pace going untill I ran out of those ingots and started the stick on's.
Why are you using candle wax in your casting pot? If your ingots have already been fluxed a couple times during smelting why do you need wax in your casting pot? Not trying to be a wise guy, just asking for my own education. I’ve been casting for close to 20 years and have never used any flux in my casting pot. I do get a bit of scum on top when nearing the bottom so I just scoop that off and discard it so perhaps the wax prevents the scum?
Just threw away 3 - 32 gal trash cans of clean sawdust from bucking 2 cords of beatle kill pine last weekend. No place to store it, bummer.
The first ingots I made were just throw them in and see what happens. After reading here more and got the sawdust opened the box and seen they were funky looking. Decided to remelt and use the sawdust and after a few weeks now they still look shinny.Quote:
Originally Posted by igolfat8
Im still wet behind the ears and haven't gotten to casting my first bullets yet as I still need some molds and have more lead to melt. With a 7 month now it'll probably be a while before I start doing some serious casting. I also have some 16gal plastic containers that held ptfe powder in them that I need to clean out so I can put my bars in them according to the source they were melted from. This way once I start using the calculator I can add from my pewter or auto body solder accordingly.
I flux both when I'm melting scrap and when I'm casting. I flux pretty heavy several times with sawdust followed by wax in my smelting pot. I only use wax or beeswax in my casting pot and usually only once per pot full. Everybody has a method that works for them.
So, if I may........ Here are the physics and mechanics for using sawdust and other products when melting down raw lead materials.
1) Raw lead melts at about 700 degrees or so. It varies with other alloyed metals in the mix. So, tin and antimony, the normal additional alloy metals might increase the melting temp somewhat.
ZINC - Shudder in horror, melts at a much higher temperature, about 1200 degrees. It will ruin a batch of lead alloy. It's the reason to pre-sort out zinc wheel weights, if that is what you are melting down. IF you overfill your melting pot, and have a few zinc weights at the bottom, where they might see 1200 degrees, the pot and that batch will be ruined. I always start melting my batches with just a few handfuls of raw lead, and then when that melts, I stir in some more. I'm always terrified of some kind of zinc product being at the bottom of a very full smelting pot.
2) Lead is extremely dense. It is the most dense thing in the pot of molten lead. Toss in a steel bolt and it will float. The sand and other impurities also want to float to the surface, but the overall density of the molten lead prevents them from rising through that dense lead.
3) Stirring in sawdust, and especially soft pine or other resinous plant fibers creates pathways through the lead for th impurities to travel along, making their way to the top where they can be skimmed off. I usually use a good handful of soft pine shavings (horse bedding) or sawdust, and then stir it in vigorously, stirring all the way to the bottom of the pot. You are trying to create eddy current pathways for the junk to make it through the dense lead. Right when the pine starts to char, and before it burns into ash, I skim it all off the top, along with the sand, and other impurities. I do that three or more times, depending on how nasty the raw lead was.
4) I then switch over to paraffin wax, old candles from yard sales, they are always cheap. Pieces about the size of a walnut are good. Toss that on the top of the molten lead, and stir, again towards the bottom. Be ready for the wax, with a low burning point, to flare into flames quickly. The melted wax creates even finer pathways through the dense lead, allowing the finer grit to make its way to float on the top. I do the wax a couple to three times, and stir until the wax completey burns off. I allow the lead to tell me when it's done. When constant stirring and scraping on the bottom of the pot no longer loosens the grey dust stuff to the surface, I know I am ready to pour out into ingots.
5) Watch out for gold colored stuff which might float to the surface. That is typically TIN coming out of solution with the lead. Sure sign that you are overheating the lead in the pot. Turn down the heat, and stir that gold stuff back into solution. Tin helps the lead FLOW into tight corners in your mold.
6) Ditto for blue or purple stuff rising to the top. That's antimony coming out of solution due to over heating the lead. Antimony is added to make the lead harder. Mix that back into solution, and lower the heat.
You always want the lead to just barely stay molten during the "fluxing" process. Over heating it risks having tin and antimony come out of solution, and wastes propane or whatever you are using as a heat source.
Finally, while I am ladling out alloy into ingot molds (I like using cupcake tins), I use the back of the ladle to clear a very shiny path through the lead, and at the end of opening up that shiny area, I dip the ladle into that, to get my lead. I eventually, even after careful cleaning and fluxing, will start to get a bunch of gritty grey crap on the surface again. I stop making ingots and clear that stuff out of the pot. I don't want any of that in my ingots.
Remember, any grit you leave in the alloy is like sandpaper scraping through the bore of your barrel. I don't want to wear out barrels like that, and hope you don't either. I hope my explanation of how I do it might help others.
If you were careful, could you purposely skim the antimony to make the lead softer?Quote:
Originally Posted by DukeInFlorida
Why waste such an important mineral?
Choose your raw material carefully.
Plumbers lead, roofers lead = dead soft is a perfect imgredient for black powder projectiles
Berm lead (recovered bullets, usually a mix of cast and jacketed) = great raw ingredient for pistol bullets. Adjust slightly for hardness as needed
Clip on wheel weights = hard lead, perfect for rifle bullets. Water drop for even more hardness.
Linotype and mono type = even harder alloy.
Better to mix amounts of these types to yield what you seek. Don't try to purposefully ruin good alloys by skimming out the minerals in solution.
I suggest that you read/re-read Glen Fryxell's book: From Ingot to Target: A Cast Bullet Guide for Handgunners
But what if I think you are ruining good pure lead by adding the impurities of antimony to it? I use soft lead. I have a bunch of hard lead. If I want to remove the antimony what is that to you? It can always be put back in. BAD ANTIMONY BAD. Only horrible people like antimony.
:kidding:
Im here to learn and hopefully make the best bullet I can once I get to that stage. Seems casting can become as much of a science as you want compared to the reloading stage.
Lead melts at 621°, zinc melts at 787°.Quote:
Originally Posted by DukeInFlorida
If you can't get those two FACTS right the rest of your post is highly questionable in my mind.
Duke missed another important point - oxidation. I cast with an open pot and ladle and thus are always adding oxygen to the mix. Tin oxidizes first and thus needs to be mixed back in to the alloy. Wax accomplishes this, thus the reason to use it in the pot when I'm casting.
I have purchased (many moons ago) pet bedding from PetSmart. Not the walnut or cob stuff, but IIRC it was for Hamster bedding and was wood "flakes". The only product I ever bought for fluxing. Worked OK for smelting, but there's usually something around the shop that works well for fluxing (Motor oil, wax, I have even used BBQ briquettes and "smoker chips").
The OP could put at least one bag of the sawdust he purchased, in his will for his grandkids. 110 gal will last a very looooong time....:wink:
I was thinking about how long 2 barrels of sawdust would last me. But if it was free or very cheap and I had the space to store it I would stock up too. I use a hand full, about a coffee cup full, when I'm smelting. I'll flux up to 3 times, depending on how the first time cleans things up. That hand full of sawdust is for a 350-400# batch of lead. I usually get a few gallon ziploc bags at a time from a carpenter friend before I run out.Quote:
Originally Posted by mdi
I do have a 7 month old and when he gets older I'm hoping he follows in my footsteps when it comes to reloading lolQuote:
Originally Posted by mdi
I flux my pot when starting or adding, regardless of how clean my lead is. There has been times I didn't flux when adding a few ingots, but I guess those ingots weren't super clean as I started having inclusions.
Sorry that I was closer to boiling point of zinc than melting point.
My purpose in mentioning zinc was that if you leave a single zinc wheel weight at the bottom of an over loaded smelting pot of lead wheel weights, it's entirely likely that the zinc WILL melt and ruin the batch and likely the pot.
I apologize to everyone for attempting to be of assistance in this matter. Hopefully, my entire post wasn't a complete waste of time. Guess I better also check for spelling errors. <wink>
This thread has run it's course. Closed.