Find any zinc, other than wheel weights?

[el34]

I smelted my 2nd ever batch of range lead from a scrapyard. Lotso jackets but I eventually pulled them out. The dross floating on top was the worse stuff I've ever seen and it wouldn't flux back in. I skimmed it off and kept some, thinking I'd do something later to find out what it was.

While ladling it out to make ingots very thin sheets would hang from the ladle, looked like strips of aluminum foil. It was a strange smelt but I ingoted it up anyway.

Later I remelted to add mono and lino to get the calculated hardness and tin for casting alloy. That melt made a huge layer of slag, half inch or thicker, and I knew something was wrong. Lots of sheeting hanging from the ladle. I saved the slag and made fairly normal ingots out of the rest.

Muriatic acid bubbled away on the slag. I took an ingot to get it analyzed and it showed 0.66% Zn.

It dawned on me there were lots of gold jackets when I did the smelt. I've used 1000's of Montana Gold bullets and learned the jacket was brass, hence the color. Another dawning reminded me brass is copper and zinc. ZINC? The sheeting dangling from the ladle made me remember the surface tension of zinc. Google told me brass melts at 1600F or so, but I couldn't think of any other way I picked up zinc unknowingly.

Any ideas? Grady it's yours but I doubt you want it.

[shadygrady]

they are another guy here that trades for contamined lead contact him

[jsizemore]

What temperature was your initial smelt? I'm intrested to know what temp it takes for the zinc to lose it's bond to the copper.

[el34]

I smelt on the sideburner of my small bbq grill. I use a thermometer and have never seen higher than 650 but I know that if there isn't much in the pot the bottom can get hotter because it's right over the flame.

I'm also curious about brass splitting into Cu and Zn and saw mention on google of that occurring but there wasn't any temp info. I'll keep looking. If there's anything to it, which to me is doubtful, it'd mean you have to pull out cases from range lead.

I haven't seen anything anywhere about brass screwing up lead but that's what my evidence points to. Maybe there were zinc boolits in there.

[Nocturnal Stumblebutt]

Maybe there were zinc boolits in there.

I think Remington is making some frangible zinc slugs