I was reading some of the articles by Glen F in California. I thought that I read that he said he remelts various bricks back together to make them more homogeneous.
Is this a common practice? Should I be doing it?
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I was reading some of the articles by Glen F in California. I thought that I read that he said he remelts various bricks back together to make them more homogeneous.
Is this a common practice? Should I be doing it?
"The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed" — Ayn Rand
What do you have? I wouldn't remelt it just for the sake of doing so. If you wanted to keep all your range scrap or ww ingots uniform and had plenty of time and extra fuel money, go right ahead. I don't do anything like that unless I'm shooting for a specific blend in my alloy. Even then, I usually just do my alloying in my casting furnace as I fill/refill it.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Well, in answer to the title of your post...One time is plenty to clean the lead if you do a good job.
Now, about your question regarding homogenizing....
I can see this having some value for say, COWW or SOWW that were collected over many years. Mixing them would ensure that all the ingots, regardless of age were of the same alloy. This would especially have value if you were going to work up a "standard" that you wanted to use to cast for a long time. Start by homogenizing the various input alloys. Then you don't have to worry about your final standard alloy consistency wandering over time as one of your inputs varied.
I don't think most of us here do it though. I know I don't. Diminishing returns.
Sounds like a make-work project.
Smelting multiple times costs money and time. I don't think it's necessary unless you have some wide variatons on your smelted ingots due to using different sources of scrap lead in the beginning. As long as the ingots are made from the same source material they are going to be close enough that more smelting won't make any practical difference.
If you're getting the results you want, don't bother.
Warning: I know Judo. If you force me to prove it I'll shoot you.
Agree with all above. You are wasting time and fuel money.
Flux/reduce three (3) times during the 1st (and only!) melt until things are clean. That depends on what you are melting. This is not a fixed science! You have to use common sense when fluxing to know if things LOOK clean.
I would NOT recommend melting all your stash into one blend. Really limits your future endeavors!
Keep them separate, mark them with weight and alloy and store separately. I use tinted spray lacquer to color code the ends of my ingots to ID them at a glance. I never use muffin tins for casting ingots.....they don't stack, fall over on your feet(!), and just do not look as professional as quality cast rectangular trapezoid ingots (Lee, RCBS, Lyman).
Mix your soup in your casting pot using the feedstock of various alloys you have.
Good luck and have fun!
bangerjim
I also agree with the above. My smelting pot holds over 400# of molten lead, and I try to fill it up with the same type of lead and usually call that a batch and store it together. I just got a load of cable sheathing that is going to take 2 pots to smelt and I'll store it together as a batch. I feel like a 400# batch is homogeneous enough for what I'm using it for. Lightman
It depends.
I generally smelt once to clean the lead and pour ingots. Of these ingots are what I want I use them as is. I sometimes mix them in the pot if the application isn't real critical of the alloy used.
If I want a specific alloy for a specific use I will weigh out ingots of the required alloys and melt them together. This is poured into ingots with each additional batch kept in a separate pile. I then remelt an equal number of ingot f rom each of these piles and pour new ingots. This makes all ingots from these batches very close to the same. These ingots are the stored separate from other ingots and labeled for that specific use.
Like I said, it depends.
You will learn far more at the casting, loading, and shooting bench than you ever will at a computer bench.
I melt my range scrap and clean it and it then gets poured into 20 lb. ingots. Then when I go to alloy it I clean it again a second time and it gets poured into ingots that fit into my casting pot where it gets a third cleaning where almost nothing comes to the top. My big pot holds 14 quarts and my small pot holds 8 quarts and I have both a WAGE pot and a LEE pot. I never melt range lead in the WAGE or the LEE pots keeping them as clean as possible.
Thanks to all that replied. About half of what I recycle is range lead (We have our own range and know what we have). The other half are wheel weights. My range lead is shot cast, some precast (storebought), a few once shot Berry plated and fmj. I also have some soft lead that I have recovered and some was given to me. I have a 3 quart cast iron pan to separate the dirt and use a pick out the dirt clips and jackets before ladling the molten allow into muffin tins.
I have been casting for probably 3-4 years. The last two years, I took short cuts, throwing used lead bullets back in my bullet casting pot, a Lee 10 pound bottom pour. Probably adding up to a pound or so with each batch of new cast.
My last few batches have seemed to have more inclusions in the bullets. I had not processed any range/ww scrap in a couple of years. A week ago I melted up my scrap and I read the article by GlenF.
My testing for hardness has been pretty low key. My bullets generally softer than most of the clip on wheel weights. Most of my muffins have some visible crystalline grain but I don't notice that in the bullets.
My plan is to clean out my casting pot before casting more.
Thanks.
Last edited by .5mv^2; 03-11-2014 at 09:03 PM.
"The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed" — Ayn Rand
Sounds like you've gradually built up a bit of grit in the casting pot? I reckon one needs to be scrupulously clean with what goes into a casting pot, i.e. only stuff that has already been cleaned and fluxed. Used bullets could have very minute amounts of grit on them. The only thing that goes into my pot are fluxed ingots, sprue cut-offs and roundballs that haven't cast properly.
When you empty the pot to clean it make yourself a scraper that fits the bottom of the pot corners to help scrape the crud out when you flux, this will help keep the pot cleaner longer.
Unless you melt crapola in your casting pot, you should RARELY ever have to dump it. Many on here, myself included, have not seen the bottom of their pots in a very long time! WE keep it at least 2/3 full all the time and leave it full for next session. Always use ONLY pure feedstock, never range garbage and dirty lead. I have another small Lee pot I use for alloys and such quick melts.
Good luck!
banger
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