what to flux with

[454PB]

I've used Ivory soap for years, if I have some air flow. I works great, just put a bar in a quart ziplock freezer bag and beat the heck out of it with a hammer handle. It breaks down into a coarse dust that is then spread across the top of the melt. It smokes slightly, and that smoke is a bit acrid. Not nearly as smoky as parafin or beeswax, and does a much better job IMHO. I tried the wood dowel method, and had to leave the room due to the smoke, plus the dowel caught on fire.

My normal casting flux is Marvelux or the newer Frankford Arsenal equivalent, because I cast without any air circulation indoors mostly in the winter.

[crabo]

When I smelt I use chunks of old candles and a wooden stick. I flux 2 or three times after I skim the clips. I also want it to catch on fire. It seems like I get more dirt out of the melt by fluxing a couple of times and it may be my imagination, but it seems like more dirt comes out when it catches on fire... ymmv

When I cast I use a cheese grater and shave a little Ivory and dump in some of Pats wonderful, wooden, resin infested, famous flakes, or whatever he calls it, and I stir it in, running the stick around the sides and the pour post with my freebe paint stirrer stick from Home Depot. I don't flux my casting melt very often and I leave the junk on top, adding a little walnut media to cut back on the oxidation.

Crabo

[trickg]

I know this thread is old, but I was curious about this subject and I wanted to post my own observations about it from watching my Dad, who probably forgot more about it in his lifetime than I'll ever know.

Dad fluxed with candle wax - pieces of old candles that he'd gotten out of the house, and usually the remenants of large candles that my Mom had burned down. I don't ever remember him fluxing with anything else.

There may be other methods that some might prefer, but I think I'll stick with the candle wax and for a few reasons.

Dad had specific reasons for everything he did with shooting and reloading, and was overall one of the smartest people I ever knew - he had to have had a specific reason for using candle wax. It could have been because he preferred it, or it might have been simply because it was good enough and it was next to free. His cast bullets were also excellent - why question those kinds of results? He had also been doing it long enough that undoubtedly he had tried fluxing with other things - he wasn't above trying something new if he felt it would work, but by the time I came around (He was 40 when I was born) he was well established in his practices and had probably already run the gamut on various methods of fluxing his lead melt, and he chose candle wax.

He'd drop in a lump, stir it in while it was melting and within the first couple of seconds, it would flame up. He'd continue to stir until it burned down, and the crud in the pot would swirl togehter in the center of the melt - he'd skim that off, dump it in a tin can he had sitting off to the side, and then get to casting. It seems like a pretty simple process to me.

[testhop]

i have lot of things like moter oil(smellyand smokey ) pine nettles (wayless smoke and better smell) i guess you could use almost any waxy subsunce if you are out of the house
wives get upset so damn easy nowdays i now use canningwax as i was given 20 lbs of
it 3 years ago

[Sprue]

i have lot of things like moter oil(smellyand smokey ) pine nettles (wayless smoke and better smell) i guess you could use almost any waxy subsunce if you are out of the house
wives get upset so damn easy nowdays i now use canningwax as i was given 20 lbs of
it 3 years ago

Whats this moter oil stuff ? Dang, there's always something else to buy Wonder if it will work on spell checkers

[357maximum]

anything carbon will work..just don't use your finger or your