first smelting session, only one surprise...

[hershey]

my surprise was a bunch of battery cable ends that did not melt, most melted right down but a dozen or so just floated, any insight?

in general i realized that one pound lyman ingot bars are tedious to do, i need to consider larger ingots. i destroyed my wifes rug, i remember reading about using a wet towel to cool the bottom of the mold, i didn't realize it'd leave little burn marks to. i probably waited way to long to turn the heat down, was charring the wood plank/makeshift table too. also need to put allot more effort into keeping everything level. got about half of the raw lead smelted, made 160 bars. i also owe my wife a new ladle for her kitchen.

[docone31]

Oh, the little lady gonna be upset! My fair bride is an avid 200yd shooter, but, melting lead, making bullets, and reloading is another issue. She thinks nothing of firing 500rds of reloaded 7.62, but, is dismayed at how long it can take to reload them. Not to mention the cost involved.
I got a Lyman ladle. It makes great bars to keep the pot full. Very predictable on weight so I can mix tin easily.
I had some battery ends not melt also. I turned up the heat and they dissolved into the melt. I fished them out later in my bottom pour pot. They just kept appearing as oatmeal in the top. Upon joining this forum I read as this is zinc. All that work, and I ended up scooping them out in the end. Not visible battery ends, just as floating crud that didn't remelt.
I turned the pot down a tad so it became very viscous and easy to remove.
I do keep the kitchen stuff seperate from the lead stuff. Makes everyone happy.
Hey, when I melt, pour, size, reload, I am on thin ice anyway. We won't even talk on how many 45ACP rounds she fires at a session.
Does anyone remember the arborist who had those .45ACP trees for sale? You know, the ones you just reach up and pluch ripe cartridges from. Must be the same person who has rootling money trees also. I do not mind loading clips, she does it also.
I am glad she likes to go to the range.
None of the other ex's did.
If she only did some reloading.

[HeavyMetal]

docone 31:

there's an old saying: be careful what you wish for you may get it!

[Tom Herman]

Hi Hershey!

Did you actually melt the stuff inside the house? Or did you just pull a throw rug, etc, outside?
A good tip is to never melt inside the house unless you have strong ventilation to the outside!
I drag a metal cabinet outside, and set the pot on it. Any drippins' or splatters get picked up out of the lawn.
Fortunately, I have a set of cement steps that make a nice place to plop the ingot mould and cast ingots.
Anything I use for casting is NEVER used for food production again! I use a number of cookie sheets, and I take metal stamps and mark them "not 4 food" so they can't be confused with ones that are still in kitchen service. It's pretty obvious if ladles and spoons have been used in casting...
My wife is pretty accomodating in my reloading/casting efforts, but I don't push my luck, and ask her if there is anything of hers that I might possibly use in my work.
I wish you Luck on your path to the better or cheaper bullet!

Happy Shootin'! -Tom

my surprise was a bunch of battery cable ends that did not melt, most melted right down but a dozen or so just floated, any insight?

in general i realized that one pound lyman ingot bars are tedious to do, i need to consider larger ingots. i destroyed my wifes rug, i remember reading about using a wet towel to cool the bottom of the mold, i didn't realize it'd leave little burn marks to. i probably waited way to long to turn the heat down, was charring the wood plank/makeshift table too. also need to put allot more effort into keeping everything level. got about half of the raw lead smelted, made 160 bars. i also owe my wife a new ladle for her kitchen.

[Down South]

I've never heard of battery terminals being made out of zinc but what do I know? I haven't melted any battery terminals down in years. All of my alloy is WW since I have a good supply. A rule of thumb I would use is if it don't melt at lower temps then throw it out. I keep my Smelting temp down low enough that Zinc won't melt. I have found many zinc WW in my smelting pot while skimming off the clips.

[Glen]

Minor comment on terminology here -- What is being described here isn't "smelting", you guys are just melting down existing metal/alloy. Smelting is the reduction of ore to produce metal, and involves a chemical reaction (i.e. reduction) to achieve that goal. Melting metal is just a physical phase transition.

For more on smelting, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelting

[Down South]

Minor comment on terminology here -- What is being described here isn't "smelting", you guys are just melting down existing metal/alloy. Smelting is the reduction of ore to produce metal, and involves a chemical reaction (i.e. reduction) to achieve that goal. Melting metal is just a physical phase transition.

For more on smelting, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelting

Yup, I know that. It’s just a term that I and I think most others use to differentiate cleaning scrap from casting.

[sundog]

awwww, dang it all Glen, can't you let us be happy in our ignorance? When I do it in the MOAS, it SMELLS like a chemical reaction. I'm sure the dog pee, cigarette butts, valve stems, and tire stickers are a catalyst!

[Bob Krack]

Minor comment on terminology here -- What is being described here isn't "smelting", you guys are just melting down existing metal/alloy. Smelting is the reduction of ore to produce metal, and involves a chemical reaction (i.e. reduction) to achieve that goal. Melting metal is just a physical phase transition.

Glen,

I have enjoyed your articles to no end.

The fact that we "flux" when we "smelt" is sometimes a sort of a reduction process, is it not?

Perhaps you could offer a more accurate term?

Thanks,
Vic

[Linstrum]

One of the major things that sets this web site apart from all others is its correctness of data, technique, terminology, and method. Correctness of physical information is of the utmost importance when getting people educated about how boolit casting (or anything else of a precise technical nature AS WELL AS a precise art nature) is done, and if what we write about is full of things of the same order of calling whales fish and bats birds, then everything else that comes from us is every bit as suspect as to its credibility and usefulness. Don't sweep inaccuracies under the rug or let them slide by, they will eventually accumulate to a critical point where they will prevent us from accomplishing what we are trying to do, which are mainly to instruct and teach, discover new and better ways, precisely define what we are already successfully doing, and have a darned good time doing it. The above posts show that we ARE doing a good job of keeping ourselves on the up-and-up!



This old chemist has mentioned quite a few times in the last ten years, or so, that FLUXING is the removal of unwanted dirt, impurities, and other constituents from a material that is in a molten state.



SMELTING is the CONVERSION by chemical means of a wanted material from a useless form to a useful form, usually a chemical compound of a metallic element, such as an ore, into the pure element. Iron ore is SMELTED, or reduced, into metallic iron using carbon to remove combined oxygen, the dirt and dissolved impurities (such as silicon metal, sulfur, and phosphorus) are removed by fluxing with limestone. When fluxing is complete it is skimmed or poured off the top of the molten metal and discarded, or in some cases reprocessed to obtain other useful materials. Galena, the most common ore of lead, is worked in a similar manner, differing from iron ore by first being roasted to convert the lead sulfide into lead oxide and then smelted to the pure element using carbon. The molten lead is sometimes fluxed with zinc metal to remove other metals dissolved in the lead, such as copper, silver, gold, and the resulting dross skimmed off the top and saved for reprocessing by simple distillation (Parkes Process) and cupelation to recover the highly valuable metals.



What we are actually doing when we put sawdust, wax, sugar, etc, on boolit metal is smelting, or reducing, back to metallic state the constituents of the alloy that have become oxidized by heat. We rarely need to flux since all the dirt and other unwanted material was removed long ago at the commercial smelter that produced the lead metal from the ore. Sand and simple mineral dirt does not require fluxing because that stuff is skimmed off very easily and does not need a solvent, which is what a flux is. Some agents used for smelting (reducing) oxidized boolit metal are actually both reducers and fluxes; pitch and rosin are two common ones that perform both functions of reducing a metal oxide back to a metal as well as dissolving oxides. Fluxing can be a bad thing since it may remove wanted constituents, like tin and antimony, from the boolit alloy.



This is just a brief explanation of reducing and fluxing, there are hundreds of comprehensive chemistry books on the subject, and in its entirety is extremely complex. Happy shooting!

rl380

[timkelley]

I fully understand the words used are not quite accurate, however, I still don't like to reduce wheelweights because reduce implies "less" and I am cheap, smelt just feels better.

BTW, Glen your articles are great, more please (please, oh please).

[Sprue]

Minor comment on terminology here -- What is being described here isn't "smelting", you guys are just melting down existing metal/alloy. Smelting is the reduction of ore to produce metal, and involves a chemical reaction (i.e. reduction) to achieve that goal. Melting metal is just a physical phase transition.

puh-tey-toh ........ puh-tot-toh