What to do with zinc contamenated lead

[technojock]

Awhile back I smelted some wheel weights and I'm pretty sure I melted a couple zinc ones into the 50 or so pounds of alloy I got. It doesn't cast well and I'm not sure what to do with it. Right now it mostly fills a .30 caliber GI ammo can... Any good suggestions?

Tony

[Land Owner]

You could buy a fishing sinker mold. Split shots, pyramid, jig heads, et al. Then 30# melt and ladle cast...or toy soldier mold, or counterweight, or door stops, or...there are about a million ideas, figuratively speaking.

[Dusty Bannister]

Dilute with good alloy for pistol bullets.

[WantGrape]

50lbs? I'd just throw it away, I still live in the land of lead though, so it's not rare around here yet. Or I'd try that sulfur method that's in one of the stickied threads

[justindad]

Flux it with Zep root kill (copper sulphate). The zinc will come out and you’ll add some copper.
*
How much zinc do you estimate is in there?

[imashooter2]

The solution to pollution is dilution.

[lightman]

I would mix small quantities with a known good alloy until I used it up.

[oley55]

Awhile back I smelted some wheel weights and I'm pretty sure I melted a couple zinc ones into the 50 or so pounds of alloy I got. It doesn't cast well and I'm not sure what to do with it. Right now it mostly fills a .30 caliber GI ammo can... Any good suggestions?

Tony

those couple zinc ones must have been a couple of those huge truck tire weights. Otherwise I would think the percentage of zinc would be quite low and shouldn't be an issue. Of course that is being said from reading other discussions here (no personal experience).

I'd dig a little deeper into other past threads to find out what percentage of zinc creates issues. You may just need to bump your casting temp up a bit.

For what it worth for the future, I don't buy into the idea that the zinc will float to the top if you just keep your smelting temps lower. Putting a thermometer in the pot doesn't measure much of anything until there is liquid metal to measure. By that time you could have zinc weights trapped under many pounds of lead and they could easily reach zinc's melting temps before they have the opportunity to float. When I sort, my lead weights go into my lead pile and then I nip check every one just to be sure.

Edit: link added, post #16, 17 refer to percentages of zinc. just hints to previous posts. https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...highlight=zinc

edit2: post #4 seems more specific and highly contradicts the above referenced percentages. https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...highlight=zinc

[Winger Ed.]

Up there, you might be able to cast it into the big sinkers they use or salmon weights and make a couple bucks.

[technojock]

If I can manage to chop it up to melt down, I have a lead fork lift ballast plate. If I could manage to melt it all together with my suspect alloy, it would give me a 2 to 1 pure lead to contaminated alloy mix. I also have some bars of pure tin I could toss in but as it stands that is 3x or more my capacity to melt at once...

I was thinking about making a couple lead hammers but that would leave me a lot left over. There's about an ounce of zinc in about 50 pounds of lead. I have another bucket of wheel weights to smelt for when I get around to it but I need to figure out a better way to weed out the zinc before I smelt them.

Tony

[muskeg13]

If you only have 1 oz of zinc in 50 pounds (800 oz) of lead, that's 0.0125% which is almost nothing. Either you melted more zinc in the mix or something else is going on. Somewhere less than 1% (maybe less than 0.5%) is the max saturation for zinc in lead alloy before you start to get "oatmeal" dross floating on the top, clearly indicating zinc contamination. You generically state that it doesn't cast well. What specifically is happening? Poor boolit fill-out or oatmeal dross?

I've accidently melted a few zinc ww in a 20# pot of lead ww and had no major problems, but I cast/smelted rather hot (750 or more on the Lee thermostat setting) and I add about 2% of tin. The resulting alloy casts just fine and is significantly harder than plain lead ww. When sorting the ww prior to adding them to the pot, I do it a hand full at the time, making it easier to spot and separate out the zinc ww. If you mess up and drop a few zinc ww into an already molten mix, the zinc and Fe (iron) ww will float on the surface for a while and you can easily scoop them out.

As mentioned previously, you may consider casting hotter and be sure you have a small amount of tin in the alloy. I've read somewhere that tin is required for any degree of zinc solubility in a lead alloy mix.

[MarkP]

It happened to me several yrs ago. I got several buckets of WW from Mother in law's work. VW / Audi dealership. I had no idea EU cars had zinc Wheel weights. I ended up using it to make 12 ga and 20 slugs (Lyman sabot types) , large balls and heavy 45's for 458 WM.

[Ed_Shot]

I would mix small quantities with a known good alloy until I used it up.

+1 My thought exactly. Waste not want not.

[243winxb]

Maximum Heat for fill out. 1 oz zinc in 50 lbs is like nothing.

[Rickf1985]

Be aware that straight WW do not generally cast well without the addition of some tin for proper fill out. I seriously doubt a couple zinc weights in 50 lbs. is going to make any difference at all as far as contamination goes. And as far as the one person who says to throw it out? Well if you do I will give you my address and I will pay the shipping, throw it my way.

[technojock]

I still have a couple hundred pounds of good WW alloy I smelted a while back. So until I use all that up, I'm going to file this info away for later use. As I recall I have about 12# of pure tin in bars that I could add as needed to round out the mix...

Because of chronic pain, I don't get to shoot nearly as much as I like so it'll take me while to shoot up what I have on hand. Then there's the matter of braking down that lead ballast plate...

Tony

[missionary5155]

A 1.1" cannon goes through zinc in fine fassion.

[GlocksareGood]

I used to keep some around. One time my brother wanted some 15lb down rigger balls poured. He brought me good lead for them and I used all of my zinced up trash for them. Win-win.

[Rapier]

I bought a double 8 0z egg weight mould to get rid of 100 pounds of cream cheese looking garbage. Salvage yard said it was tin, tested and all, were not so. I went to the local tackle store and bought the mould, just made up 100 lbs of slip line bottom weights for grouper fishing. Had a boat at the dock at the time. We wore out some deep water grouper with those weights. Would rather have been shooting though.

[Jeff Michel]

Couple ounces in a batch don't sound like much, but it's a bigger deal than you might think. once it's in there it's never going to be "right".
Sure you could cast some sort of crummy bullet but what is the point of a marginal bullet? Been there, poor economy at best. Ended up with a lot more worthless bullet to scrap than when I started. Missionary 5155 has probably the best idea.