Adventures in first time smelting

[Reddot]

I finally just said "To heck with it." and smelted my first batch of range lead. After removing the bullet jackets and dirt I decided to flux the remainder with a little sawdust and parafin. FLAMES!! and LOTS OF SMOKE, I mean LOTS OF SMOKE. I thought for sure I was busted at that point, but no the fire department didn't show up. Cool I survived that one.

Now for the questions. There was a scum of silvery stuff on the top of the pot. I couldn't seem to get it to mix with the rest of the lead. Am I not fluxing enought or was the mixture to cold? I put a thermometer in the brew and it read 600 F. I don't know if it is calibrated or not, nor do I know how to check it.

I do have a dozen muffin ingots however.

[snaggdit]

If the lead was melted you were probably hot enough. Yeah, parrafin will flash, and smoke. Someone recommended I use charcoal to flux some monotype I was smelting. Worked well for that, so I use it in my casting pot now, too. I just get some chunks out of the ashes of my woodstove and crush them.

The scum on the top. Was it papery thin? Or like oatmeal? As soon as you skim off garbage and flux and skim again, the top of a melt begins to oxidize. That layer is paper thin. Ignore it and make your muffins. If you have an oatmeal like layer, you have something else going on. You did say range lead. Never smelted that myself, but kind of thought most store bought is jacketed pure (or closer that direction) than WW or hardened alloys. Might be some tin or antimony floating, but I would think normal fluxing would mix that back in.

[Bret4207]

You're probably fine with what you have. You can save all the dross and remelt at a later time and see what it turns out to be.

[Sprue]

Congrats, sounds like you are well on your way. I flux with a dime size piece of scented candle, it helps especially when casting. I also (and you may too) keep a lighter handy to light that smoke, it helps to rid of it.

[blackthorn]

All I ever use anymore to flux is a piece of VERY DRY 1"x2" lumber. It smokes a bit, provides the needed arbon and I can scrape the sides of the pot with it. Have fun.

[smburnette]

I did my first large scale smelting last night... I had done it once before with a 4 lb lee pot. Not the easiest idea.. This time I used a turkey frier and a stainless pot.. the stainless pot got so hot that it was flemsy at the end.. I had a 5 gallon bucket 3/4 full with wheel weights.. I smelted it down and got 83 pounds of ingots...

One of them is a 23 pound lead heart for my wife... She didn't think it was a sweet as I thought it was going to be as I was pouring the led into her heart shaped cake pan...

I threw it all in and let it melt until the clips were floating and used a metal spoon with holes to scrape off the clips... I them kept adding more weights until they were all in there.. i didn't think they would fit, but they did.. Then I tossed a candle in stirred it with a long wooden rod, and enjoyed the fireball.. A metal soup ladel did the trick for pouring the ingots into the muffin tin.. I was using a lee ingot mold, but that got old really fast and I switched to the muffin pan... when the level was soo low that I couldnt get the ladel all the way in to fill it, I poured what was left into the heart shaped pan..

One think I did learn was do NOT use the plastic bucket that you stored the weights in to dump the metal clips into unless you put some water in the bottom of it, as it will smoke like crazy and melt a hole in the bucket..

[snaggdit]

Yeah, SWMBO does not appreciate you raiding her pans and utensils for smelting, no matter what pretty shapes you make with them...