Green and yellow crap ontop of melted lead

[Gunfreak25]

Yesterday I needed to melt down some of my pure lead 20lb pipes into smaller ingots for ease of melting later. My setup was a coleman stove, a stainless steel pot for melting in, an old spoon for skimming the junk off the top, and a homemade ladle made from a ball bearing cap.

All was going well for awhile. My purpose was just to skim off the crusty crap that floats up to the surface, and simply turn out some ingots, and the next time I could properly flux the metal.

Well by the time I got to melting down my 10th pound of metal, I noticed if the lead sat in the pot for awhile undisturbed, a dark green/yellowish/goldish flaky surface would form on the lead. I then had to skim that off, only to have the lead underneath a rainbow color of blue and purple.

I know it's not the lead, because when adding a fresh pure lead chunk to the pot for melting, the freshly melted lead was pure silver in color. It wasn't until my pot started getting on the empty side (half inch deep) that the green discoloration I was speaking of, was all throughout the pot. I could skim it off the top and more of it would be directly underneath.

By the end of the day I had half of an old meat loaf pan full of that green/gold stuff that I skimmed off. Can anyone tell me what it might be? When I emptied my pot for the day I noticed the bottom was a red rusty color too. Like I said I didn't use any flux this time in the metal, I was going to do that later, Just wanted to get some ingots made.

[osage]

I've noted the same colors when working with cable sheathing. Since you said you were working with pure I would save what you have skimmed off. You should be able to work most of it back into your next melt. I leave what forms on the top to slow oxidation and just push it to the side when ladling out. I stir with a wooden stick and have used saw dust to flux with.

[Wayne Smith]

That is normal with pure. It fluxes back in easily. Next time you melt put it in the melt and flux and you will see the silver again. I think it's oxides of lead that you are seeing.

[powderburnerr]

when you get her melted turn your pot down just a little . it dont need to be that hot to ingot .....Dean

[Gunfreak25]

Well I finished melting the rest of my lead today, only using an iron pot instead of stainless steel. I noticed a dramatic reduction in the green skim on the surface of the lead, this time I also used a good bit of flux and that really cut down on how much crud I had to skim off. The casted ingots are extremely soft, dentable with your thumbnail. In other words, perfect for blackpowder but I will have to harden them up a bit if I use it for smokeless.