No more mister nice guy - more aggressive smelting

[ghh3rd]

I heated up the Dutch oven and began to fish through 1/2 pail of WW last night. I have always spent a lot of time sorting through all of the weights, looking for Zinc and trash. After about five minutes of examining each weight, I made a drastic decision.

I kept the heat on low, just enough to melt a lead WW when placed in the pot. I carefully picked enough lead WW out to fill the pot with about 1/4" of melt. There were lot’s of rubber grommets and valve stems in the pail, so I tested a piece of rubber to see how fast it would melt, but it didn't - amazing!

After that, I held my large ladle over the bucket and filled it with a handful of WW, picking out only the tape on weights, and whatever rubber grommets, valve stems, etc. were on the top and easy to pick off. (Using the ladle is an easy way for me to add weights to the melt without any splash.)

After each two or three ladles full, I skimmed off the garbage, including the unmelted zinc weights and unmelted rubber stuff.

I was a bit paranoid during the process about the possibility of melting Zinc, and would occasionally put a known Zinc weight and a lead weight into a ladle full of melted lead and let the ladle float on the melt. The lead would melt, and the Zinc would just float around.

Before long, the half pail was all melted, and I had a pile of debris. After cleaning up, I poked through the debris and found a nice selection of Zinc WW and unmelted rubber parts.

My yield was 60 lbs of clip on ingots, in record time. I stuck the 10 lbs of stick ons into my stick on pile for another day. Not too bad for a free WW pickup

[Matt_G]

Just make sure all those weights are dry!
You don't want a visit from the tinsel fairy.

[Down South]

If you are adding WW to the pot after it has reached melt temperature then I would monitor the temperature. I’ve never had a problem with filling a cold pot to running over full then bringing the temp up high enough to skin the clips and trash. But I did one time contaminate a pot with zinc by adding WW to the pot after I had skimmed the trash and started adding WW to the melt. I wasn’t watching the temperature and evidently it got hot enough to melt a zinc WW or two as I was dropping them in.

[Old Ironsights]

If you are adding WW to the pot after it has reached melt temperature then I would monitor the temperature. I’ve never had a problem with filling a cold pot to running over full then bringing the temp up high enough to skin the clips and trash. But I did one time contaminate a pot with zinc by adding WW to the pot after I had skimmed the trash and started adding WW to the melt. I wasn’t watching the temperature and evidently it got hot enough to melt a zinc WW or two as I was dropping them in.

+ a lot.

I use a thermometer, but without one you can acomplish the same thing with this procedure:

Dump 20# of WW into your pot & crank up the fire.
Watch it as it gets hot, and keep poking th mass of WWS with a DRY wood stirring stick.

The WWs will start to melt/get crumbly at about 500deg and begin to make a mush.

Mix the mush - clips & all - until it becomes liquid. This will be right at 625-650 deg.

Scrape the now floating clips, zincers & steelies off into one of your other stock pots.

If you have more dry WWs, immediately add them before the melt gets too mch hotter. It should QUICKLY go back to a mushy mass (500-600) with a lump of WWs in it. Start stirring again.

Repeat the last 3 steps until you are out of WWs or room in your pot.

Once you have melted everything/all you can melt, you can let it get hotter as you stir with your stick until it's at a nice pourable 750 or so... but since you have scraped off the clips & floaters early & often you shouldn't have to worry too much about how hot in total it gets when you pour ingots.

[ghh3rd]

I keep my ingots in separate batches as I cast them, so if something went wrong with a batch I don't contaminate the entire stockpile.

Just for some self reassurance a friend is going to bring me a small sample of Muriatic acid so I don't have to buy a gallon. I'd like to test a sample from each of my batches of ingots to see if it detects any Zinc.

Randy

[Ancesthntr]

It seems to me that it would it be a good technique to put a drop of muriatic acid on each WW before dumping them into the pot. By getting rid of the zinc first, as well as the rubber, nails, bolts, etc. that are typical in a pail of WWs, you get a much easier job of casting clean ingots.

[Old Ironsights]

You don't need to test your questionable WWs with acid... Simple sorting is enough to get 99% of them, and cold-smelting will get the rest...

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=50064

[hammerhead357]

I use a thermometer when melting WWs and if I am using my old lino furnace it has a thermostat to control the temp. However I do sort thru my WWs to sort out the stick on weights from the clip on weights and while doing this I look for zink weights.
I think I remember from a past post here that the lettering on the zink weights is stamped into the weight where as the lead weights have raised lettering. I hope I remember correctly.....Wes

[farmerfish77]

I am new to this business, and am just in the process of getting a stash of lead built up. Now for my dumb ??? How does zinc contaminate the lead? and what happens? We are getting some WWs and just want to know what to look for. thnx tom

[shotman]

zinc wont hurt the boolit but will not mix well at normal cast temp [650-750] If you heat it more will mix but DONT try in an aluminum mold.

[farmerfish77]

thnx, got a lot to learn but should be a rewarding hobby.

[BruceB]

As usual, there are a lot of folks making this FAR more complicated than it has to be.

To melt down wheelweights, I use an ELEVEN-dollar (on sale!) Harbor Freight weed-burner and a steel pot one of my co-workers made for me from heavy-wall pipe.

The weed-burner has huge amounts of heat available, far more than any stove or turkey-cooker I've ever seen, and it melts forty or fifty pounds of WW in minutes. I usually do a fast sorting of the weights into stick-on/clip-on categories as I drop fistfuls into the pot, setting-aside the stick-ons for later melting. Garbage and oddball weights that I notice get tossed, but I do NOT agonize over every last weight going into the pot.

As the weights get close to melting point, they assume a sort of slushy state as they lose shape. Very suddenly, they will change from slush to a true liquid. I stir the mix constantly as this condition arrives. AS SOON AS THIS LIQUID STATE HAPPENS, all remaining un-melted objects in the pot are removed QUICKLY. Guess what? All the worries about zinc, steel, aluminum, and various foreign objects, are GONE. There's no time for the melt to rise in temperature to the melting-point of zinc.

Now, I have leisure time to flux and skim etc as I see fit. Generally, a reduction in the heat level is desirable at this time as well.

NO thermometer, NO worry about zinc, just melt and scoop. It's not high science, guys.

This procedure is rapid enough that I don't have to wait at any stage. Between pouring the ingots, then refilling the pot, skimming, fluxing etc., I find that I am constantly busy and the pile of ingots just keeps mounting up. If it's not going fast enough, turn up the heat! TOO fast? Turn it down! The heat available is practically limitless, at least for batches of the size I use. I've never run the weed-burner wide-open, or even close to it.

I'll try to post some photos to show the simple set-up I use.

[jack19512]

As usual, there are a lot of folks making this FAR more complicated than it has to be.

To melt down wheelweights, I use an ELEVEN-dollar (on sale!) Harbor Freight weed-burner and a steel pot one of my co-workers made for me from heavy-wall pipe.

Or you could just use something like this if you don't need to melt a large amout of lead at a time. Gets hot enough to melt the lead but doesn't get hot enough to melt the zinc. I have been using this for quite some time now and it has worked great for me.

[Ole]

Or you could just use something like this if you don't need to melt a large amout of lead at a time. Gets hot enough to melt the lead but doesn't get hot enough to melt the zinc. I have been using this for quite some time now and it has worked great for me.

I have used a turkey fryer for most of my smelting. The last batch I tried a 1500w hot plate and was surprised how well it worked. It's definitely slower, but it makes enough heat to melt a 20lb batch of WW's and electricity is cheaper heating than C3H8. Money saved on propane leaves more money for buying lead.

[jack19512]

I have used a turkey fryer for most of my smelting. The last batch I tried a 1500w hot plate and was surprised how well it worked. It's definitely slower, but it makes enough heat to melt a 20lb batch of WW's and electricity is cheaper heating than C3H8. Money saved on propane leaves more money for buying lead.

It's worked well enough for me that I keep a 6 gallon bucket full of ingots ready for casting. I have enough cast boolits made already to last me a very long time. Plus I don't have to worry about melting those zinc weights.

[tomf52]

BruceB - How ironic I read your post about the weed burner now. Was out in my garage last night looking at my weed burner and thinking "I'll bet that would melt lead faster than my plumber's furnace". Was thinking of welding up a stand for my pot which is made from a piece of 6" well pipe and some sort of bracket to hold the torch in the desired position. How do you have your flame, straight up under the bottom of the pot or do you heat it from one side? Thanks, Tom.