Melted down new lead, weird color

[Grendel99]

A friend gave me a brick of lead from an old x-ray machine that was used as ballast. It was about the size of a brick (not concrete cinder block) but the smaller orange bricks used for houses and walkways and such. I melted it down, fluxed with sawdust, and then poured it in to ingots. Everything went fine, but I noticed that the ingots have an odd color to them. They have this blue/purple color and I was wondering what the heck is it? It did this for all 35 of the ingots that I got out of the lead brick. Here is a picture with an ingot I made from it sitting next to an ingot from wheel weights. IIRC, the x-ray machine ballast is usually pretty close to pure lead. Did I do something wrong? Maybe my ingot mold was not clean? Does this mean the alloy is different? I haven't casted any bullets with the new lead yet, but was going to do half the ballast with half WW's for .44 mag HP's.

Ballast lead on left and WW's on right.

[blaser.306]

Looks to me like Pure or almost pure that was melted on the hot ( ish ) side of things! If the color bothers you , you could re melt at a slightly lower temp and flux the oxide ( rainbow color ) back into suspention and re cast. If your mould is good and hot it should leaveyou with fairly shiney silver bars of joy!

[lwknight]

Those colors are a good thing
Once your mold gets kinda hot, pure lead does that.
Cherish it!

[Grendel99]

Awesome, thanks for the quick replies. It does look pretty cool, just wanted to make sure there was nothing wrong as I've never used anything other than WW's. Thanks guys!

[wiliamr]

Did you notice a slight blueish glow in the dark?

[bangerjim]

Blue = too hot pure lead. No problem.

bangerjim

[dbosman]

Pretty.
That looks a bit like color of the scintillation light from an underwater reactor.
Michigan State University use to have one in the Engineering building.

[Defcon-One]

....That looks a bit like color of the scintillation light from an underwater reactor. Michigan State University use to have one in the Engineering building....

Happy to say I never saw that one!

Like they said, Pure Lead a bit hot! Go hotter and you'll get some purple, maybe even gold.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

here is a informative thread
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...ghlight=Purple
and an easy search.

[dilly]

I've heard it described as peacock colors before.

[Smoke4320]

Its pure lead for sure and as others said a little on the hot side but no harm .. lead is quickly becoming like pure unobtaitium ..

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

lead is quickly becoming like pure unobtaitium

Not exactly, just keep mentioning it to friends, to keep a lookout for various Lead scrap. Last weekend I worked a Gunshow, two friends offered me some scrap and delivered it...including a 75 lb piece of sheet lead that was rolled up, a Lead box (looked homemade from sheet lead that was soldered together) about the size of a USPS small FRB, and a 55 lb box of NEW monotype (New meaning it all was still in small sealed paperboard boxes with commercial Labels-Never seen ink).

So, all that scrap just fell into my lap for $100. I wasn't even really looking to expand my collection of scrap alloys.

[bangerjim]

Its pure lead for sure and as others said a little on the hot side but no harm .. lead is quickly becoming like pure unobtaitium ..

Here in AZ I can buy all I want! No shortage of roof/pipe/scrap/range/COWW/SOWW/misc lead at all the scrap yards. They have literally tons of it and they get it in almost every week.

Now............if you want it for FREE.........that is a different story. There are very few free lunches or buckets-o-lead anymore in this world. When *****s are ripping the copper wire & tubing out of schools and churches to make a few dope dollars, people are also selling lead. The yards 'round here normally get a buck a pound.

bangerjim

[Skip62]

I was about to post a very similar question, but did a search and found this thread. I got some lead, but it cast funny, very frosty, lead temp=650°, cooled mold to make sure that wasn't too hot, same thing. The guy said it was WW, but there were a couple of jackets in one hunk, so..... Anyway, I resmelted it all yesterday, cleaned pot today, cuz it needed it, then added the new ingots. My ingots looked good, not blue, but here's what the pot looked looked like at about 700°.



Skimmed that off, and got this.



I cast a few just to see what they looked like, no problems. So I'm in the same boat as the OP? No need to do anything?

Thanks y'all

edit: Almost forgot, the lead seems really watery when casting. It doesn't have a nice round sprue on top, it just flattens out across the sprue plate. Never had that before, but I'm still very much a rookie.