Fluxing does nothing

[LAGS]

I do clean the casting pots with a scraper, and even a pot scrubber.
But unless you can take it back to shiny metal, there is a fine rust patina that does flake off into your alloy.
Fluxing brings that to the surface where you can skim it off.

[GhostHawk]

I'm like RogerDat.

I keep all my scrapings, once I have a pot of clean liquid metal I pretty much just cast until either I need to add ingots or take a swipe with a spoon. The next time I smelt big bars into little ones, wheel weights, downrigger cannonballs, whatever, that frying pan of skimmings goes into the pot. THAT I will flux and more than once.

But in my casting pot, not much fluxing going on, and mostly only a small piece of beeswax or bullet lube (With Beeswax as major part of it.)

[timtheartist]

Most of you agree on beeswax used sparingly in the casting pot. Have you found beeswax or sawdust better when smelting?

[bangerjim]

Most find beeswax is far too expensive to use in the quantities required for re-melting pots. I use 3X sawdust and the final time a few hunks of those cheeeeeep tea lite candles from the $ store.

I have over 20# of beeswax from back when it was $.60/# but only use it in my casting pot in pea-sized pieces.

And remember wax ONLY reduces. You need to FLUX in your re-melting pot to get all the garbage out. Use pine sawdust.

banger

[timtheartist]

Thanks Banger.

I bought several pounds of beeswax cheap on eBay for making boolit lube. Seems there are a number of regular beeswax dealers

Now I hafta find a pine tree. Down here in Florida is that the tree with cocunuts ?

[bangerjim]

Any carbon-based life-form will work for a flux. (some even claim to use old motor oil...YUCK!!!) Everybody (normally) has a saw of some kind and it yields saw dust! Most cut pine. I have pine, alder, mahogany, oak, walnut, cherry and others I cut in my wood shop and, between the saws, thickness planers, jointers, & shapers, I have tons of dust. Wife uses it around her plants (except walnut).

If you are "saw-less", get pine pet bedding as WalMart. Cheap and will last a long time! Do not use the free sawdust from Lowe's or Home Despot, as it can contain nasty woods and glues and resins from the stuff they cut. Free is not always good!

[RogerDat]

^^^ +1 ^^^
Free is not always good. Free sawdust from the big box lumber store can make you sick. Just like free love can give you socially unacceptable medical conditions.
Pine bedding from WalMart or pet stores is the most readily available supply and dirt cheap. Actually cheaper than they sell dirt for now that I think about it. At least by volume.

[timtheartist]

Thanks guys for the sawdust info.

[Electric88]

Thanks guys for all the good information in this thread! I am getting ready to start smelting wheel weights into ingots, and casting after that. I was just thinking to myself this morning that I needed to get on here and see what you guys are saying about fluxing

[Sticky]

+1 Banger Jim
Flux heavy in the smelt About 3 times to clean everything out: Then when you have clean ingots & drop in your casting pot and then just reduce with beeswax: By then the junk is gone and you just want the tin back into the melt while casting

This has worked very well for me with a bottom pour pot... the beeswax does a great job of reducing in the casting pot and the sawdust works very well in the smelting pot to remove the junk, perhaps a pinch of wax as I am ladling out to the ingot molds if I see any skimming on top.. then back to ladling.

[guncheese]

for those that cant find clean/safe sawdust
ive been using sunflower seed shells
that i have spit out and dried
they work pretty well
and smells like toasty seeds when it burns

[RogerDat]

I'm like RogerDat.

I keep all my scrapings, once I have a pot of clean liquid metal I pretty much just cast until either I need to add ingots or take a swipe with a spoon. The next time I smelt big bars into little ones, wheel weights, downrigger cannonballs, whatever, that frying pan of skimmings goes into the pot. THAT I will flux and more than once.

But in my casting pot, not much fluxing going on, and mostly only a small piece of beeswax or bullet lube (With Beeswax as major part of it.)

I just melted my fluxing skim bucket. The one from smelting yielded about 12 lb. bar from a dutch oven worth of skimmed dross. That was some work for $12 worth of lead. The dross from my casting pot went about 4.5 lbs and I did that in a stainless steel sauce pan. I would have normally just thrown this into a big batch of WW's but I am pretty much caught up on WW's to smelt and don't figure on buying more anytime soon. Not exactly sure what I have but over 1k lb. so not going to buy more anytime soon, maybe in the fall a couple of buckets. For now I just wanted to clean stuff up.

[JRLesan]

Have been casting on and off for forty years or so and, being a plumber by trade, have always used a Bol Wax for fluxing. While they used to cost about 40 cents back in the 70's, they're now up over a dollar. One wax did over 1,000 lbs of WW last JAN as I recollect. The same wax also works great for lubing wood screw threads when driving into hard materials. Just stick the threaded end into the wax and give a twist...

[depoloni]

Big fan of cedar sawdust from cutting trim boards, siding, shakes, you name it. Ever since getting into casting I am a hawk on the sawdust bags on the various saws at the shop anytime we saw a bunch of cedar. As in the guys know it's mine lol.

And yes, they all think I'm more than halfway off my rocker. I don't expect it to make sense to them... nothing beats that smell in my smelter, and often-times given the stank of what goes into my smelter, I deserve a little return-on-smells-nice

[Lloyd Smale]

if you frequent rummage sales you can usualy find huge candles that are either new or a bit used for next to nothing. Ive even found beeswax candles for next to nothing and can either use them for flux or making lube.

[lobowolf761]

I just melted my fluxing skim bucket. The one from smelting yielded about 12 lb. bar from a dutch oven worth of skimmed dross. That was some work for $12 worth of lead. The dross from my casting pot went about 4.5 lbs and I did that in a stainless steel sauce pan. I would have normally just thrown this into a big batch of WW's but I am pretty much caught up on WW's to smelt and don't figure on buying more anytime soon. Not exactly sure what I have but over 1k lb. so not going to buy more anytime soon, maybe in the fall a couple of buckets. For now I just wanted to clean stuff up.

You melted your bucket?

[cajun shooter]

I agree with my friend John Kort aka w30wcf and others who use this type of fluxing. I find no need to use any beeswax or any petroleum material or beeswax candles, old tranny oil and so on. I have been at this since 1970 so you can say that Í have a few years of OJT behind me.
I will first disagree with bangerjim about using pine sawdust as pine contains gums and oils in it that are not good to breath or use. The same goes for the sawdust from Lowe's or Home Depot as they cut treated wood and that material is all mixed in. The breathing of treated wood fumes may kill or severly injure you and anyone else that is close. I saw 5 laborers taken by ambulance from a construction job I was on in the 60's from burning treated wood scraps in a 55 gallon drum to stay warm.
The best wood shavings I have used are those once sold by a board member here for many years. Certain life changes dried that source up. The wood was from certain spruce trees he used for cutting. I also had very good results with the wood shavings that a local wood mill sold to horse owners for stall bedding. I purchased it by the horse trailer full for my horses for about $20 in the early to mid 80's, I sure hated when they closed down.
If you have noticed, I stated wood shavings and not sawdust. There is a huge difference and finding the shavings is worth the hunt. You may want to look at rough cut saw mills in your area that do all types of sizing. I may do a smelt twice if they are a little on the dirty side, like about 500 lbs. I now have that went under in a flood. Completely covered with river silt that is thick and sticky.
I make my ingots up and use them without further fluxing ( excessive and futile ) Take Care David

[RogerDat]

You melted your bucket?

The ghost of Jr. High English teacher is haunting me!
I melted the contents of my fluxing skim bucket :-p And took the resulting ingots mentioned in post 32 in to have them gunned for alloy content.

The 12# ingot from a full dutch oven worth of dross bucket contents came in at 2.5 Sb, .9 Sn so essentially COWW's with slightly more tin. This makes sense the tin oxidizes on the top and would concentrate in the dross to some extent. Plus there has been scrap with slightly higher tin content melted down that contributed to that dross.

The smaller 4.5 # ingot made from the dross of my casting alloy mix pot was a richer being 4 Sb, 13 Sn again I would expect that skimming the pot where I'm making Lyman #2 to yield better alloy and for the tin to concentrate in the metal recovered from the dross.

Thought this information might help others decide if they want to hassle with recover from the dross skimming or just dump it. So to clarify 1000# of COWW and some plain & SOWW yielded 12# ingot of essentially COWW lead from melting the contents of my dross bucket. Making bullet alloy the dross is less in volume maybe two bread loaf pans worth and yielded about the same metal as the alloy it came from with elevated tin.

[lobowolf761]

Sounds good to me. I just usually toss my dross because of all the clips and unmelted zinc and iron WW mixed in with it. But I'll be keeping your info the next time I do a big melt.

[303Guy]

Today I had the opportunity to see what 'fluxing' does. It does do something - it causes metallic's to separate from the dross and form small beads of molten metal. I have noticed that even when the dross is a yellow powder (do not breath in the dust from this), adding wax and sawdust yields the same small metal beads. Well, not quite the same small beads - smaller.