Howdy gang, been lurking for a week or two, and registered today. I've had intentions of trying my hand at casting bullets and dropping shot for quote a while, but have never found the time in the last 10 years or so to get started. Having a young family can really cut your free time ! I've been collecting some WW here and there for the last 8-10 years, and finally decided to get started melting them down and casting ingots last night. Everything went pretty well, but one of my ingots has a crater in the top and looks weird. I'll try to post a pic. I just want to make sure this wasn't caused by zinc inclusion into my melt. The pot looked good while melting, no strange foamy, wavy stuff coming up to the top. I was using a turkey burner and a cast iron dutch oven for the melt. Fluxed with pine sawdust and scraped all the clips and iron / zinc WW from the top. I don't have a lead thermometer, but I had the fire turned down quite a bit for a slow melt as to catch the zinc before it all melted. Took about 25-30 min to get a good melt. Anyways, just was looking for opinions and ideas as to why this particular ingot looks like it does. I was using a ladle to fill the muffin pans, and was adding 2 ladles full to each hole. maybe I poured too fast on the second ladle and the outside splash cooled quicker than usual ? Thanks for any replies !
I was using the shallow muffin pans from Cracker Barrel for my ingots.