Flux for smelting?

[38 Super Auto]

I think someone posted here a few months ago about using stearic acid. I got some of e[vil]-bay and a little dab will do ya. I have used marvelux, pine resin, sawdust, and paraffin. Paraffin is cheap, but stearic acis really cleans up my melt.

Here's a reference.

http://www.answers.com/topic/stearic-acid


Just my 2 grains worth...

[Linstrum]

Stearic acid works great - another one of the many materials that gives excellent results. Stearic acid is one of the components found in plant and animal oils and fats, it is chemically combined with glycerin to make glyceryl stearate, one of the fatty esters found in lard and tallow. One advantage of stearic acid is its low odor when burning and is why it is so popular with candle makers. Another one that works for preparing boolit alloy is palmitic acid, also found in vegetable oils as glyceryl palmitate; especially palm oil, from which it gets its name.

Lard works, too, the main thing with it is that it doesn't burn as clean as stearic acid. One of the combustion products of lard and other fatty esters like vegetable oil is a real irritating aldehyde called acreolin that forms from the incomplete combustion of glycerin. Like other aldehydes, it is toxic, but no worse than wood smoke. Shouldn't be breathing smoke from preparing lead boolit alloy, anyway.

Stearic and palmitic acids when reacted with lye make ordinary soap like Ivory, and is why soap also works to prepare lead alloys. When palmitic acid is reacted with an aluminum salt it makes aluminum palmitate soap, which was the first agent used to gel gasoline for making Napalm, and with wood alcohol to also gel it, it makes the original Sterno canned heat that was used for heating the WW2-era GI ground pounder's C-rations or his shaving water in his helmet when a Jeep wasn't handy to heat water in the radiator.

Stearic acid and palmitic acid are also good components for boolit lubes but I don't know what happened to the recipes for using them, might be over at:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=29683


Have fun!


rl484

[Whitespider]

I use grated Ivory soap, after it melts I sprinkle in some sawdust (wood chips or flakes from a chain saw) and start stirring. Ivory soap alone makes kind of a greasy slime on the pot sides and spoon, adding the sawdust eliminates that problem. Sawdust alone can leave quite a bit of carbon on the side and bottom of the pot, but using it with the Ivory seems to keep the carbon on top of the melt where I can skim it off.

When I "smelting" WW's I'll toss in healthy amounts of both, probably more than is needed but I wanna make sure I'm getting the metal clean and homogeneous before I start pouring ingots.

[ddeaton]

I am a little slow and maybe didnt read all posts to the letter.

When you add flux, lets say beeswax, you set it on fire? Actually with a lighter?

How do you know when you need to add more flux as you are casting? What are we looking for in the lead pot? Or do we just for the heck of it flux at a given timeframe?

Thanks in advance

[OeldeWolf]

As I was melting down some range lead, and "fluxing" it, I had a few pots that felt almost silky when I ladled them. That is the only way I can think of to describe how they felt. Is that what they should all feel like by the time they are ready to pour into ingots?

And I will have to try the sawdust with ivory trick, the ivory was so messy I was thinking I was doing something wrong.

[blackthorn]

All you really need to do is to stir your melt well with a VERY DRY piece of 1x2 board or even a VERY DRY 1&1/2 to 2 inch tree branch (pine works well). Scrape the sides and bottom of your pot well to loosen any crud that may be stuck to the pot and you are good to go!

[DoubleBarrel]

Hello Everyone, I'm new to this forum and would like to know if anyone has tried using liquid soldering flux such as "stay clean" made by Harris? It contains zinc chloride. Thanx,DB

[Linstrum]

Hi, DoubleBarrel, welcome to the forum.

Zinc chloride and ammonium chloride soldering fluxes work great for soldering applications but preparing boolit alloys for casting does not involve the type of chemical action that these commercial soldering fluxes perform. Besides that, those types of fluxes rapidly attack and damage steel and brass moulds.

The action required to clean up casting alloys is conserving alloy constituents, not chemically dissolving them for removal, which is what soldering fluxes do. I hope this helps a bit.

[DoubleBarrel]

Thanks Linstrum, I just happened to find a small bottle in my plumbing box and wondered if it would work. While I was digging around , I also found a large chunk of lead that was once used to contain radioactive isotopes.This thing must weigh 30#. I was going to cut it up and turn it into ingots, however it's snowing like mad here and deer season just started!