My first attempt at smelting

[honkey]

I had some time today to smelt some lead. It went well. I will probably get a spoon with slits in it before I do this again, just because when I used the ladle spoon, I kept dropping stuff back into the pot on accident...

I have a pretty nice burner that got my lead to melting temps very quickly. 50 lbs of lead took me about 30 minutes start to finish.

 

[MikeD]

Very nice. I've never tried that myself.

 

[carbinemike]

I used to smelt lead with my Grandfather when I was a kid and we'd cast fishing sinkers. Great times. The last thing I smelted was empty beer cans on a camp fire in the mountains. They would magically dissappear.

What are you going to do with this ingots?

That outdoor cooker has a lot of great uses!

 

[nitesite]

Looks great!

Each ingot should weigh about 2.5-pounds so that is 17,000+ grains per ingot; divide by your bullet weight and you'll see that pile of ingots is a crapload of boolits!!!!!!!

Way to go!

Don't forget to do a short flux when you get your casting furnace up to temp. Sawdust works well when it turns to carbon and gets stirred in because it floats up with the impurities and forms a protective barrier against the air so the barrier hinders oxidation.

Darned proud of you, honkey!

 

[honkey]

I used to smelt lead with my Grandfather when I was a kid and we'd cast fishing sinkers. Great times. The last thing I smelted was empty beer cans on a camp fire in the mountains. They would magically dissappear.

What are you going to do with this ingots?

That outdoor cooker has a lot of great uses!

I may need some help from nitesite here, but basically, I am going to put them in my casting furnace and melt them again so that I can mold the lead into bullets. All I was trying to accomplish in this step was to separate the lead wheel weights from the aluminum and steel that was in the bucket. Essentially, I was cleaning the lead when I smelted.

Where I am confused is that I thought I didn't need to flux since I had put some candle wax in the pot and then scooped all the crud off the top after the flames died down. I thought that was all the fluxing was.

 

[nitesite]

Hi~

Fluxing is an ongoing process even though you'll remove over 90% of the impurities in the alloy during your smelting down scrap lead. But, as air makes contact with your molten lead oxidation occurrs and you should periodically give a little wax flux and stir or do the sawdust thing whenever you add more ingots to your pot and they come up to temp. It's just a quick two minutes and you're back pouring bullets again!

It's not like you must do it constantly or even frequently, just every so often.

 

[honkey]

Awesome! Thanks for the tip!

 

[carbinemike]

Thanks for the reply Honkey. After I posted it, I came to think you're probably making bullets. Keep us posted how you make out. I like do it your self activities.