Question on recycled lead...

[Kurt]

I would use caution with sawdust or wood sticks. Sawdust/wood will draw moisture from the humidity in the house or especially outside. I have used sawdust from Yellow pine and Walnut and out of the same coffee can I kept it in I got along fine using it in but I also got an reaction a couple times submerging it to soon. Also paint paddle sized slabs of yellow pine wood I keep in the basement makes a good fluxing but you will feel and hear the rumble if you stick it to fast and deep.
I like to use a rosin flux. It will not cause corrosion like an acid flux will. Back when rosin flux core 50/50 solder was fairly cheap I would cut off about 2" and drop it in the pot and it did a fins job. Now I use pine pitch about a small ball 1/2 the size of a pea and drop it on top and let it melt before stirring it.
it it smells better than most stuff
Anything you dip in the pot and get it buried under the molten lead can cause a violent reaction if it has moisture either from sweat or water as well as a gas build up.
Sweating metal Lead/iron (ingot, stone stuck on spilled lead, spoon, ladle) has emptied my lead pot several times.
Nothing is fail safe. Things I got away with don't mean that it cant happen. When you add something to the pot do it slow.

[opencountry]

I like ‘whatever you do, do it slow’.
I have a couple half-gallon cans, with lids, I store my fine fir sawdust in. BTW, this sawdust is really dry, and I use just a very little bit of this once or twice in my casting sessions. It has proven just as good, IMO, as anything out on the market. I’m sure to add this - as was on the market 3-4 years ago.
Can anyone give me an optimum temperature to keep my 16-1 alloy to while casting? I’ve been keeping it right at 800-820 degrees, and 30-1 at 790 degrees.

R

[Michael Johnson]

I raise honeybees and have lots of beeswax. I use a pea size bit of beeswax, place it in the ladle, draw it down into the melt, stir and scape the inside and bottom of the pot and then skim off the impurities. This has worked for me. Fifteen years ago I obtained lead sheeting when they rebuilt the roof of Stadium High School in Tacoma. I melted the lead in a fifty pound pot over a propane burner. I fluxed as I went and ended up with 700 pounds of ingots of pure lead according to my Saeco lead tester. My only cost was the diesel for my truck and propane for the burner. They were glad for me to haul it away. Lots of guys around here get lead from PSNS (Puget Sound Naval Shipyard). They work there. I don't have those kind of connections. Bottom line, beeswax works great and is not corrosive unlike some of the other fluxes out there.

[mdeland]

I like and use my wood saw dust from stock making operations, usually walnut. I've tried a few commercial fluxes but none of them worked any better than saw dust. Actually, I'm told, anything that infuses carbon will suffice as as a flux which makes sense as most anything that will burn easily seems to work.
I don't like to cast at much higher temperature than it takes to get full, consistent fill out with the mold heat at the point of a bit of frost on the nose which wipes off with a finger rub. The higher temperature one casts beyond full fill out increases the need to flux more often , burns tin out of the melt and waists fuel.

[Kurt]

My alloy is a mix of 18# lead and one roll of 95/5 no lead solder that is 95% tin 5% antimony and I cast at 720º and no hotter than 750º. When I see frost showing up under the cut sprue when the mould is up to temperature that is where I cast.
The more tin the lower the temp.
Below is my first attempt modifying a PP bullet to a duel diameter and it was cast with the temperature above and they fill out very well with less than 1 gr variances the way I cast.

IMG_3735.jpeg

IMG_3740.jpeg

[opencountry]

I'll lower my temp to 775 degrees, and look for improvements. Then I'll try 750. No sense in wasting power, and the possibility of the tin in the alloy as well at my current high temps.

R

[opencountry]

BTW, those look real good, Kurt.

R

[opencountry]

I found that 750 degrees was just right, complete fill-out using 16-1 alloy. 740 degrees left the edges of the bullet’s base slightly ‘soft’. Casting with the temp up around 760 I couldn’t get the lead to ‘puddle’ on the sprue plate like I like.
Soon I’ll try 30-1 alloy to break-in a new hunting bullet mold.
Thanks again for everyone’s help,
R

[MSalyards]

I been running 30-1 at 800 degrees per other guys suggestion. Works good for me! Steve Brooks said to do that with his mould too!

[bpcr shooter]

750deg and 16+1 with a DDPP bullet.....works great

[opencountry]

I been running 30-1 at 800 degrees per other guys suggestion. Works good for me! Steve Brooks said to do that with his mould too!

Thanks, I’ll give the 800 degrees at try casting 30-1.
Robert

[scriv]

Lot's of good information for a new caster. Thanks everyone, I enjoyed it.

[Tasmanian Rebel]

The best thing to use for me has been to go to local grocery store and look in the canning section and get Gulf Wax paraffin wax.
Keith Lay

[Woody]

I just don't flux. Stir and skim. Discard the scum. The amount of waste is so small, it ain't worth the worry. All fluxing does is to turn the small amount of lead oxide back into metalic lead. I have had the scum tested and it is the same alloy mix as the main melt. Do your research and you will find the same results.

Woody

[Kurt]

Woody,
Good to see you, Doc and Coltsmoke back.
I do the same as you. I add ingots to the pot and just stir and skim. I throw it in a metal coffee can and when I mix a new batch of ingots I do this outside in a large dutch oven. When I get done with the ingots I dump the coffee cans full of skimmings in the pot and I drop in a large hard pine pitch glob and stir till it's used up and all that is left on top is dust. I usually get around 2-3 10# ingots back from the skimmings and they test right close to the original hardness with the Lee tester.
I just put them on a separate ingot pile and use it again.