Shiloh Rifle Forums

Please note that occasional fluxing will clean up your casting ladle while you are stirring in the flux.
I use old candles/paraffin for fluxing, also a 1x1 pine stick works
beltfed/arnie

I'm told anything that will produce carbon will flux a melt. I use walnut saw dust from stock work that both works and smells good. I also like the idea of using left over and FREE flux.

Okay...I gotta ask, How exactly does that "flux" work? I am a child of science and at 13 was convinced a perpetual motion machine could be built, so details about how burning wax on the surface of a pot of molten metal will "purify" ( for lack of a better term) it. I'm not saying it doesn't work, just an inquiring mind .

Please note that occasional fluxing will clean up your casting ladle while you are stirring in the flux.

Fluxing does nothing to remove any impurities. It just changes the small amount of metal oxide to metal by absorbing the oxygen.

That is exactly what you have done. Changed the oxidized lead on your ladle back to metallic lead, and it slide off into the pot. The amount is so small as to make zero percent change in anything.

Glenn,

The carbon bonds stronger and easier to oxygen than the oxygen does to the lead. Heat weakens the bond, thus allowing the oxygen to move to the carbon.

Woody

Thanks Woody. That makes sense.

I have a lot of questions and usually don't ask them because there are so many opinions that lack evidence and are based on , it seems, , conjecture.

Another is bullet slump at time of ignition and how "slump' is actually proven by examination of recovered bullets.....that have impacted some medium.

I understand that if a bullet isn't performing that lack of performance can be caused by several factors and initiate a multitude of best guesses.... ...barrel twist, velocity degradation, improperly sized bullets, but the barrel slump issue guess has me wondering.

That was a good questioned answered for me as well Glen. I knew carbon was the key but not how it functioned chemically. Good answer Woody, thanks.
I still have my doubts about inertia bending a bullet nose off to the side (bullet slump) instead of impact causing it. Inertia shortening is a given in my view though.

Mdeland
I agree. I guess my junior high teachers taught me right...question everything and ask for proof.

GUYS:

Look at bullet slump this way...... A bullet is sitting on top of batch of hot gas at a pressure of, say, 20,000 psi. The only resistance to this pressure is the mass (weight) of the bullet. So there is 20,000 PSI of force on the BASE of the bullet, but when you get up to the TIP of the bullet, the force has diminished to zero. So for a certain distance from the base of the bullet, depending on the hardness (or compressive strength, which is related), the bullet will deform, expanding to exert force on the bore of the barrel. Above this distance, the bullet is not stressed beyond its compressive strength, so will not expand, but retain its original form.

The math on this is F = M x A. Force equals Mass times Acceleration. The whole bullet is accelerating at about the same rate. The force on the base is that required to accelerate the WHOLE bullet, whilst the force very near the tip is just accelerating a tiny mass, hence is small.

CHRIS

Dean, I'm sure both of us in our Plumbing career mine was for 41 years that we both wore a silver overcoat putting a cold dry ingot in the 30 or 50 pound pot of molten lead pouring lead joints or wiping lead joints. I know I have.
When you hear that rumble start you learn to quickly turn your back.

Kurt. Yup.
Respect not fear. Huh?

Chris
Isn't the friction of the bullet in the case and then later in the barrel, something to consider also?
What would be really cool is to visually see the nose slump..if that actually happens. I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm just saying I'd like proof and not just hypothetical s and theory s.

Maybe shoot a few rounds and with the newest Doppler radar, determine the down range velocity and flight characteristics of certain bullets would enlighten us.

Another question I've had is what is the temp of burning gunpowder and the effect that heat has on the soft bullet?

Is there a common understanding that dross contains no lead and if it does, they are not fluxing properly. A good dross is nothing more a powdery ash. If it isn’t the wrong flux is being used

I've tried a lot of different materials to flux with over many years, even commercial grade and none of them have made the dross remix with the melt. I define dross as the oxides on top of the melt mot the debris that is mixed in with it. Most of my alloy has had some antimony in it and that may be the primary reason as antimony does not really alloy with lead as does tin. I think the correct term is mix as it forms crystalline "trees" that act more like an amalgamate of pebbles and concrete to form cement, than an alloy.
I have used 30-1 lead tin and that dross would not remix either as I remember it. It looks to me like the oxides remain oxide no matter what you do to them.

If you flux and rub Gainst the side to work it against something your dross will reincorporate and leave only a small pile of gray dust. Flux dont do it on its own.
A good carbon flux will pick up contaminants and adhere to them and float them.

I read that years ago Dean and have tried rubbing it against the pot wall with every flux I've used and if any of the oxide has been reconstituted into the melt it has escaped me.
Actually one of the things I have done that seems to work is to leave the dross and ash on the melt and just keep cleaning the dipper and spout periodically. The ash lets less air to the surface of the melt and helps keep the oxide accumulation down.
I did worry about getting dross voids in the castings from bringing the dipper up through it on the melt surface each time but that did not seem to occur.