'Twas a beautiful spring Saturday, and I thought I'd pass a pleasant hour in the backyard casting a few bullets for my antique rifles. Set up my gear, melted the lead (recycled lead from my club's indoor range), and got ready to flux before pouring. My 'flux' is old wax candles, crumbled, and I've got a plastic bag of the stuff that has worked fine.
But this day there was another bag of white waxy-looking chunks sitting there, that I thought was also candle-wax, so without thinking or checking or smelling it, I stirred in a scoopfull. BA-AD idea!
It was soap, Ivory, 99.99% pure. It melted and became a black sludge that gummed up my ladles and took quite a few minutes to clean up.For a while I thought my old pot was a goner. I scooped out the sludge and wiped it off the ladle with old cloth rags, refluxed - with my candle-wax this time - and my casting proceeded without further incident.
I've seen a number of things recommended as bullet-casting flux: wax, sawdust, even
commercial fluxes; but I can't recall ever seeing soap mentioned as not recommended! In a way, I'm glad I had that little accident then, and not later when I might be pressed for time.
But this day there was another bag of white waxy-looking chunks sitting there, that I thought was also candle-wax, so without thinking or checking or smelling it, I stirred in a scoopfull. BA-AD idea!
It was soap, Ivory, 99.99% pure. It melted and became a black sludge that gummed up my ladles and took quite a few minutes to clean up.For a while I thought my old pot was a goner. I scooped out the sludge and wiped it off the ladle with old cloth rags, refluxed - with my candle-wax this time - and my casting proceeded without further incident.
I've seen a number of things recommended as bullet-casting flux: wax, sawdust, even
commercial fluxes; but I can't recall ever seeing soap mentioned as not recommended! In a way, I'm glad I had that little accident then, and not later when I might be pressed for time.
