First Ingot Casting Experience

harbl_the_cat

harbl_the_cat

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Today I tried casting my first lead ingots.

I was using an propane fryer, with a stainless steel pot I bought from Value Villiage. I'll swap it out for something larger and cast iron - bit it worked safely this time.

I was melting range lead I picked up in the berm and from some steel traps we have at my clubs ranges. I rinsed it to remove as much of the mud/dirt as I could and let it dry over a period of about a week (no tinsel fairies when I melted it).

I used pine needles as flux that were dried that I left under an incandescent light bulb over night (just to make sure they were dry).

I had a question though - once the lead had all melted and I had skimmed away the copper and other stuff, after I added the flux (which I thought I stirred pretty well into the melt), as I was scooping the melt into my muffin pans - I noticed a thin layer of skin forming on the top of the pot. I did turn the heat down slightly, but I cranked it up and still kept getting it. There was some residue on the top as well, it looked like dust. I tried my best NOT to scoop it into my ingots - I used my seive and perforated ladel to try to skim it off - but I couldn't get it all off.

I'll post more details and pics later, but should I be worried about that layer of skin and the stuff that was on top of it?
 
Lead skin is normal after skimming off impurities. The dust that is floating on top is more than likely dirt or sand. Quite common since you are using lead from dirt backstops. All you can do is skim more or try moving it to one side of your melting pot. I did this for some time until I bought a Lee Production Pot IV. Super easy now to cast round ball in a Lee mold. Best $65.00 I spent..... no propane or hassles setting up, less chance of spilling etc.
 
M77 said:
Lead skin is normal after skimming off impurities. The dust that is floating on top is more than likely dirt or sand. Quite common since you are using lead from dirt backstops. All you can do is skim more or try moving it to one side of your melting pot. I did this for some time until I bought a Lee Production Pot IV. Super easy now to cast round ball in a Lee mold. Best $65.00 I spent..... no propane or hassles setting up, less chance of spilling etc.
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Will the dirt/sand hurt my loads are can I skim if off when I melt the ingots inside my lee pot?
 
harbl_the_cat said:
Will the dirt/sand hurt my loads are can I skim if off when I melt the ingots inside my lee pot?
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unless somehow a big chunk of dirt/rock gets into your mold and happens to set where the bullet touches the barrel, and you miss seeing it, then it might hurt the barrel, but i wouldn't worry about it.

once you put the lead into your lead pot, which i assume is a bottom pour?, then you reflux it and all the crap should float to the top.
 
I ordered a Lee pot from the US. It hasn't come in yet, but I'm sitting on 2 - 5 gallons pails of wheel weights and range lead (and it keeps coming in).

Also - I used muffin pans to pour my lead, but the ingots got stuck and I had to demolish the pans to get them out. I have more muffin pans and an old rusted out cast iron skillet used to make small, Vietnamese Rice Cakes that my wife doesn't want anymore.

It sounds like it's the safest bet for making the ingots without having pan stickage - but the holes are TINY - slightly smaller than a small cupcake.

It looks like this:

P1090469.JPG


It sounds like it's the safest bet for making the ingots without having pan stickage - but the crepes are TINY - slightly smaller than a small cupcake.
 
I would try to skim off all the dirt and garbage now to keep it out of you casting pot so it stays relatively clean. If it is a bottom pour pot it will help prevent the bottom hole from clogging and sticking open. If you scrape the sides and bottom of the pot while stirring and fluxing this stuff will rise to the top. Also when the melt is hot with alloys containing tin the tin can seperate and rise to the top as well. You want to leave it in of course but get the dirt and stuff out before this happens.

You don't need to let the lead dry out that you start the melt with. It will not explode or splash if wet since that water will boil off long before the lead melts. Once you have a pot of MOLTEN lead you do not want to add anything wet to that though as it can cause a steam explosion if it gets under the surface. A drop of water on top of the lead will boil off, a drop trapped in a chunk of lead that sinks below the surface of the molten lead and then boils instantely will splash.
 
I collect the range lead from our range. It normally takes 3 or 4 meltings to get most of the crap out. You will also find dirt trapped at the bottom of your melting pot.

The stainless melting pot will last a long time. I have been using a stock pot from a cooking set my mother had when I was a kid. Just assume decades and forget the jokes.

I melt my lead at the range and remove all of the stuff that floats to the surface. I put that into cast iron frying pans I bought for the task. They produce plates that are about 25 lbs each. Those get melted again, at home, and put into cupcake pans. Those get melted and put into 1 lb lee ingot molds. At each step I am removing crap. When going to the 1 lb molds I have the melting pot set to just enough to melt the lead. That is when I get rid of most of the extra stuff that melted when using my propane deep fryer setup.
 
tbrwlf said:
I collect the range lead from our range. It normally takes 3 or 4 meltings to get most of the crap out. You will also find dirt trapped at the bottom of your melting pot.

The stainless melting pot will last a long time. I have been using a stock pot from a cooking set my mother had when I was a kid. Just assume decades and forget the jokes.

I melt my lead at the range and remove all of the stuff that floats to the surface. I put that into cast iron frying pans I bought for the task. They produce plates that are about 25 lbs each. Those get melted again, at home, and put into cupcake pans. Those get melted and put into 1 lb lee ingot molds. At each step I am removing crap. When going to the 1 lb molds I have the melting pot set to just enough to melt the lead. That is when I get rid of most of the extra stuff that melted when using my propane deep fryer setup.
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I collect my range lead in a 5 gallon pail and when I get home, fill the pail with water and try to strain out the dirt/sand/grass/etc.

I let it dry for a few days/weeks this first time, while I was getting all the melting equipment.

I just found 30 lbs from a bullet trap we set up at our one range and there's a lot of grass, wood and rabbit poo mixed in with it. Not so sure what I'll do with that stuff - but I think it would be fun to try to melt it with all the fiberous stuff inside - that should act as flux when melted, should it not?
 
The skin that forms on the surface is lead oxide. Any molten metal will oxide significantly faster than it's solid counterpart. Molten copper for example oxidizes ridiculously fast while molten. The skin isn't the other metals coming to the surface (usually) as you will get the skin even when melting pure lead.
 
So I just melted down the range lead with the rabbit crap and grass... It sure put up a lot of smoke... Note to self, don't that in the garage. Even with both doors open and the fryer pretty much at the door it stunk the place up pretty bad... And I had 3 muffin pans with lead that wouldn't come out... The cast iron Vietnamese dish worked like a boss, but only does 7x 3/4 lbs ingots.
 
Try it when you are taking from the indoor range and there is rubber in it. Stinks like you would not believe. That is why I do my first melt at the range. Outdoors and nobody to complain about the smell upsetting their barbeque.

I think the crap does act like a type of flux but it still takes multiple passes to clean up the lead.

NShunter. I am trying to remove the lead alternative that some shooters are using and anything else that would contaminate the lead if I super heat it. The closer I can get to pure lead the happier I am.
 
Just a question - I more or less followed BSD's technique in the sticky, EXCEPT, I was a bit loosey goosey with separating the zinc/steel WW's.

I basically melted a small batch of verified lead WW's and once molten, I threw in a large number of unsorted clip on WW's. Pretty much within 2 minutes of that going molten, I skimmed off the turds. I repeated this process about 4 times.

After scraping and fluxing, I did a check with my thermometer of the melt (probably 5-10 minutes after skimming off the turds). The temperature was easily 750 F. This concerned me a bit, because I'm worried that I could have zinc contaminated the melt by keeping the heat too high. I'm using a large stainless steel turkey pot, and in the centre where the flame meets the pot, I think is a hot spot.

After I had poured out the melt, I went through the clips and turds and was able to find several (about a dozen or so) fully intact zinc WW's.

I reasoned that because I had tossed in a bunch of unsorted WW's into the melt, it basically was like throwing a huge amount of ice cubes into a glass of water, so the melt temperature overall should have been well under 725F before I skimmed off the turds.

What do you think? Is there any way to check, short of casting with the ingots, if the lead is contaminated?
 
Galvanized? or plated steel muffin tins are bad news unless you let them rust first. Aluminum muffin tins are great, but handle and knock ingots out gently(or risk bending, deformation of muffin cavities). Some oxides respond better to different fluxes, try paraffin wax, beeswax, a dry, smoldering chunk of pine. Be safe
 
i think you will only notice with slim (rifle) bullets or pistol bullets in the mold if they aren't flowing good. i'm sure it would mold fine in ingot forum since it's so large and a basic shape.

also keep in mind when you get your molds hot (i use a torch, and dip them into the molten lead in my production pot) it will take 5-10 castings to get the mold to temp and make proper bullets.
 
Muriatic acid is used to tell if you have zinc contamination. I did exactly what you did and threw everything into the melting pot to make ingots out of. When my ingots cooled I dribbled a bit of the acid on the lead to see if there was any bubbling (and indicator of zinc) and nothing happended. So I cast up a bunch of 30 and 348 cal bullets and fired as cast.
For plinking, water dropping is fast and quick, but the bullets are way to brittle (2100 fps), and they shattered when fired into wet newspaper. Air cooled they mushroomed beautifully (brinell 14), and no leading of the barrel.
And, yeah, I go through several melts before I end up casting bullets, starting at large 10-20 lb ingots and remelting to smaller ingots in the 1-2 lb range, then using my bottom pour lee melter. You gotta keep that bottom pour melter clean, or it will drip all your lead, and splatter it all over the casting bench.
It's a big up-front investment, but done over several years isn't too bad. I have fun and can load a box of 50 for $5 or less. Sure beats $20-30 for a box of factory.
 
Lionel said:
Muriatic acid is used to tell if you have zinc contamination. I did exactly what you did and threw everything into the melting pot to make ingots out of. When my ingots cooled I dribbled a bit of the acid on the lead to see if there was any bubbling (and indicator of zinc) and nothing happended. So I cast up a bunch of 30 and 348 cal bullets and fired as cast.
For plinking, water dropping is fast and quick, but the bullets are way to brittle (2100 fps), and they shattered when fired into wet newspaper. Air cooled they mushroomed beautifully (brinell 14), and no leading of the barrel.
And, yeah, I go through several melts before I end up casting bullets, starting at large 10-20 lb ingots and remelting to smaller ingots in the 1-2 lb range, then using my bottom pour lee melter. You gotta keep that bottom pour melter clean, or it will drip all your lead, and splatter it all over the casting bench.
It's a big up-front investment, but done over several years isn't too bad. I have fun and can load a box of 50 for $5 or less. Sure beats $20-30 for a box of factory.
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Honestly, with the exception of my fish fryer, propane, pots, and ingot molds - I bought all my custom reloading stuff online from a company in the US in 2 big orders. It ended up being about $150 cheaper than what I would have paid buying it at WSS, including shipping.
 
I use dollar store candle as a flux but they do smoke and burn off at times. Canadian Tire occasionally has a sale on cast iron Dutch Ovens from the camping section and I have 2 that I use for melting WW's. I never found a dutch oven in any of the thrift stores I looked in but did get some muffin and mini loaf pans that I use for casting ingots.

I have found that adding some 95/5 Oatey lead free solder from Home Depot to the pot before pouring into the mould helps.
 
My ingot molds are channel iron for the big ones (just fit into an ammo can lengthwise) and angle iron gang mold for the smaller ones (fit crosswise into the ammo cans). I welded them myself exactly for this purpose.
A lot of my gear is repurposed from its original use, and I did luck out onto a cast iron dutch oven for my first melts of scrap.
I've been lucky to get a lot of tin, from solder, and from old plumbing joints. I've kept that separate from the rest of the lead.
I don't know what kind of melting pot you have, but the Lee I have is out to lunch on the temps, so I use a thermometer, and if I use the right setting I get perfect fillout and sharp corners. According to the Lee guage, I would be 100- 200 degrees hotter, and the results are not as nice, with a lot more rejects.
Practice. Practice. Practice. You can always remelt your mistakes.
Don't forget to keep notes. It can save you when you need to make up that nice blend that worked so well in your hunting gun last year, but can't remember the recipe...
 
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