You just never know

[yomomma]

I have had several occasions where I thought I had the same alloy but the resultant ingots looked totally different. I had some hard lead which was used to reinforce certain lead plumbing fixtures. I melted them all down and poured into my mold.

I'll let the pic speak for itself. You sure cant tell what alloy you have from looks alone. Some people might even call one or two of those "zinc" contaminated

 

[yomomma]

p.s. I snuck one pure ingot in there, see if you can tell which one

 

[Aries-]

I have had several occasions where I thought I had the same alloy but the resultant ingots looked totally different. I had some hard lead which was used to reinforce certain lead plumbing fixtures. I melted them all down and poured into my mold.

I'll let the pic speak for itself. You sure cant tell what alloy you have from looks alone. Some people might even call one or two of those "zinc" contaminated

Id say the hard lead would be the bottom left. Bottom right is a mix. The lower that is split looks like very soft. The top could have some zinc in it.

 

[yomomma]

Well the bottom is the pure.

The other three were all poured from the same ladle at the same time...you just never know

Order of pour was left, right, and top

 

[Lionel]

How many ingot molds did you use? One, or three? I have gotten similar results to your pics where the ingots don't look like each other until the mold starts to get warm (or hot)...

On big pours I like to have more than one mold on the go so as to try and keep the mold temperature down, and let the lead solidify faster. First pours are lousy and look like hell, later pours take minutes to cool off enough to dump out of the mold, but at least look consistent.

 

[Aries-]

Well the bottom is the pure.

The other three were all poured from the same ladle at the same time...you just never know

Order of pour was left, right, and top

Look also changes how fast the ingot cools. One that cools slower has more time to shift under thermal movement. I have found if an ingot cools to fast it will crack and have more of a crystalline structure than when cooled slower.

 

[zuke]

When I have unknown lead I pour it into my LEE mold's then add it to my lead melt's till it's all gone. My pot hold's 150 + lbs.