What is in my pot?

[boodro98]

Can anyone tell me what this orange looking stuff is on the inside of my melting pot is. My lead won't flux worth a crap now and it will not pour right out of my ladle. If I turn the temp up high there seems to be a reddish tint on top of the lead. Also the lead always seems to be dull never shiny. I separate my lead WW from the steel and zinc before melting. This is the first time I have tried casting out of a melting pot. I used my cast iron Dutch oven before with no problems . Any help is much much appreciated.

 

[boodro98]

Where is my pic. Ill try to get it posted.

 

[Josh45]

Get the pic posted as it will help a lot of people help you out better.
What pot are you using? How high is the temp? What are you using for flux?
Are you sure you removed all zinc and steel? I don't mean to make you second guess but it never hurts to check again.

I have been casting with my Lee 10# Production IV and have never seen this and I also use straight WW and flux with what I have on hand and never done that before?

Can you remove all the lead out of your put and get it cleaned and then try again?
Also Castboolits.Gunloads.com is the place to be for anything related to casting.

 

[rfwobbly]

Until you find out, I wouldn't smoke any more of that pot !

 

[Striker Fired]

Did you get any copper /lead alloy. Some alloys have copper in them and above 2% or so the copper can't stay suspended without other certain elements(I don't remember which offhand),if that alloy was "dilluted with WW lead the copper could be seperating out. Orangish color is a strange one.

Zinc would turn the mix into oatmeal consistancy ,not orange.

 

[boodro98]

ive been thinking about it. my ladle had a little surface rust but cleaned off as best as i could tell. would rust cause this

 

[FROGO207]

I have a rusty cast iron pot that I use to melt my lead and never had that happen. I would say that you got some type of impurity in that batch. I would not heat it too much as the lead could vaporize and then you will have even more problems to deal with.

 

[blarby]

Remove lead.

Brillo pad.

Clean.

Reuse.

Who knows what that is...but brillo gets off anything.

 

[boodro98]

OK ill try a brilo pad. I tried a little wire brush but I guess it didn't help. The pot is the little 4# pot for use with a ladle. If all else fails can I replace the pot itself or am gonna have to start over with a new unit. I know I said unit.

 

[popper]

Flux it with saw dust and/or sulfur( the sulfur will flame up). Copper is absorbed by tin. Can you skim it off/does it drop orange from the ladle? Your melt does look pretty dirty but rust won't cause that. I've seen purple but not orange. You by any chance flux with auto grease or oil? If it is a copper alloy you will have to go to 900 deg to get it to pour right.

 

[boodro98]

I flux using candle wax.

 

[flashhole]

Looks to me like you had an impurity in the lead and the fluxing is doing what it is supposed to do to separate the lead from the crap. Your crap is orange. Does it scrape off like dross is supposed to. Looking at the crap clinging to the pot I'd say you missed something on the screening process sorting through your wheel weights. Any rubber in the mix?

 

[boodro98]

No rubber. I bought a corn cob mould last wkend at a yard sale. There was some grease in it like they had actually used it for cooking. I wonder if that could have something to do with it. After I melt my WW down and flux in my cast iron pot its nice and clean. No crap no weird colors. Other than the lead that was pured into the cob mould the lead is the same lead that I've already used for casting. When I was done I poured it into muffin pans and that cob mould. Then I purchased this melting pot. Then put one muffin ingot in and a cob ingot.

 

[oldcelt]

I would not attempt to explain this orange stuff. With more than sixty-five years of casting bullets I have never seen anything like this.

 

[41 Mag]

The only thing I can come up with would be you might have had some plated bolits somewhere in the mix, but this should have been seen when you made up the ingots for sure.

Might throw a post up over on Castboolits.com, some of them might have seen this before.

Me, I hope I never do that looks pretty weird to say the least.

 

[FROGO207]

I wonder if you had any plated .22 bullets in your mix. I seem to have seen this before after thinking about this a while and it was attributed to the metal used to plate the lead .22 bullets that you can scratch with your fingernail IIRC.

 

[popper]

Try the sawdust - crud sticks to it and makes it easier to remove. I use a small plane to get my wood shavings. Is that CC mold aluminum? Or coated with PAM? Seems like I got a golden shine when I melted CBs with alox on them but the alloy was fine.