Author Topic: Insanity's odyssey in casting. (Read 13699 times))

Insanity · « **on:** July 14, 2019, 04:56:17 PM »

So no surprise I didnt have a good start i expected it. I casted 4 pellets in all of my efforts and only managed to lead up my mold. After all of that I made my muffin tin ingots into 1 pound ingots.

Kinetic45^ · « **Reply #1 on:** July 14, 2019, 06:30:01 PM »

WHAT?

In close to 50 years of casting I've never seen a mold look like that!!

I've seen a brass mold 'tin' and have problems but that is an aluminum mold.

Something is contaminated somewhere....
Is that dross / flux on the mold? Lead is just not going to do that. Could have been something on the surface of the mold, did you solvent clean or hot soapy water boil the blocks first?

I've learned that trying to use reclaimed pellets can be a problem as many are NOT pure lead and can ruin your alloy.
ESPECIALLY if you add lead free pellets to lead alloy, that could be it too.

That entire batch of lead may have to be dumped

Insanity · « **Reply #2 on:** July 14, 2019, 06:37:05 PM »

I cleaned them with soap and hot water. The lead is of question but I think it is pure lead. I did do a heat cycle on it and started with a hot mold. I did flux the lead prior to and it was sticking bad and only got worse so I tried to heat the mold in the lead to try and get it to melt off. That didnt help as you see. So I will clean it and try again.

dmeguy · « **Reply #3 on:** July 14, 2019, 07:13:20 PM »

How did you get so much lead on the flat mating surfaces between the halves?

How did you heat the mold? Is it possible it was too hot?

Did you smoke the mold after you cleaned it?

How were you pouring?

I'm a novice myself but i just can't imagine a scenario that would cause that.

maraudinglizard · « **Reply #4 on:** July 14, 2019, 07:24:00 PM »

Looks like zinc contamination to me. When you poured the molten metal did it look like oat meal consistency to you. Zinc will stick to anything and be flaky. You have some kind of contamination in your metal to do that. Did you melt wheel weights. A lot of them are now zinc instead of lead.

Wayne52 · « **Reply #5 on:** July 14, 2019, 08:00:22 PM »

That lead is no good and by the looks of it the mold isn't anymore either. I see plates from old car batteries lying on the ground in one of those photos. Never use anything like that for casting pellets. Pure lead only. I've never used anything to heat molds except placing the mold on top of the melter to warm it up some. It's obviously been contaminated with some mix of bad stuff.

Insanity · « **Reply #6 on:** July 14, 2019, 08:22:24 PM »

I tried to melt the car battery down and it is not in the lead just trash now. I think the lead I have is junk to begin with. I warmed it up on a hot plate used a temp probe on my multimeter to 400~ the melt started to stick immediately. I smoked the cavities and they are not contaminated, just every other part is...

AGEnthused2 · « **Reply #7 on:** July 14, 2019, 09:22:08 PM »

When I first got into casting I tried melting down a fishing weight, or something resembling one, it wasn’t my first time casting so I could tell something was wrong. It was a very time consuming process to separate all the dross from my good lead. I ended up discarding a few lbs worth of lead as a result.
Good luck getting all the lead off, if I found myself in desperate need of pure lead, or at least usable lead I would probably buy a bag of lead shot.

I once tried reclaiming lead from a car battery, I didn’t recover enough from it to even bother melting it. It was some kind of mesh, not much there.

Kinetic45^ · « **Reply #8 on:** July 14, 2019, 10:16:41 PM »

Quote from: AGEnthused2 on July 14, 2019, 09:22:08 PM

When I first got into casting I tried melting down a fishing weight, or something resembling one, it wasn’t my first time casting so I could tell something was wrong. It was a very time consuming process to separate all the dross from my good lead. I ended up discarding a few lbs worth of lead as a result.
Good luck getting all the lead off, if I found myself in desperate need of pure lead, or at least usable lead I would probably buy a bag of lead shot.

I once tried reclaiming lead from a car battery, I didn’t recover enough from it to even bother melting it. It was some kind of mesh, not much there.

Lead shot tends to be expensive though.
Anything over $100 at Rotometals is free shipping.
https://www.rotometals.com/pure-soft-lead-metal-99-9-5-pound-ingot/
https://www.rotometals.com/1-to-40-bullet-alloy-ingot-5-pounds-97-5-lead-2-5-tin/

For BigBore I use 1:40 alloy but for .25 and down I use one ingot of pure and one of 1:40 blended together (gives about 1.25% tin for better fill out) [ 10lbs of lead casts about 2000 .25 pellets so buying it is not that bad for better than the mostly junk pellets sold today ]

Noticed it's on sale right now

Salvaged lead, wheel weights, etc are just too much of an unknown and always take a lot of extra effort to make 'right'. For me, just not worth it any more.

Insanity · « **Reply #9 on:** July 14, 2019, 10:24:18 PM »

I think I'll order 10 15 pounds of lead from roto metals and clean this mess up. I hope Wayne isn't right and the mold is junk.

Wayne52 · « **Reply #10 on:** July 14, 2019, 10:26:47 PM »

I see that right now Rotometals has the split pig ingot of 99.9% pure lead for $119 shipped.

Wayne52 · « **Reply #11 on:** July 14, 2019, 10:35:33 PM »

Matt I hope the mold is still ok, bamboo picks would probably work if anything would to clean that mold up. Brake cleaner might help in the process but it looks like you've got your work cut out for you trying to clean it up.

triggertreat · « **Reply #12 on:** July 14, 2019, 10:52:24 PM »

Remove the brackets and try hitting the mould in sessions with a portable propane torch while knocking off the excess. It should clean up with some effort. Close the halves together for a while if it gets too hot to maintain the shape, form and alignment while letting cool down some.

KnifeMaker · « **Reply #13 on:** July 15, 2019, 01:48:42 PM »

It would appear you have Zinc contamination. GRRRR!

I Can't for the life of me understand how the blocks got all of that on the surfaces. Unless you heated the molds in the lead, and they opened. Allowing the Zinc to weld.
Never buy lead made from wheel weights. Too high a chance of getting Zink. And even if not, the antimony in it will cause the pellets to age harden. Not good. Not good at all.

Insanity · « **Reply #14 on:** July 15, 2019, 05:42:15 PM »

Quote from: KnifeMaker on July 15, 2019, 01:48:42 PM

It would appear you have Zinc contamination. GRRRR!

I Can't for the life of me understand how the blocks got all of that on the surfaces. Unless you heated the molds in the lead, and they opened. Allowing the Zinc to weld.
Never buy lead made from wheel weights. Too high a chance of getting Zink. And even if not, the antimony in it will cause the pellets to age harden. Not good. Not good at all.

I had sticking issues that then kept the mold halfs open so I noobed it into the lead in Hope's it would melt off. Clearly that did not work out well for me.

avator · « **Reply #15 on:** July 15, 2019, 06:22:42 PM »

Crosman CPUM are on sale at Walmart for $5 and change....

Just kidding, I know I don't have the patience for casting anything except a fishing pole.

Insanity · « **Reply #16 on:** July 15, 2019, 07:18:52 PM »

Back side of the ingots mind you I had to use my dipper 3 4 times to fill each section. The structure on the surface dose not look right to me.

Hobbyman2007 · « **Reply #17 on:** July 15, 2019, 09:30:12 PM »

Holy smokes , there’s gold in there .

Hope you get that mold cleaned out.

Insanity · « **Reply #18 on:** July 16, 2019, 06:17:16 PM »

Good news with light scraping on the flats with a razor blade and picking with a toothpick in the cavitys it is slowly coming clean. Still some more work to do but going slow aught to help and not mar the more important surfaces.

avator · « **Reply #19 on:** July 16, 2019, 06:24:21 PM »

Never did any casting. How expensive are these mold?

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Insanity's odyssey in casting.

Author Topic: Insanity's odyssey in casting. (Read 13699 times))

AGEnthused2