Melted down a bucket of wheel weights after washing and hand picking out the junk. Had plenty of heat . A 2 inch thick slush formed on 25 lb pot. Could not get it to melt into the pot. What might be in wheel weights that would cause this condition? Ended up throwing out the whole pot.
Slush
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- Last Post 07 April 2012
zinc seems to be the common answer, Without close inspection of each piece, this is going to be very difficult. So much for a cheap source of alloy!
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A high heat melt will melt Zinc. Next time use less heat and do smaller batches then the Zinc weights that float up and don't melt can be safely tossed.
I use a pot setting that I know just melts pure lead and no higher. That temp will not melt zinc.
Gary
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Roger,
I've have have some incidents of this also. After a couple of conversations with Tom Ferguson, I think there are three/four possibilities.
Not enough heat, 675 degrees is the minimum for antimony to dissolve with less than 2% tin in the batch. I have had to get the thermometer to read 725 to get a full melt.
accidentally getting aluminum/die cast metal from car parts in the mix
Oxidized WW's or WW's with the road salt still on them. Fully oxidized metal will not go back into solution with home casting gear, even with lots of beeswax flux.
Zinc/cadmium metal contamination. When I have had this problem, it would melt into the mix before the antimony would liquefy out of the slushy phase. I have never seen or read in an engineering book of either of these metal forming slush, but that doesn't mean it cann't happen!
HTH, Ric
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I save the slush in a can over several casting sessions. Then I throw it in the pot, turn the heat all the way up, flux and stir a lot. The result is black dense powder. Which I throw out. Until last week. The slush didn't change to powder, no matter how much heat, flux and stirring. I threw it out. This is a first for me, I've been getting the powder for 30 years or more. Always figured the powder was oxides. Something changed in the WW, I don't think I got any zinc in there, but ?? joe b.
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I save the slush in a can over several casting sessions. Then I throw it in the pot, turn the heat all the way up, flux and stir a lot. The result is black dense powder. Which I throw out. Until last week. The slush didn't change to powder, no matter how much heat, flux and stirring. I threw it out. This is a first for me, I've been getting the powder for 30 years or more. Always figured the powder was oxides. Something changed in the WW, I don't think I got any zinc in there, but ?? joe b.
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I got something similar to what you describe after adding a slug of Babbit metal to the pot. No amount of heat (that the pot would generate) not stirring nor fluxing would get it to incorporate or melt. I threw it out and had to clean the pot extremely well to be able to use it again. That was the last time I used Babbit metal of any kind. I believe the slush was the result of Zinc and or Copper or Chromium contamination. Brodie
B.E.Brickey
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I just happened to read an article about the slush in TFS #198 this am. Sounds like the slush is a tin/antimony mix, according to Bill Ferguson the Antimony Man. I have smelted bulk wheel weights in a screamin' hot plumber's pot for speedy ingot production and don't believe I've melted a zinc ww yet, they float and are very obvious. The old TFSs on CD have articles on babbit metal that could be useful.
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That article is titled “Slushy Pot” by Frank Washam. The quote is:
"that sounds like yu were getting quite a bit of the two phase liquid/solid tin/antimony intermetallic compound which is a slush and just floats on top as it is much lighter than alloy.
"Increasing temperature simply increases the amount until as you say it 'rainbows' from melt oxides forming. As you had a full pot, nothing could be done however if you could have ladled most of it out and later on added just ww or better yet lead, like pure lead, you might have been able to recover"
It is important to note that Bill said “might have been able to recover". So yes, the foam might have disappeared, but you likely would have diluted the antimony sufficiently to be less than desired.
Again, if it was actually zinc contamination, if you dilute it enough, the foam will also disappear, but you still have zinc, and too soft an alloy.
In Frank's case, this foam resulted from reheating. And suggested that it took forever to melt. In the original post of this thread, it was on the first melt. Perhaps there is the key and would be reason to suspect zinc contamination rather than the formation of intermetallic compound? I certainly do not know the answer but can see a difference in the circumstances. Duane
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Occasionally I'll see it too. I just sprinkle a little borax on it and gently jiggle a long (icedtea) spoon in the top 1/2” of it. Back and forth across the top. After a bit it settles down and all I'll have is a little grayish fluff with the metal recombined.
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Make a camp fire outside if you can do that. Put the stuff/powder/fluff into a metal can. Stupit enough the metal can wont melt but the zinc or the antimony do melt in that metal can. (it gets white red hot) See over time or test it for what, what is. 95% what is left is zinc But this is what i have collected Make your fire not that hot enough to melt glas. This tric helps me a lot. And yes after close inspection i found pure antimony in my WW, and they are hard to put in
Pure zinc is a even price with pure lead with a scrap dealer, around here, i just get one pound of lead for one pound of zinc
I hope this helps or you can use a propane tortch as well in combo with a bbq bricks/chorcaol? (can someone help me with naming things right)
Best regards, a tired:P parkerhale with a smoking and a to warm barrel:riflebr:, it was a good weekend:fire.Tommorow comes the cleaning:(;)
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Friend gave me a 5gal. can 3/4 full with steel.????, and lead wheel wts. Sorted for 20 min. A pain, so I fired up the propane plumbers furnace and speeded up the melt with a propane brush burner on a separate 20# propane bottle. After getting some of the known lead to melt I threw in the unsorted stuff heating with brush burner. Skimmed the unmelted one off the top and continued till done. Then I fluxed twice, one with old motor oil and then old candle wax. Then skimmed the junk off the top. Next I added a cup of sulphur stirring it in judiciously (staying down wind of course) Another bunch of black ash-like material came off the top after I stirred and scraped the sides of the pot clean. I used an old propane bottle cut off for my smelting pot. Will let you know how they cast bullets if any zinc got into the pour....... I heard sulphur was supposed to help remove it......Anyone else experience this. afish4570:fire:fire
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What I use to melt my alloys is a Camp Chef cooker that'll put out 60,000 btu-that's 60,000, and a pot that'll hold 125 lbs of alloy. I experienced this Slush last fall for the first time while melting down about 80 lbs of ww, and no matter how hot I ran it up, it would not go into solution. I don't think running up the temp is the answer. And scraping off the stuff just produced more. I kept the melt going for over five hours with no result, and ended up scrapping the whole lot. This batch of wws did not have any glue-on junk in it, and they all appeared to be the standard clip=ons. Now, where does that leave us?
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What I use to melt my alloys is a Camp Chef cooker that'll put out 60,000 btu-that's 60,000, and a pot that'll hold 125 lbs of alloy. I experienced this Slush last fall for the first time while melting down about 80 lbs of ww, and no matter how hot I ran it up, it would not go into solution. I don't think running up the temp is the answer. And scraping off the stuff just produced more. I kept the melt going for over five hours with no result, and ended up scrapping the whole lot. This batch of wws did not have any glue-on junk in it, and they all appeared to be the standard clip=ons. Now, where does that leave us?
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Scrapping the whole lot?!! Go get it out of the garbage before they pick it up Mitch. I've had slushy pots, only a few, but went ahead casting bullets from the bottom pour pot. The stuff underneath the slush made real good bullets. The only thing I've found that helps with the slush is a bunch of plain old candle wax. Keep stirring right through the flames.
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Mitch, I have no idea what the slush is, but if you read my post of 12Mar, you can eliminate adding heat. Ric
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Cheap heat source is a camp fire. Wood must be avail.free or cheap. This will be be my next goal to use the campfire method to melt a large propane “pot' full of range lead...... A leaf blower really can get alot of heat once you learn how to control it. I melted some aluminum in on a piece of scrap that I used to start the fire. Thats hot. Of course the sparks blow around so safety and controlling the fire are a concern. Anyone else using wood fires and if so how???afish4570:fire:fire
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Cheap heat source is a camp fire. Wood must be avail.free or cheap. This will be be my next goal to use the campfire method to melt a large propane “pot' full of range lead...... A leaf blower really can get alot of heat once you learn how to control it. I melted some aluminum in on a piece of scrap that I used to start the fire. Thats hot. Of course the sparks blow around so safety and controlling the fire are a concern. Anyone else using wood fires and if so how???afish4570:fire:fire
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Cheap heat source is a camp fire. Wood must be avail.free or cheap. This will be be my next goal to use the campfire method to melt a large propane “pot' full of range lead...... A leaf blower really can get alot of heat once you learn how to control it. I melted some aluminum in on a piece of scrap that I used to start the fire. Thats hot. Of course the sparks blow around so safety and controlling the fire are a concern. Anyone else using wood fires and if so how???afish4570:fire:fire
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I've a little setup with ?limestone? withs i put in my pallet eating outdoor fireplace,(i'll make some pictures in the weekend) I use some hardwood like ?mahogany? ?palisander? ?bankirai? and etc That wont be hot enough to melt glass, but hot enough to melt pure antimony. For glass and iron(just fun) i use a extra steel pipe (approx 4 inch in diam and approx one yard long) I put the pipe almost into the fire/Cole's so it can suck faster air into it so the wood will burn faster and hotter.
You can also use some soft wood like pine, use small and dry pieces, the trick is that your pot must be surrounded with fire!!!but not completely covered.This is good enough for range lead with its junk with it. So just burn without smoke
1 dry wood 2 enough room for oxygen 3 enough heat in your fire When all the lead is melted you can let the fire go out and put it all with a big old spoon in your favorite 1 or 2 pound mould for further use( in my case EMPTY beer cans=6 pound)
And begin at round number two, and so on and so on.
I hope this could be a help and i hope my english is quite reasonable to understand it enough,if not just let me know and please feel free to fill me in, ill also post some pictures when i work with it
With best regards parkerhale from the eu
ps your metal can, can be red glowing, dont worry its thick enough, just see it like a paper cup filled with water, water will boil off first before the cup will burn:thinking:
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