Remelting bulltets with Alox?

N

NINEX19

New member
Some time ago when I first got into casting, I made up a bunch (100s) of 148g W/C and coated them with liquid Alox. I fired @ 100 of them and quickly decided Alox was not for me (way too smokey) and looked into alternatives. I eventually decided on sticking with powder coating and am very satisfied with it.

Anyway, I still have many pounds worth of 148g w/c sitting on a shelf and would like to powder coat them. However, the powder coat will not apply correctly with them being coated in Alox if I were to try that in their current state. I would like to just be able to remove the Alox, but am unsure of how to do this.

Would it be possible just to re-melt them with the Alox without ruining my pour pot and just skim off the Alox? I seem to remember reading long ago to be careful about getting any type of oil in the pot.
 
If you decide to remelt them, the alox will not harm anything and can act as a flux. A couple ways I've removed lube from my cast bullets; I put paper towels on a tray/pan, set the bullets on the pan and warm the bullets in my toaster oven. The lube melts and runs down and is absorbed with the paper towels. Then a light rinse with mineral spirits will get the film off. This has worked well with wax based lubes. For alox coating I have uses an aggressive solvent, lacquer thinner, acetone or brake clean to remove alox. It may take a bit of soaking to soften/dissolve the alox but it does work. Normally, because I like casting, I just toss the "bad" bullets into the pot and re-cast a bunch...
 
Have a little bit of lead already in the bottom of the pot then have at it, the alox will burn off but it is kinda tough stuff, will leave a black film on your molten lead, flux it with saw dust, let it char and skim it off, good to go.

If you are worried about your pot use an old pan for making ingots, then chuck the ingots into the pot, adds a step but you clean the lead before it goes in the pot. Ive done hundreds of pounds this way.
 
If the smoke from shooting the bullets one by one bothered you, I'd say melting them with the alox by the 100's is probably not a good idea...:eek:
I don't know the melting temp of alox, but you could try boiling the bullets in water for a few minutes, see if that works.
 
I removed NRA Formula 50/50 Alox from a lot of bullets by first soaking in mineral spirits that then soaking in Acetone. Tried boiling them in water but that still left a residue.

I had no trouble with the Powder Coating sticking when I used Mineral Spirits followed by the Acetone.
 
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I've reused lubed bullets in the melt without issue. I just made sure all the lead was in together before the pot started heating up, not dropping lubed bullets into molten lead.
 
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