smelt?
- Thread starter salvadore
- Start date
IllinoisCoyoteHunter
New member
We say smelt when refering to melting down lead, fluxing, and pouring it into usable ingots. Smelting is the process of producing a metal from its ore. Are we misusing the word...yes. None of us are actually "smelting" lead. Hope that answers your question.
The Tourist
Moderator
I had over 1,200 pounds of wheel weights. I had the opportunity to smelt them down with the help of a friend and one of those huge plumbers pots. It did take a few days and lots of cold drinks.
(Yikes, was that pot loud! Sounded like a small jet engine!)
I believe in the old canard that the more work you do on the "front end" the less you do one the "back end." And in my case it was true.
I always add a touch of tin or solder to my stuff to make the pour easy, and because I got a lot of that stuff free or at lower cost. But boy, was casting easy and clean up a breeze! No greasy wheel weight clips, no slag, no really bad smells.
I am not a metallurgist so I cannot tell you if this "double boil" did anything to my actual bullets--I drop them into a bucket of ice between my knees just to be sure.
I did it for ease.
(Yikes, was that pot loud! Sounded like a small jet engine!)
I believe in the old canard that the more work you do on the "front end" the less you do one the "back end." And in my case it was true.
I always add a touch of tin or solder to my stuff to make the pour easy, and because I got a lot of that stuff free or at lower cost. But boy, was casting easy and clean up a breeze! No greasy wheel weight clips, no slag, no really bad smells.
I am not a metallurgist so I cannot tell you if this "double boil" did anything to my actual bullets--I drop them into a bucket of ice between my knees just to be sure.
I did it for ease.
Mostly it's a misuse of the word. But when I melt range scrap and other dirty lead, I do save all the heavy black sand and smelt it to convert back into usable lead. It's probably not cost effective, but I feel better about not sending the pounds of lead oxide to the landfill. I use sawdust and old motor oil for the reducing agent; heat it up almost red hot in a stainless steel saucepan with a tight lid and hold it at that temperature for a while.
I agree that smelt is NOT the proper word for re-claiming lead from various sources. It's just become the useful word to describe the process. I actually think it's sometimes used correctly, because introducing any carbon into the melt will reduce some oxides into metallic lead.
A lot of people re-run the dross with a lot of carbon, then cook it at very high temps to reclaim some lead, like zxcvbob does. I may try that sometime, I have a bunch of skimmings from the casting pot I could try it on. Rather than pollute the local landfill.
A lot of people re-run the dross with a lot of carbon, then cook it at very high temps to reclaim some lead, like zxcvbob does. I may try that sometime, I have a bunch of skimmings from the casting pot I could try it on. Rather than pollute the local landfill.
Rangefinder
New member
True enough... To actually "smelt" would be more like burning down the black sands and heavy deposits with charcoal and a blower to extract the iron to turn into steel to work a good blade out of... That's too much like work these days. Fun and rewarding, but...
OK--"smelting" lead WW... I use the term to the point that I'm taking junk metal and melting it down, cleaning it, and reforming it into a base metal that I can later use. Kinda the same thing, only less digging involved and a whole lot more usable material left from the base product when I'm done.
trip_sticker
New member
What are you trying to accomplish buy crushing the wheel weights? Seems to me like an extra step that isn't needed. Maybe I can learn something new here today?
chris in va
New member
Maybe 'Refine' would work better for what we do.