Smelting lead question

T

trip_sticker

New member
I just finished melting down 70 pounds of wheel weights. I scored just over half a 5 gallon bucket from a tire shop that I hadn't tried before. Anyway, when I melted them down cleaned off the dross, and fluxed them, I kept getting a bright gold colored film over the surface. I haven't seen this with other batches before. Any idea what this golden color is?
 
Some metal oxides change color with temperature. I am assuming it goes away when the alloy cools? Chances are if you used a slightly lower melt temperature you wouldn't see it. What it is an oxide of, I can't say? I assume wheel weights have a number of contaminates because there is no motivation for them to spend money on pure alloys for the purpose.
 
No, the yellow color was still there when the ingots cooled. I'm not really worried about it, I was just curious if other peolpe had seen this before.
 
new one on me.... ive never seen that before on mine... tho i have heard that they are adding new alloys to the new weights...
 
I've seen the same gold tint in my Lee pot when I was casting some bullets just the other day. I added about 1/2 of a pound of 60/40 solder to 10 pounds of wheel weights to make some 44-250-KT's. I think it's the tin content making the gold color. I've smelted pure lead and it gets a blue/purple color to it sometimes.
 
Hmm. I'd still look for an oxide layer. Did you score an ingot with a file and see if it is through and through, or just on the surface?

Another possibility is some kind of scum from the stick-on wheel weight glue. Just don't know?
 
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