Iridescent lead?

[Tonibaruch]

I bought a rather large stock of roof cover lead.
It is supposed to be pure lead, but tryng to melt some ingonts in my furnace this night I grew highly disappointed from what I saw.

The lead looks iridiscent and continues to form a dark "skin" on top. For how long I skim it, no way to end this iridiscent skin. The ingots I made look iridiscent and full of impurities.

I somewhat hope to have pushed the lead to too high temperature, but I am not very convinced.
Please give me some suggestion before I just trash all this f******g sheet of lead.

 

[bwhoffman]

probably a bit too hot and possibly some other alloy in it.
If you can easily scratch it with your thumb nail, its probably ok!
You can also drop an ingot on a concrete surface and you should hear hear a dull sound rather than a ring or "ting", indicating a harder alloy.

I have always had good success with sheet lead!

 

[reddog]

Best lead you can find, the iridesence is a characterisic of nearly pure molten lead.

 

[tg]

On this side of the pond roof flashings or sheet lead for flashing is about the softest, purest stuff you can get thru normal channels

 

[GreyWhiskers]

I agree with the first 3 posters. Iffin yer still suspicious of that stuff send it my way. :wink: GW

 

[jtmattison]

Sounds like you have some pure or close to it. I think you had it too hot causing that film.

As others said, cast an ingot and see if it thuds when dropped on hard ground like concrete. Give it the scratch test too.

I think you have a goldmine.

HD

 

[mckutzy]

ya the lead is probably a little too hot, but roof lead is realy good stuff. i have a recent melt that yielded about 50#, but i have about another 75-100# that needs melting. it also helps having a roofer friend... not to mention the crew he works with collecting the stuff.

 

[Tonibaruch]

Update:

the balls i cast yesterday night are absolutely perfect and the lead is indeed very soft.

Good to know that the iridescent stuff is mark of pureness. The seller also says it as pure as commercial lead can be. Maybe having 60 kilos of it and seeing something strange and unusual let grew me a bit too nervous...

Now I feel better

 

[texcl]

If you heat pure lead too much it'll get a weird bluish skin on it, but lead alloys don't tend to do this as much in my experience, just mix some flux in (I use bees wax or parafin wax, but be carful it'll spit and crackle and ignite some times)the lead to get most of the impurities out and mix in alloys, skim the slag and you'll be good to go.

 

[Dphar]

Maybe the stuff you have used previous was adulterated.
I would love to have a ton of what you have.

This color change is not anything new and ALL lead alloys form and oxide on the surface.

Dan

 

[paulvallandigham]

I agree with the others. There is nothing wrong with your lead, save, perhaps, you may have the lead heated a bit too high. It won't affect the casting of the balls, or bullets. You can skim the oxide off to remove that iridescence, but there is really no need to do so. My father used to simply stir the lead in the pot with a spoon whenever the iridescence showed on the surface and it disappeared into solution. I followed his practice when he finally let me cast lead.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Rule of thumbnail, if you can scratch it, you can patch it.

From your description of the melt, sounds like you have some near pure lead.