I've made and shot wheel weights balls out of my smoothbore for years but always bought pure lead balls for my rifle. I found a mold for my 54 and cast some of my .50's into them. What is what i have always called "slag" that comes out of the lead? The dry sandy looking stuff. I always thought it was impurities in wheel weights but got the same thing melting pure lead.
Lead byproducts
- Thread starter wayne1967
- Start date
Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:
Your weights and lead come from different places and are different materials.
Don't fret what the slag is except something to be discarded.
BTW, there are many different kinds of wheel weights out there these days. You can never really know what you have anymore.
Don't fret what the slag is except something to be discarded.
BTW, there are many different kinds of wheel weights out there these days. You can never really know what you have anymore.
Rust.
Rust is the oxidized metal. lead being soft as it is oxidizes in the atmosphere like everything else.
Plus the action of melting lead creates some level of oxidation itself and it's pulling some of the oxidation from what ever pot your using too.
Billnpatti
Cannon
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2008
- Messages
- 7,340
- Reaction score
- 44
That slag is a mixture of lead oxide and impurities in your lead. Use caution when using wheel weights because more and more of them contain some kind of alloy other than lead. You don't want to get any of that stuff in the lead you are using to make balls. Another thing to consider is that as your alloy changes, the density can change resultikng in a ball of a different weight than one made from pure lead. Of more importance is the difference in thermal expansion coefficient betweern different alloys. What this means is that different alloys will turn out different size balls from the same mould. These differences are only a few thousandths of an inch but make a difference in how the ball fits in the bore. If you cast some balls from pure lead and then use wheel weight metal to make more balls from that same mould you will find that they are not exactly the same size nor are they the same weight.
If I am not sure that the lead that I am melting is pure I bring it up to temp and skim it several times fluxing between waiting periods. Tin Antimony and other impurities such as sand dirt and oxidation will rise to the top. I have used bullet lube plumbers flux and candles to flux with. I stir well while fluxing and wait a while to skim. It's a smokey mess so do it outside.
Geo. T.
Geo. T.
