Hello from Down Under. This may be a lost cause but I'll give it a shot regardless. ( pardon the pun). I've been casting off and on for a few years now and my first attempts were with mixed lots of lead & commercially cast bullets of dubious origin. A few years back, I gave up on commercial bullets for the Shiloh and commenced with pure lead and pure tin and mixed accordingly. Far better and more consistent results.
My question ? With a bucket full of commercial bullets & ingots poured from contaminated pots that contain antimony , arsenic and do doubt some zinc, I wondered if it is actually possible to heat these to a point where they actually separate and I can at least salvage the lead from them or is it a lost cause. Just throwing one or two pistol bullets into a pot containing a known 20/1 ratio of lead/tin seems to corrupt the whole lot and crystal like formations occur through the mix so I dont mix anymore when I dont know what I'm working with. Can it be saved or should I just leave it in the 'dont touch' bucket and let it be ?

Might get a thermometer and run your melt up to 650, anything that's still floating on the top probably isn't pure lead. Scim it off, flux and stir some more..

(09-01-2013, 10:15 PM)Don McDowell Wrote: Might get a thermometer and run your melt up to 650, anything that's still floating on the top probably isn't pure lead. Scim it off, flux and stir some more..

.. Thanks Don. I will give that a go when I get my bottom pour emptied. Just annoyed me having metal around that I didnt know the ancestorage of and run the risk of putting the wrong metal into a good mix. I cant remember if antimony attaches itself more to tin than lead but believe arsenic and zinc play havoc as well. Obviously less expensive to harden the alloy with antimony etc ..than to add tin...and hence the problem. Thanks for the heads up.

If there's zinc in the mix it will float to the top and be a grey looking gunk.
A bit of antimony won't hurt , you can always dilute the mix by adding more pure lead.

I use WW for getting some trigger time but when it comes to shooting a match I use the good stuff.
When I mix up a batch of WW alloy I add lead for what I want for hardness but I flux using Sulphur. It does a fine job helping to separate the Zinc if any is in the mix.

Mixed alloys can be a bit more time consuming to deal with but certainly worth the effort----i have found like Kurt that the sulphur flux followed by a pour to ingots----scrub the empty pot squeeky clean and remelt the ingots then flux with clean saudust.

This cleans up wheel weights really nice ----------get a hardness check on the alloy and simply adjust the hardness with pure lead ------------works well for club match sillywett bullets.

Dave

(09-02-2013, 04:54 PM)Dave Roelle Wrote: clean and remelt the ingots then flux with clean saudust.

Dave

CLEAN DRY SAWDUST!!!

For sure Kurt-------------thanks for the assist

(09-01-2013, 10:00 PM)J.B. Wrote: Hello from Down Under. This may be a lost cause but I'll give it a shot regardless. ( pardon the pun). I've been casting off and on for a few years now and my first attempts were with mixed lots of lead & commercially cast bullets of dubious origin. A few years back, I gave up on commercial bullets for the Shiloh and commenced with pure lead and pure tin and mixed accordingly. Far better and more consistent results.
My question ? With a bucket full of commercial bullets & ingots poured from contaminated pots that contain antimony , arsenic and do doubt some zinc, I wondered if it is actually possible to heat these to a point where they actually separate and I can at least salvage the lead from them or is it a lost cause. Just throwing one or two pistol bullets into a pot containing a known 20/1 ratio of lead/tin seems to corrupt the whole lot and crystal like formations occur through the mix so I dont mix anymore when I dont know what I'm working with. Can it be saved or should I just leave it in the 'dont touch' bucket and let it be ?

you will not get the antimony or zinc out of the lead.