I am new to both this forum and to casting. I am scrounging around the house for something to use as an ingot mold. Will a non-stick mini loaf pan work, or will the teflon screw things up? Also, how clean is clean enough? I am fluxing with parrafin and I keep getting dross, but in ever smaller amounts. The lead I am using is sealer rings from the joints of old sewer pipe. I used to use it for casting fishing weights and didn't care about clean, but am now casting .715 roundball and want to produce good quality. Thanks in advance. Tom

I would not use Teflon lined pans with molten lead.
Teflon is, after all, a form of plastic. I've never added molten lead to any Teflon surfvace but I suspect the Teflon would burn and stink. Also, it would probably stick to the lead ingot, requiring re-cleaning later on when you melted the ingot in your pot.
You're better off to buy an aluminum muffin pan. Do NOT buy a steel muffin pan. Casters have reported molten lead soldering itself to steel muffin pans. Apparently, there is a thin tin wash on some steel muffin pans.
I don't know if that's true, but I have read a number of reports stressing aluminum-only pans for this reason.
I bought an old, aluminum muffin pan at the local thrift store for 50 cents. Works great. Bring a small magnet when you shop for one, to ensure it's not coated steel. With old, used stuff it's sometimes hard to tell aluminum from thin steel.

As to fluxing:
You'll always get crud on the surface after adding the flux. After a while, it's just the burned remnants of the flux.
I wonder why you are fluxing if you shoot black powder. At least, if you cast .715 round ballsl I assume you are shooting black powder.
Black powder bullets require a very soft lead. When you melt scrap lead of unknown alloy, the tin, antimony and arsenic typically found in the alloy float on the surface.
This is good because you can remove this layer of non-lead and you'll have very soft lead.
But if you flux, it reintroduces the tin, arsenic and antimony back into the lead and makes it a blend. Now you have an alloy that is harder than what is preferred for black powder shooting.
If you want an alloy harder than pure lead, flux. But for black powder shooting, use as soft a lead as you can get.
Hard lead alloys, when coupled with black powder, typically cause leading. Soft lead alloys or pure lead, when coupled with black powder (and the proper lubricant) cause little or no leading. Dunno why, but it's true.

I would not use Teflon lined pans with molten lead.
Teflon is, after all, a form of plastic. I've never added molten lead to any Teflon surfvace but I suspect the Teflon would burn and stink. Also, it would probably stick to the lead ingot, requiring re-cleaning later on when you melted the ingot in your pot.
You're better off to buy an aluminum muffin pan. Do NOT buy a steel muffin pan. Casters have reported molten lead soldering itself to steel muffin pans. Apparently, there is a thin tin wash on some steel muffin pans.
I don't know if that's true, but I have read a number of reports stressing aluminum-only pans for this reason.
I bought an old, aluminum muffin pan at the local thrift store for 50 cents. Works great. Bring a small magnet when you shop for one, to ensure it's not coated steel. With old, used stuff it's sometimes hard to tell aluminum from thin steel.

As to fluxing:
You'll always get crud on the surface after adding the flux. After a while, it's just the burned remnants of the flux.
I wonder why you are fluxing if you shoot black powder. At least, if you cast .715 round ballsl I assume you are shooting black powder.
Black powder bullets require a very soft lead. When you melt scrap lead of unknown alloy, the tin, antimony and arsenic typically found in the alloy float on the surface.
This is good because you can remove this layer of non-lead and you'll have very soft lead.
But if you flux, it reintroduces the tin, arsenic and antimony back into the lead and makes it a blend. Now you have an alloy that is harder than what is preferred for black powder shooting.
If you want an alloy harder than pure lead, flux. But for black powder shooting, use as soft a lead as you can get.
Hard lead alloys, when coupled with black powder, typically cause leading. Soft lead alloys or pure lead, when coupled with black powder (and the proper lubricant) cause little or no leading. Dunno why, but it's true. I probably don't understand near as much as I have read and heard. I thought the purpose of fluxing was to bring the dross to the surface as well as to mix the alloy. The lead I have may not be pure, but it is very soft. I can easily dent it with my fingernail. Yes, I am casting for a muzzleloader, but with a patched round ball, would leading be a problem, especially with a wad to protect the patch from burnout?

Teflon breaks down at 600F or so, well below the melting point of lead. Releases some nasty stuff like florine, one of the most corrosive substances known.

Not likely you'll want that down the rifle bore.

If the roudballs you cast shoot fine with that alloy, great - but if not, maybe need to find a source of pure lead. The ball may not lead with a patch, but it also might not be soft enough to seal the bore. You'll just have to try a few and see.

Good luck!

Wheelweight metal is very efficient at soldering it's self to tin coated steel muffin pans. Personal experience speaking here. Cast iron or aluminum isn't near as sticky. I've found that a heavy layer of acetylene smoke and "Fluid Film" are the best anti-stickers. "Fluid Film" is a spray on lube and anti-rust product that contains wool-wax (lanolin).

I should mention that the pan was well smoked before I discovered "Fluid Film", and a new pan may need smoking before the "Fluid Film" works, but it didn't need smoking after I started using it.

The Cat is usually right, but the chapter titled "The Metallurgy of Molten Lead Alloys", in the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook, clearly explains that you're dealing with an alloy, not a mixture, and the lead, tin and antimony do not separate. Your alloy may be soft enough as is, but if it isn't find some pure lead. A patched round ball won't lead, but a hard ball is hard to load in a rifle.

Check out this link for an excellent explanation of fluxing.
http://www.sixguns.com/crew/simplefluxing.htm

Bye
Jack

You can cook (oxidize) the tin out, eventually, and it floats to the surface as dross. It's covered in the fluxing article, but I don't know if you'd ever get it all out.

Not sure if antimony could be removed by not fluxing, or any other possible non-desireable components.

See if you can get some lead roof flashing. That stuff is butter-soft.

Maybe I should not have but we cast several hundred pounds of lead into the muffin pans. Seems to be ok. First we used a metal muffin pan and that thing was worthless. It bent up after about 5 or 6 castings and the ingots stuck. We are going to further process these ingots with tin in the small lee ingot molds. This our first time doing this. Hopefully we are creating poison gas from the nonstick??? Well good luck!!

Boy, the wealth of info on this board! I settled on a cast iron corn muffin pan. It looks kind of funny(shaped like ears of corn) but in twenty years we've never used it. I am using a cut-down coffee can for a pot. I hope this isn't a mistake. I guess I should not be so cheap and buy all the proper equipment, but my fuel bill has gone from 30k to 50+k per year and I don't feel very extravagent. The link to the fluxing article was very informative. Thanks guys. Tom

People leave their teflon pans empty on the stove constantly...burning the pan past use (and praobly glowing by the time they realize what they've done)...while bodies aren't piling up on the kitchen floor, but breathing that stuff can't be healthy.

Swap shops/fea markets/garage sales. Look for cast iron corn bread molds...usaully a rectangular cast iron mold, that casts four "corn stalks" (although I have one that cast fish shapes as well). Pretty common in the south, up north may have to look for a garage sale from some transplanted southern family. Cast iron pots or dutch ovens are also pretty common. NEVER USE THEM FOR FOOD after casting lead.

Actually, the long ear of corn shaped ingots add to the pot easier than the round thick muffin shapes.

Check the thrift shops around your area. I've found several good cast iron and stainless pots at those places. You can also get stainless dippers there. I use a couple of RCBS ingot molds. Just fasten a set of vice grips on to dump and handle them. I never thought of the cast cornbread molds. That is a great idea. The longer pieces would be easier to put in the melt pot. Thanks ribbonstone for the idea.

You can't get the antimony out of the lead. when Speer bullets bought out the local newspaper's linotype quite a few years ago (several hundred thousand pounds) they developed the grand slam bullet to use this much harder compund rather than try to seperate it. Sure made a great bullet.

I am using a cut-down coffee can for a pot. TomPurely for safety reasons, get a better pot in which to melt lead. A molten metal accident can be quite serious and will cost more than the price of a pot many times over! Cast iron, or steel pots can be found at very reasonable prices at second hand stores, WalMarts, K-Marts, etc. Please give this some serious consideration before you continue casting.

Purely for safety reasons, get a better pot in which to melt lead. A molten metal accident can be quite serious and will cost more than the price of a pot many times over! Cast iron, or steel pots can be found at very reasonable prices at second hand stores, WalMarts, K-Marts, etc. Please give this some serious consideration before you continue casting.

Agreed; you don't know how the seams of the can are put together and when they'll finally let go.

A buddy uses a cat-food can with a pair of vise-grips as a dipper for casting ingots, but that's a lot less lead per canful, and it's not constantly submerged in molten lead.

I had used coffee cans for sinkers before, but it does seem a little foolhardy. It seems that there is no such thing as clean lead, as I get a bit of dross or lead after about 2 dips. I cleaned my cast iron ladle (flea market special, about 1.2 lbs of lead per dip) but the darned thing gets coated with a gray powder (lead oxide?) as soon as I use it. Am I just anal-retentive and insisting upon a level of cleanliness that is not obtainable, or am I doing something wrong? All this info on the net is neat, but without someone who is experinced standing by my side saying yea or nea, I find myself doubting everything I do. :confused: