hi, all. I just cast 75lbs of ingots from reclaimed range lead and I plan to start casting bullets here soon. I have but one mold, an H&G 4-cavity mold for 200-grain .45 swc bullets. I plan to get another 6-10 molds by year's end to feed some other guns. Anyhoo ... I was wondering ...

1. What is a good fluxing agent? I fluxed some with olive oil and some with butter just because I had them on hand but I don't know if that was such a hot idea.

2. what should I lubricate my molds with, including my ingot mold (an old muffin pan)? thanks.
Thanks everyone.
-- lawboy

I never thought of using butter or olive oil......

Scrap lead recovered from dirt berms is really grungy, and needs lot of fluxing. Probably the easiest and cheapest flux is parafin wax or even candles. A lot of women have the stubs of candles laying around, if you are married, check with the boss about that. At times I've pre-cleaned really dirty lead by washing it, but be very careful about introducing any moisture into molten lead, it is explosive!

As to lubricating moulds, don't lube them if they are iron (like your H&G mould). Aluminum moulds, such as the Lee moulds recommend lubrication, but even that has to be done carefully and sparingly. Any oil or hydrocarbon in a mould cavity causes all kinds of problems. If you are talking about rust prevention, then make sure you remove any trace of the lube/rust preventative before using the mould. WD-40 works as well as anything to prevent rust for the short term. I use Q-tips and one of the spray degreasers for guns to degrease my iron moulds, but denatured alcohol works as well.

Paraffin works well for the initial clean-up. Once you've got the junk out, try some bacon grease plus paraffin. That reduces the oxides back to clean metal as well as anything I've tried. Paraffin by it's self doesn't quite do the job, unless I use a lot of it. Bacon grease by it's self is slow. Let it burn off, scrape off the thin black film and go back to casting.

Here's an excellent article on the how and why of fluxing.
http://www.sixguns.com/crew/simplefluxing.htm

For mould storage, a quick spray of Outer's Tri-Lube rust proofs them, and a blast of brake cleaner takes it off. If you're getting wrinkled bullets, your mould's too cold, or it still has oil on it, or both. Casting hotter usually fixes both problems.

Lead is very efficient at soldering it's self to tinned muffin pans. Smoking them with acetylene stops the sticking, if you've got a torch handy. Lately I've found that Fluid Film, an anti-rust spray does an excellent job of stopping the sticking. The muffin pans were well smoked before I tried Fluid Film, so I don't know if it will work without the smoke. Re-apply between pours.

Bye
Jack

Thanks, all.
I washed the bullets reclaimed from the sand berm very well and got probably 90 percent of the sand out. I put the wet lead into a COLD pot, then turned on the burner, so there was no problem with steam explosions.

I will get some parafin and some lard for fluxing.

I have dropped 29 ingots from the muffin pan without problem, but I did stick one ingot and had to heat up the pan to get it out. It seems without some flux, you have a critical window of time to dump them out before they get stuck. I will try some spray on pam as a mold release for the ingot mold and see what happens.

I didn't have good luck with Pam on a tinned muffin pan.

Bye
Jack

noted. looks like I'll be looking for a cast iron pan of some sort for an ingot mold ... oh joy.

That's easier than beating soldered-in ingots out of a tinned pan. :D

Look for Fluid Film in an auto or ag supply store. The label says it contains wool wax, which is another way of saying lanolin. Re-apply after each pour.

Bye
Jack

For big melts like you describe, sawdust. This is the same material that foundries use to flux. It must be dry. The trick is to provide carbon, lots of it, so that the oxygen that has combined with the metal will instad recombine with the carbon, releasing the metal back into the melt. If you are bottom pouring, a layer of fine charcoal on the melt will proivide all the fluxing action and act as an oxygen barrier to the melt as well. Or you can simply not flux at all in the pot. A layer of oxidized metal will form on the surface and prevent further oxidation. If you are dipping, you will be constantly exposing new metal to the atmosphere and creating the need to flux to remove the dross. to prevent this, get a bottom pour ladle from www.theantimonyman.com With this you can keep a layer of charcoal or sawdust on the melt and this will keep down your atmosphere exposure.

Use mold release on your ingot molds, I bet any brand would work ok but the one I am using is Frankford Arsenal Drop Out.

Michael Grace

Smoked the muffin pan with a zippo lighter. No more problems. I cast another 17 ingots tonight and they all dropped out without problem. thanks to all for the help.

I smoke my cast iron muffin pan with my acetylene torch that stuff never seems to come out and the lead drops easy. Course this .50 cent cast pan I bought in a tag sale was round topped muffins which is perfect.

I use three Aluminum muffin pans, plus two aluminum "ears of corn" corn bread pans. never smoke 'em and don't have a problem with sticking.