| Posted: Mon Aug 24th, 2009 04:10 AM |
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miestro_jerry
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Folks,
Becky called me early this evening and she had some orange stuff on the surface of the smelter. I told her to turn the heat off, find something disposable to make ingots in and then take the ingots to the junkyard.
When you get this while smelting lead you are getting cadnium from WWs that have been made in the past. If you did this in electric poy you cast from, it maybe contaminated. Cadmium is very dangerous.
I haven't seen this in a few years, but with lead being hard to get, some contaminated stuff is starting to surface again that other casters probably rejected a few years ago.
Jerry
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| Posted: Mon Aug 24th, 2009 11:21 PM |
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smacks
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from old batteries most likely.
smacks
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| Posted: Wed Aug 26th, 2009 12:53 AM |
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miestro_jerry
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Back in the late 70s or early 80s WWs were made from various salvage lead sources. Many thousands of pounds of WWs came into the states that contained Cadmium. IT IS REALLY NASTY STUFF. The local junkyard takes all of our scrape and salvage lead. They mark it for over seas disposal and ship to some Chinese company along with all of his other hazmat metals.
Jerry
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| Posted: Wed Aug 26th, 2009 02:35 AM |
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wheezengeezer
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You are saying some imported ww had cad in the mix? Any distinctive markings to watch for? Maybe we need to sort a bit closer. A quote from the lyman 3rd ed CAST BULLET HANDBOOK "while lead-calcium and lead-strontium alloys have properties which are well suited for use in batteries,they have no place in bullet casting.if either alloy is accidentally mixed with regular bullet alloys,a dangerous situation can arise. for example,if lead-calcium and lead-antimony alloys are melted together,calcium and antimony will combine in the melt to form an intermetallic compound.this compound and others like it have low solubility in lead,and since the compound is less dense than lead,it will float to the melt surface where the unsuspecting bullet caster will remove it with the dross.the result is a melt with a reduced antimony content.the second and more critical aspect of the problem relates to the subsequent handling of the dross.either in moist air or in contact with water.the intermetallics contained in the dross can react to form poisonous gasses such as stibine or its arsenic counterpart arsine" The way i read the piece in the handbook was mixing the alloys was where the danger came in.trying to add antimony will give the same dangerous result. using the battery alloys as is to cast will probbally cast poorly.the handbook does show some tin in batterey alloys so adding more shouldnt be a problem.however the hardness and suitability for bullets remains to be seen.another problem could arise from someone remelting range scrap.the alloys will undoubtedly be mixed.then the previously posted dangerous situation may arise.
____________________
I was raised in the 50's on jackrabbits and gunpowder.salt and pepper wooda made'em taste better
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| Posted: Wed Aug 26th, 2009 06:05 AM |
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miestro_jerry
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These weights were labeled 84 (must be year) and something like 200 (proibably grams which is close to what our scales is 7 ounces)
So it was label 84 - 200, the 84 could be a lot of other things, but the year is most likely.
Jerry
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| Posted: Wed Aug 26th, 2009 06:52 PM |
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steel13
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I haven't encountered any thing like that, and hope I dont.
I really dont want to have start trying to ID WW other than the Steel and zinc, when I'm smelting. What a PITA!
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halitosis is better than no breath at all!
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| Posted: Wed Aug 26th, 2009 10:22 PM |
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wheezengeezer
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I was going thru the Lyman cast bullet handbook.And I just realized I read cadmium and thought calcium in Jerrys first post.They are both found in batteries and both bad news.From the Lyman book;"Cad is used in some battery alloys and in low melting point fusable alloys like Woods metal .Cad causes some trouble with increased dross generation but the real hazard is its toxicity. The vapor pressure of cad is quite high which means it tends to evaporate from the pot,much more than lead or antimony. Cad containing drosses are extremely toxic." It sounds like it is really not a good idea trying to recycle batteries at home. Jerry,is the orange color a common indicator of cad being present? Last edited on Wed Aug 26th, 2009 10:22 PM by wheezengeezer
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I was raised in the 50's on jackrabbits and gunpowder.salt and pepper wooda made'em taste better
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| Posted: Fri Sep 25th, 2009 12:49 AM |
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madsenshooter
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A long time ago, back in the 90's, I "borrowed" a large mercury thermometer from the chemistry class at the university I was going to. While checking the temp of my melt I lightly stirred it and the thermometer broke. I had assumed the mercury would have immediately evaporated at that temp. 10 years later I fired that pot up again and it kept producing a reddish ash that looked for all the world like ash from a coal furnace. Mercury oxide! It produced a half a 1lb coffee can of the stuff before it finally stopped!
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| Posted: Fri Sep 25th, 2009 01:17 AM |
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miestro_jerry
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Madsenshooter,
Never borrow mecury thermometers from universities, they haught you for decades. I retired from a large university, I taught engineering.
In one our many building, they had a swimming pool reactor during the 1950s. The university was doing final cleanup in the early 1990s. The U had a some company come in way back when and used some cadium and some carbon/graphite based material to "soak up" the left over radiation and other nuclear garbage.
This area was supposedly clean, but I still would not want my office around that area. When they were getting the finally inspection so they could do some construction work, they found the area was still contaminated, not with nuclear material, but with mercury. Grad students had drop by some estimates hundred of large mercury thermometer in the "swimming pool" containment in that reactor.
That was a whole different type of clean up. I believe they tore that building down, poured a new foundation and put up a new building.
Whether it be Cadnium or Mercury, these metals will contaminate your lead melting pots. You may have to dispose of them it you let it set in the pot too long.
Jerry
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