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Possible Bad Lead

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Hello,

I usually pour plastics and se that forum but recently got into pouring jigheads. I have a Do-IT darter head mold and I am having problems with pouring to where the barb does not pour on the neck. I wasted about 20 hooks and finally called do-it. He suggested I turn down my pot to 8 from 10 and it made it worse.The heads hardly poured. I have pre-heated the molds with the hooks in them and it seems to help get the lead down the neck further but even when it fills the barb is missing. I used flux before I poured and scooped out all the garbage. I took a scribe and made the vents bigger and tried to make the barbs bigger a little too and no difference. I tried pouring slower and putting a piece of notebook paper in the mold to vent it better but no difference. I notice that when I tried to cut the lead off the hooks to reuse the hooks the lead peeled off in layers and had alot of dents in it. It seems kind of hard for lead. I poured a few other type jigs and they came out ok but when I heated them for powder paint the lead immediately turned black. I dont remember other lead turning black when I heated it before. Do you think the lead is bad or did adding paste flux screw it up. When I put it in it smoked like hell for about 5 minutes. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks,!

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Well it looks like you tried everything, but here are my suggestions and tips. I'm sure you will get more from other members. The Darter jig is one of the easiest jigs to pour since it doesn't have a lot of detail in it, so I'm surprised you are having problems with it.

1) When you put the flux in the pot you need to light the smoke so it doesn't infumigate your whole house. Also as the smoke is flaming, mix the lead carefully with a metal spoon.

2) You can smoke your molds, but I never do and have no problems pouring.

3) If you are not getting full pours crack the mold with more paper to see if you get better pours, do this until you get good pours and no flash.

4) When you have a bad pour and you want to re-use your hook, just stick the bad jig into the pot partially not covering the hook or hook eye, the hot lead in the pot will melt the cold lead off of the jig and you won't have to waste time cutting lead off of a hook.

5) I think your lead is too hard, just a guess since I'm not there. I also have never had "Bad lead", maybe too hard but that's about it. Try softer lead.

6) On my pot I pour all my lead in the summer at #7- #8

7) Do all the cavities pour bad or just one? There are instances where one cavity will give you problems.

Other than that you seemed to have all the bases covered. I still think the lead is too hard, but that's a guess.............Let us know how you do.

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Thanks

I melted some more lead and it had all kinds of crap in it. I am guessing it is too hard too and has alot of impurities. I have to try and find soft lead somewhere. What do you mean by lighting the flux? The smoke will catch on fire? I dont know what would bother me more getting away from the smoke today or seeing flames shoot out of the pot? LOL

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May be that you have hard lead, but not knowing what brand of flux you used I can't tell you for sure. I use plain candle wax it will smoke then ignite and then you stir it in. If you have some pure add it to some of the stuff in your pot and see if that helps. I have some molds that I can pour harder lead into and others that require PURE or they won't come out at all.

I've poured tire weight lead down to 1/32 in several molds but others it won't work. If you were using tire weights and you had your melter up on 10 it's also possible you got a zinc wheelweight and it melted in.

Never used paste flux before just the candle wax. Try some more fluxing, add a bit of pure to your stuff and see if it works. If not maybe it will pour in a different mold.

Fatman

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Thanks

I melted some more lead and it had all kinds of crap in it. I am guessing it is too hard too and has alot of impurities. I have to try and find soft lead somewhere. What do you mean by lighting the flux? The smoke will catch on fire? I dont know what would bother me more getting away from the smoke today or seeing flames shoot out of the pot? LOL

Fatman is correct. There are many variables here. I use beeswax to flux my lead you could use candle wax. You really don't want the flux to smoke you want it to flame up so you can mix the flame into the lead. You only need to put in a small piece about the size of half a dime cubed.

On the lead just get some really soft lead and mix it to half of your current lead, you will have a 50/50 mix. You can try that and see if that helps.

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I remember the first time I lighted flux. I had a lot of wax in there and got a flame that about made me wet myself.

I was given 100# of printers lead. It is quite hard but I use it on baits that I don't want to paint as it is very slow to tarnish. In order to get it to pour well, I put the mold on top of the pot as the lead is heating so the mold is very warm when I start pouring.

Good luck to you.

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Places for lead:

Home remodlers take 40# out of old shower stalls

Hospitals have lead containers for radio active meds that they have to pay to get hauled off

Some roofing companies have used lead flashing

Any hospital remodling will have lead from lining X-Ray rooms

Metal recycling places sometimes have lots of it laying around and it is usually cheap

From those places I have gotten over 300 lbs in the last few years.

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Speaking of the jigs that didn't come out so well, what is the best way to get the lead off the hook. Can you just put the lead into the pot and pull the hook out after melting? Sorry if this is a stupid question, but still learning and just getting started pouring.

Greg

Yep, just dip the poured portion back in the pot and let it melt off. Tap the hook on the side of the pot to shake what left on the hook.

If you are using zinc plated hooks, the plating seems to melt off during this procedure. These are the ones that you paint.:whistle:

No issues with melting off bad pours with black nickel hooks

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Speaking of the jigs that didn't come out so well, what is the best way to get the lead off the hook. Can you just put the lead into the pot and pull the hook out after melting? Sorry if this is a stupid question, but still learning and just getting started pouring.

Greg

Exactly what sdsaw commented on and also what I stated in post 2. Comment #4

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Altho most hard lead is useable by itself or mixing with soft lead, an exception would be a zinc contaminated alloy. Even a small amount of zinc adversely affects the pouring quality of a lead alloy, so I would keep a suspected zinc contaminated alloy separate for pouring sinkers and not risk ruining good soft lead by mixing.

http://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/wire-baits/17461-wheel-weight-melt-sludge.html

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From your description, it appears that your mold and/or lead is not hot enough. The lead should not "peel off in layers" when you try to cut it off the hook. That, and the "dents" are a sure indication of inadequate heat. The problem likely lies with the pourer and his technique-- it sounds unlikely that it lies with the lead itself.

CLEAN the mold with solvent once. Dry completely. Smoke the cavities with a lighter.

FLUX the lead! If you don't know how to do this like a pro, read the sticky posts at the top of this page. This step is critical, it is basic, and it is missing from your description of your pouring process. Fluxing cannot be overlooked. Do not ignore that advice, or skip any one of these steps.

PRE-HEAT the mold by pouring the cavities with no hooks. Keep pouring until the castings are perfect, then start pouring with hooks.

Hope this helps, good luck.

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Altho most hard lead is useable by itself or mixing with soft lead, an exception would be a zinc contaminated alloy. Even a small amount of zinc adversely affects the pouring quality of a lead alloy, so I would keep a suspected zinc contaminated alloy separate for pouring sinkers and not risk ruining good soft lead by mixing.

Btw, Hawnjigs, I have recently heard that fluxing zinc-contaminated lead with ordinary elemental sulphur (get cheaply at a gardening/farming store) can successfully restore the fluidity of the lead by removing the zinc component as a sulfide.

Fluxing procedure is slightly different than normal. Heat the lead to almost molten or partly molten, and smash it with a utensil to finely divide it into bits. Then sprinkle liberally with sulphur, and mash the sulphur into the subdivided lead. Once mashed/mixed with sulphur, heat the lead fully to liquidus, stirring continually. When liquid and stirred, skim off the crumbly dross. Pour into ingots, and flux normally with hydrocarbon flux upon the next melting. Test for 'pourability' in a quarantined vessel. Indications are that the lead can be salvaged by this simple method.

Note that elemental sulphur can and will catch fire during fluxing, so take the normal fire precautions with this method.

Hope this info comes in handy some day.

Good luck, and stay safe! :)

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"sagacious", thanks for the sulfur tip, wish I hadn't discarded the terminal zinc-ed slag I've encountered over the years.

"squigster", you probably already figured it out, but it sounds like you may have been using "paste flux" which function is preparing metal for solder adhesion? Smoking for 5 minutes sounds like my experiences melting "flux" cored solder to recover the metal, & since your good castings turned black when heated for powder paint, using this wrong type of "flux" actually contaminated rather than cleaned your melt.

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