Over the weekend a friend brought me 7 buckets of wheel weights that he got from an old building he was tearing down. Grungy was a kind description. This morning, suffering from cabin fever, I decided to take them behind the barn and break em down. Drug out the 50 gallon kettle and got a good fire going under and around it and dumped all the buckets into the kettle.
Two hours later stopped smoking so I went out to skim the first layer of crud. OMG had a layer about 5" thick of whatever you wanna call it. Decided to flux it so put a chunk of wax in an old degassing lance and put it in the bottom of the metal bath. Stepped back to observe. Yes it is dangerous and the erruptions are kinda cool.
After things settled down, skimmed off another couple inches of black disgusting crud. Stirred the metal bit and still more crud came up. Skimmed that off and did another chunk of wax. Not as much but still plenty of crud to skim off. Repeat and still getting lots of crud and still very dark and nasty looking.
Got cold, added another handful of logs to the fire pit and came back in
Metal was bit cold as well ~550 degrees. Gonna let it cook a while and after I warm up gonna do another couple rounds of flux.
I know that the first round had a bunch of gunk (Bird droppings, geraase, oil, etc, ) from being stored but there is so much stuff coming up that I wonder how long its gonna take to get down to just the fine ashy stuff.
I know wheel weights are nasty but forgot just how nasty they can be.
Two hours later stopped smoking so I went out to skim the first layer of crud. OMG had a layer about 5" thick of whatever you wanna call it. Decided to flux it so put a chunk of wax in an old degassing lance and put it in the bottom of the metal bath. Stepped back to observe. Yes it is dangerous and the erruptions are kinda cool.
After things settled down, skimmed off another couple inches of black disgusting crud. Stirred the metal bit and still more crud came up. Skimmed that off and did another chunk of wax. Not as much but still plenty of crud to skim off. Repeat and still getting lots of crud and still very dark and nasty looking.
Got cold, added another handful of logs to the fire pit and came back in
Metal was bit cold as well ~550 degrees. Gonna let it cook a while and after I warm up gonna do another couple rounds of flux.
I know that the first round had a bunch of gunk (Bird droppings, geraase, oil, etc, ) from being stored but there is so much stuff coming up that I wonder how long its gonna take to get down to just the fine ashy stuff.
I know wheel weights are nasty but forgot just how nasty they can be.
