I am making some small vases out of black pipe to hold floral arrangements. These tend to be top heavy so I weight them by pouring some melted wheel weights to form a stabilizing weight at the bottom. Im having trouble with the lead breaking loose. (I realize this is not pure lead) Is there a way to get it to "wet" onto the steel?

I could attach it mechanicaly by having a bolt or something to grip come up from the bottom. But I'd rather do it by adhesion if possible.

Thank you

With the work that I have done with lead, I think that you are probably going to have to give it something to grip to(ie. the bolt). Lead seems to have a habbit of breaking free from steel. Just my 2 cents. :D

Could you flare the base into a slight conical shape before pouring the lead, or would that take away from the design?

Did you clean the surface and flux it like you would for any solder joint?

If you are casting a thick slab then shrinkage from the melt may be a problem; switching to an alloy with less shrinkage might help in that case.

Hmm I wonder if rotating the piece while the lead cools would help it by providing a "hollow center"---something like a variation on slush casting.

You can take a small tool and set the lead like plumbers used to do on leaded cast iron pipes. All that involves is using a dull chisel to expand the lead in the pipe

You should be able to get wheel weights to attach(solder) to clean steel with the proper flux. If not then attach some form of screw or bolt to the bottom to hold the molten wheel weight metal in place as it cools. Wheel weights are higher in antimony than regular lead alloys. I used to use them for my wad cutters when I did a lot of pistol shooting in my .38 Special and .357 Magnums, it fouls the bore less than pure lead. Pure lead is better for muzzle loading guns. :blink:

Neck in the pipe enough to hold the lead in place. Or, sand the steel, flux with acid, tin, pour the lead, pack the lead with an apropriate punch and several medium hammer blows within 15 seconds of the pour.

Should work since it was used way before Bondo was invented.

Dad made his own Lingcod jigs out of chromed tubing, and wheel weights. Never had a separation. They weighed around 1#-2# depending on the tubing used.

The steel will have to be clean to get good adhesion. One thing that may cause problems is water causing rust, and corrosion that may lead to the lead popping loose.

Thank you everyone for the advice.

The vases I make have a long narrow neck with a swollen bulb at the bottom so packing is not practical.

I think I will try to get it to bond. If that fails I will go for a mechanical hold like a bolt or a loop of 1/4" rod attached to the base. I'll clean off the scale etc with muriatic acid, tin the surface and then pour the lead. I'll try this out on some scrap first.

I have several buckets of wheel weights, one bucket of spent bullets and also quite a bit of pure lead. Would the soft lead do any better in this case? I'd rather use up the wheel weights for this application. Down the road I hope to make some rather large versions of this design which will require substantial quantites of lead for stability.

I don't think it will matter one iota if you use pure lead or wheel weights as one will solder as well as the other. What really matters is how clean is the steel, the right flux and the soldering temperature. Once those are all correct it shouldn't matter. The steel of course needs to be reasonable clean, the flux needs to be suitable for steel to prevent oxidization during the soldering process and the the temperature should only be hot enough to bring the lead or wheel weights to flow temperature. If you get it so hot that you burn of the flux you won't get it to adhere to the steel. When I was working on guns back in the sixties many of the older ones had the sights soldered on with soft solder. It didn't take much heat to get them off. Lead based solders work very well on steel.

I don't know if this would work with your design but if you pour the lead then after it cools pull it out and then glue it in with polyurethane (Sika Flex). That will hold it!

Spirit of salts works well as a flux for this type of work, also pre-heat the steel .
Ian

Spirit of salts works well as a flux for this type of work, also pre-heat the steel .
Ian

"Spirit of Salts" sounds like a term from alchemey !

Googling I found "Spirit of Salts" usually means muriatic acid and "Killed Spirit of Salts" which is zinc chloride. Apparently zinc chloride is the main active ingredient in many ordinairy soldering pastes like Oatey. So I will play around with that to start.

Again, thanks for all the tips