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WTB - 1 lb Litharge & SiO2 Flour

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snoman701

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 8, 2016
Messages
2,108
Location
SE MI
I need to perform a couple fusions and don't care to buy a 24 lb can.

So, just looking for a pound...if you've also got a pound of flourospar, cryolite, flint and KNO3. But really, I need all the other stuff either way, but the litharge isn't something I really expect to need again, or if I do, it can wait until I need to place a freight order.
 
Lead source and seasand are scarce today(?)
Seasand worked for me nicely on another (similar) application, however it can be sieved through a desired mesh sieve if that looks essential
 
Helpful post, thanks!

On Edit:

For anyone that doesn't know, litharge is lead oxide. During fusion, flux ingredients cause the lead oxide to reduce to elemental lead, in the processing, helping oxidize base metals in the sample.

The beach sand comment is completely wrong as well, as I am looking for 200 mesh flint. Beach sand is a pretty broad mixture of minerals, and is rarely just silica, but broken up shell, coral, and tons of other crap. If I wanted silica sand, I'd just stop at the pool store.
 
snoman701 said:
Helpful post, thanks!

On Edit:

For anyone that doesn't know, litharge is lead oxide. During fusion, flux ingredients cause the lead oxide to reduce to elemental lead, in the processing, helping oxidize base metals in the sample.

The beach sand comment is completely wrong as well, as I am looking for 200 mesh flint. Beach sand is a pretty broad mixture of minerals, and is rarely just silica, but broken up shell, coral, and tons of other crap. If I wanted silica sand, I'd just stop at the pool store.
Have you ever run a fire assay before? What type material are you assaying? If you have 2 grams, or a little less, of copper present, some of it will likely end up in the gold, no matter how much litharge you use. With high copper, I used to cover the sample with yellow sulfur and heat it at about fusion temp for about 20 min, then add the fluxes and run the fusion. That puts the copper into the slag as a sulfide, I assume. I don't remember where I got that trick but I know it works.

You can buy both yellow litharge (PbO) and silica sand in 1# quantities on Ebay. I've also used the red Pb3O4 with success. It contains a little more oxygen per unit lead. Silica sand is also available from lumber yards in the Quikrete brand, although I think it's in 100# bags.

For electronic components, Lino's suggestions would likely work. For these, the fluxing mix (except for the amount of sugar or flour) is very forgiving. Ores are a different story. I doubt if Lino appreciated your rude rebuke of his suggestions. I know I didn't.
 
Thank you for the detailed response chris. I have not ran a single fire assay. This is the reason I did not want to go off book and use ingredients that may not be appropriate for reliable results.

I am aware it is available on eBay, but not as a buy it now. I messaged the seller and they are unable to do a buy it now. I don't care to wait to try to remember to bid. Hence the reason I posted a very specific want to buy thread.



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I don’t think he meant disrespect—definitely not very tactful—but surely not all sand is silica FLOUR.

Also, who wants to make their own high purity litharge? Not me!
 
My post lacked tact. Chris described it as rude. I would also describe it as childish. All are probably correct. I can even see how his post wasn't rude, even though my initial interpretation saw it as such.

It's about prior knowledge, intent, and delivery.

If my wife asks me for borax, and I give her anhydrous borax, it's an acceptable alternative for the laundry.
If you ask me for borax, and I give you 7 mule team, it's likely not an acceptable alternative for melting.
If my wife asks me for borax, and I ask her if sodium borate is scarce, I'm going to attitude in return. BUT...If I tell her there's a bucket in the garage labeled sodium borate, and it'll work just the same for what she's doing...I'm golden.

With all of those, it's how it's delivered and the intent of the delivery...if his message had said, as Chris's did, elemental lead is an acceptable alternative for what I assume your application is, it would have had the intent of being helpful, providing the knowledge that he likely assumed I had. There would have been no reason to interpret it as rude, and I would not have been rude in return. But, it did not...I saw his message as snarky and rude, and behaved in a childish manor. And Chris was right to call me out for it.
 
goldsilverpro said:
For electronic components, Lino's suggestions would likely work. For these, the fluxing mix (except for the amount of sugar or flour) is very forgiving. Ores are a different story. I doubt if Lino appreciated your rude rebuke of his suggestions. I know I didn't.

Hey Chris,

My concern with the use of elemental lead vs the lead oxide is largely the mixing. In this case, I'd be mixing a powder (ashed chip) with a solid metal. I was under the understanding (very likely wrong) that with powders or microscopic metal fractions it is extremely important to have intimate contact with the collector. It may just be the way I'm understanding it, but with elemental lead, you'll have a metal with a very high surface tension, and a flux that will be a separate entity, with some surface mixing. Whereas with a powdered litharge, everything will be near the same size, and the reduction of lead oxide is just icing on the cake for the collection, with no worries that anything is going to stay in the flux.

I guess I see it as the ball pit at chucky cheese, as strange of a metaphor as it may be.

Even distribution of different colored same size balls happens readily. Spray all the balls with a bleach solution, and you can imagine it being pretty evenly distributed as well.

Whereas, make ONE of those balls large (the lead) and the rest still different colors, it's going to be much more difficult to get an even distribution of the bleach. You'll have much more bleach on all of the small balls because of their low surface area, and it's going to be more difficult get get everything together.

Meaning I'm having trouble seeing all of the miniature prills come in to contact with each other, as well as the bulk of the lead collector, to evenly mix, even in the presence of a fluid melted flux.

Whereas with karat scrap, or even electronic pins, it seems like it's much less of an issue to just wrap it in a lead boat and melt it all together. You've got big balls mixed with big balls coated with bleach....all evenly distributed.
 
Now...let me add, the takehome message from the post above is "I'm likely wrong in my understanding".


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Back on topic... have you checked any pottery stores? They usually carry litharge and even fluorite if needed.

Göran
 
g_axelsson said:
Back to topic... have you checked any pottery stores? They usually carry litharge and even fluorite if needed.

Göran

Litharge is no longer available from any US based pottery supply companies that I know of. It wasn't being carried by pottery stores over here in the early 00's when I was a an art major (it's amazing how useful my glaze formulation class was now). They now manufacture different frits, which are nothing more than pre-made glass, ground to a fine powder that just needs to be balanced to match your specific clay body. These have presented themselves as alternatives for not only litharge, but many of the "old chemicals" that are becoming more scarce as the original mined supplies are running low. It takes a lot of variability out of it, that the experienced hands came to expect, and sort of looked forward to. It's sorta like the above statements about flint vs beach sand. I'm sure Chris (and possibly Lino) could perform assays with a broken coke bottle and fishing sinkers, and just adjust their recipes based upon the results...meanwhile I'll struggle with pure refined chemicals.

But yes, I can get most of the dry chemicals from a pottery supplier. Unfortunately my local supplier has a limited dry chemical supply and doesn't offer either cryolite or flourospar.

If people need a supplier, axner carries both, as well as almost everything else you need, in 1 lb increments, and is generally just an awesome company.
 
When I was a kid... back when my computer was top of the line... :lol: my mother did a lot of pottery, mixing her own glazes. I'm quite sure there are some litharge in a bag still at the old house. Think I'll do a raid in the pottery next time I'll visit them.

I just checked a pottery supply house here in Sweden, looks like lead is totally phased out, but they had quartz flour at least. There's your SiO2. $6 per kilo.... but shipping from Sweden is probably a bit expensive.

Göran
 
I was going to recommend Rovin Ceramics. They used to have a pretty good supply of chemicals, but I see they've curtailed their list quite a bit. Here's a link to their catalog I found online. They used to be in the Southgate area, but I think they may have moved to Ann Arbor now? Even if they don't have what you want, they may be able to point you to another supplier.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0...f1-a541-5da0711954f1.pdf?12520372133781967870

Macfixer01
 
Yeah, I'm familiar with Rovin. I bought my pottery wheel from them, as well as spent a lot of money on glaze chemicals. Rovin moved to Ann Arbor about five years ago I think, they used to be just off Eureka in Taylor. I did a summer internship at Motawi Tiles, who bought them. I think we were their biggest customer at the time, buying a few pallets of clay at a time.

They made great clay, even offering one that they aged for a year that allowed the bacteria to work their magic to develop better shear properties. I doubt that Motawi is doing that as unless they expanded, they are very space limited.
 
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