Citronella candles as flux??

[jhalcott]

  I grabbed a citronella candle to use as flux. It took me forever to get good bullets from this batch of alloy! Temperature was the same 700 to 750 degrees as before (different mold, SAME batch of alloy) ,same casting technique was used as before also! Is there some thing in the citronella (oil) that could cause the wrinkles and poor fillout I got?? After the pot got around 1/3 empty, the bullets started to come out good. I did throw the wrinkled ones back to refill the pot. I've used this mold before with few if any problems. This is the 1st time for a citronella candle though!

[Lloyd Smale]

citronela candles have oil in them and especially if your ladle casting could cause trouble if you dont get it all skimmed out. I most allways use a bottom pour and if your using a bottom pour it should give you much trouble. Ive preached for years about the evils of fluxing. Ive done tests to prove to myself that over fluxing is much worse then not fluxing at all. I pretty much keep all of my fluxing to when im smelting and alloying and rarely flux in my casting pot. Ive allways made better bullets like that. if you want to prove it. Take some CLEAN ww lead and cast 500 bullets with it without fluxing. then do the same fluxing every 10 minutes and ill about bet you a dime to a dollar that you will have less rejects and better weight consistancy with the lead you didnt flux. If you insist on fluxing in your casting pot do it once at the beginning of a session and not again even if you add spruce or other CLEAN lead.

[ND Sharpshooter]

I definitely agree with Lloyd.  I flux when I start a casting session if I've added "dirty" lead.  Otherwise, I keep about an inch of kitty litter on top of the melt to prevent most of the oxidizing and flux thouroughly at the end of the session when the pot has about an inch of melt in it.  I do this mostly to make sure the sides of the pot stay clean.  I use regular old candles for the fluxing I do.  When I melt down wheel weights, it's an entirely different story.  I flux the bejabers out of it then.

[jhalcott]

  Thanks for the replies! One benefit to the citronella was a LACK of flying bugs around me while I was casting. I cast on the back porch and get a few 'skeeter" bites during a normal casting session, THIS time I got none.! But I had to spend too much time dropping bullets BACK into the pot.

[Lloyd Smale]

and it would probably work fine if you were using a bottom pour pot.

[Shooter973]

I've used pieces of crayons that have worked well. Mostly use some old candles that are kicking around the homestead.