On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:42:42 -0500, wrote:

On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:33:04 -0700, "chaniarts"
wrote:

David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 11/18/2010 7:19 AM jamesgangnc spake thus:

Those old porcelain cast iron sinks are pretty tough, I'd' even try a
small chisel on your nut if nothing else worked.

Meaning a small COLD chisel, not a wood chisel.


actually, if they are in fact lead, a sharp edge, or even a pencil soldering
iron, would cut through it pretty easily.

But I agree: there's always a way to get things like this off. May
take a lot of patience and a coordinated attack plan, but you can
somehow un-freeze, crack, split, cut or chisel the nut off.

I've never seen a LEAD nut - lots of Zinc nuts though.
You can be almost dead certain the nut holding the tap shank to the
sink is NOT lead.

It is NOT zinc, but lead, or more precisely, a lead alloy (another one
pulled through the hole when the giant washer disintegrated). I ended up
getting a multitool, not for this job, but for an ongoing job of replacing
broken windows. The multitool is the only reasonable way to pull out the
old, hard caulking between the aluminum retainer and the glass in these old
1950's commercial windows. Replacing these windows is an time-consuming and
ongoing job. I have 3 critical windows right now to work on.