Swede44mag
04-04-2011, 05:01 PM
I melted 92 pounds of what looked like wheel weights a friend had got for me.
I got out my fish fryer propane cooker attached the propane bottle and put the heavy cast aluminum paint pot. I loaded the paint pot with most of the wheel weights lit the cooker and waited for the lead to melt. I kept adding lead to the pot and started pushing down the weights further into the pan. After a while the whole mess started smoking good thing I was outside. I started dipping out the clips but some still had lead on them so I shoved them back into the pot. After a while I quit shoving them back in and dipped them out with the clips. Finally I got to where there was some lead showing in the pot and started to scrape off the slag/dross. I had read about melting with a lower temp because of some of the wheel weights might be zinc. I tried to check for anything with a zn stamped on it but didn’t find any before I put it into the pot. There sure was a lot of slag/dross the get rid of before I got down to what appeared to be lead. I put a small amount of bullet lube to flux the pot and get rid of more slag/dross. Everything was going well until my heavy duty aluminum pot started to leak. I put one of the cast iron Dutch ovens I had to catch the drips and started dipping the lead out of the pot into pop cans I had cut the top off to make ingots. I almost got half of the lead dipped out when the bottom side of the pot kind of gave way and lead started pouring out. I was sitting on a stool on my driveway that slopes away from me when the lead all leaked out after it cooled enough I picked it up with some tongs my grandfather had made. I put the lead into one of the many cast iron Dutch ovens and started to melt it all over again.
I ended up with what I hope to be about 50 pounds of usable lead for 25 dollars. I don’t yet have a lead hardness tester but plan on buying one of the tree versions.
I got many pop can ingots full with lead but even though I had used the aluminum pot to melt probably 2000 pounds of wheel weights in the past it is now going to be recycled with the wife’s pop cans for cash.
Lesson to be learned is don’t use aluminum to melt lead in or you are going to have a mess and might get burned very badly.
BTW Sticky Weights with FE (Iron) stamped on them don't melt.
Anyone else have a similar experience they wish to share?
I got out my fish fryer propane cooker attached the propane bottle and put the heavy cast aluminum paint pot. I loaded the paint pot with most of the wheel weights lit the cooker and waited for the lead to melt. I kept adding lead to the pot and started pushing down the weights further into the pan. After a while the whole mess started smoking good thing I was outside. I started dipping out the clips but some still had lead on them so I shoved them back into the pot. After a while I quit shoving them back in and dipped them out with the clips. Finally I got to where there was some lead showing in the pot and started to scrape off the slag/dross. I had read about melting with a lower temp because of some of the wheel weights might be zinc. I tried to check for anything with a zn stamped on it but didn’t find any before I put it into the pot. There sure was a lot of slag/dross the get rid of before I got down to what appeared to be lead. I put a small amount of bullet lube to flux the pot and get rid of more slag/dross. Everything was going well until my heavy duty aluminum pot started to leak. I put one of the cast iron Dutch ovens I had to catch the drips and started dipping the lead out of the pot into pop cans I had cut the top off to make ingots. I almost got half of the lead dipped out when the bottom side of the pot kind of gave way and lead started pouring out. I was sitting on a stool on my driveway that slopes away from me when the lead all leaked out after it cooled enough I picked it up with some tongs my grandfather had made. I put the lead into one of the many cast iron Dutch ovens and started to melt it all over again.
I ended up with what I hope to be about 50 pounds of usable lead for 25 dollars. I don’t yet have a lead hardness tester but plan on buying one of the tree versions.
I got many pop can ingots full with lead but even though I had used the aluminum pot to melt probably 2000 pounds of wheel weights in the past it is now going to be recycled with the wife’s pop cans for cash.
Lesson to be learned is don’t use aluminum to melt lead in or you are going to have a mess and might get burned very badly.
BTW Sticky Weights with FE (Iron) stamped on them don't melt.
Anyone else have a similar experience they wish to share?