New User Intro and Log W/ Pics

[sniper4395]

Hey guys! This is my first post on this forum and I thought you would enjoy a little picture log of my first ingot smelting attempt. Please forgive me if this is the wrong thread for that, I didn't see one dedicated to logs.

Here's a shot of the first pale of WW I purchased for a buck a pound from the local auto repair shop.

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/6389/88345250.jpg (http://img822.imageshack.us/i/88345250.jpg/)

Picking through each piece by hand to make sure all zinc and steel labeled WW are thrown out. Later more zinc pieces would float in the melted lead...

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/4118/90839848.jpg (http://img9.imageshack.us/i/90839848.jpg/)

and the "other" pile

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/3179/83548926.jpg (http://img20.imageshack.us/i/83548926.jpg/)

My outdoor setup. The WW were melted in a cast-iron skillet, with that pot of WW heating them up before adding more to the batch. They were a little wet so dropping them in without heating would make explosions. Already knew they would explode when wet, but I really underestimated it. Currently picking lead out of hair...

http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/3861/90558202.jpg (http://img690.imageshack.us/i/90558202.jpg/)

A shot of my makeshift "blower" setup. This old grill and squirrel-cage fan setup gets hot enough to completely melt railroad spikes. This I have done a few times in the past to make butter knives for fun.

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/1162/60374236.jpg (http://img156.imageshack.us/i/60374236.jpg/)

Closeup

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/8672/69528904.jpg (http://img822.imageshack.us/i/69528904.jpg/)

Some shiny melted lead

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/6397/54762717.jpg (http://img33.imageshack.us/i/54762717.jpg/)

The results of spilling some molten lead on the ground, picking it out of the grass for recycling. Hey a cast iron skillet full of lead is HEAVY! haha

http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/9504/68935220.jpg (http://img263.imageshack.us/i/68935220.jpg/)

The finished product! Woohoo! 25 2# muffin ingots

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/3989/10cd.jpg (http://img59.imageshack.us/i/10cd.jpg/)

For shock value, compare the first bucket to this one. You REALLY lose a lot of material, but this is why we smelt right fellas?

http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/4183/11ci.jpg (http://img851.imageshack.us/i/11ci.jpg/)

Thanks for checking it out! Any comments welcome.

Please understand that I don't plan on remelting the lead in the skillet to cast bullets, I'll find something smaller and more pot shaped.

[Firebricker]

Looks like your well on your way and welcome to the forum. What calibers are you going to cast for first ? FB

[RobS]

You already have what it takes to be a cast booliteer; thriftiness and ability to adapt. Welcome to the forum.

[sniper4395]

Thank you both very much for the kind words, I'm glad to hear that nothing in my process disturbs either of you experienced members enough to mention it. haha

A Lee 124gr truncated (flat nosed) .356 dia bullet mold is in the mail. I plan on using it to reload 9mm and maybe 38 spec for the time being. Figured with the 50-55# of lead maybe 3k bullets will be the end result. Any thoughts on my math?

[RobS]

Probably a bit less as most lee molds cast heavier than specified, say 5 to 10 grains depending on caliber. Definately over 2,500 of them though.

[geargnasher]

Feller's, we've ruinated another one!

Gear

[steg]

Welcome to the club pal, some good ideas there............

[*Paladin*]

Welcome! Not bad, altho I would advise you that for a buck a pound, you could get some nice ingots delivered to your door and save yourself the work. Check the vendors and classified sections. $1 a pound for clean material in ingot form is pretty much the average.

[Bret4207]

Welcome aboard. The "extras", all those valve caps and wing nuts, those are the freebies I save. You're off to a good start.

[Jal5]

Welcome!
You are off to a good start. But I would agree that for $1/lb you could get ingots delivered right to you rather than melt the WW.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

sniper,
WELCOME !
I love your oxygen assist wood fired cooker :)

You're off to a great start...yes buying Ingots for $1 a lb is lots easier.
But it's a great feeling to know how to smelt some scrap into boolit alloy,
it's knowledge and a ability boolits casters may "need" someday.
Jon

[Dennis Eugene]

Great first post,good pics also. But the only concern I have is the price, if your orginal pail was110 pounds at a buck a pound and you came out with 55 pounds of good alloy you paid 2bucks a pound not counting time invested.( I know it's a labor of love) But that still comes out to twice the price of clean ingots delivered. While smelting being fun and all, at that rate I'd buy my alloy. but hey that's your call and like I said Great first post I enjoyed it. Dennis Eugene

[Cherokee]

Welcome to the forum - and welcome to the fun. Come back often to let us know how you are doing. BTW, I like the Lee 124 TC (conventional lube) in my 9mm and 38 Super's.

[onondaga]

Welcome, Looks like you got the basics down and will have a lot of fun.

Your pictures have not been scaled and this makes your post so wide on the screen that viewers have to side scroll to read your posts. PhotoBucket will auto-scale your pictures for maximum forum size.

I like large pictures, but side scrolling confuses some readers who will to try and rescale their browsers.

Gary

[Blammer]

good setup!

what caliber are you going to cast for first?

[gray wolf]

Did I miss what you fluxed with ?
I would think while I like your fire and the blower, it may be a little difficult to maintain a low enough heat level. Zinc WW are not always marked Zinc. Take that heat above 750* and they may not float, you don't want to melt the bogies. A little deeper C/I pot may be helpful also.
If the dross in that can is as shiny as it looks in the Pic. I would re-melt it.
THAT SAID
Welcome to the madness and our little fraternity of casters, shooter, mess makers,
cheap skates, scroungers, and man cave dwellers.
Your going to be fine with this ( can see your a thinker ) Keep us up to date.

Did I say welcome ?


Sam

[Love Life]

Welcome to the forum and stay away from the swappin and selling section. It is the devil.

[sniper4395]

Wow! I wasn't expecting so many nice responses so soon. Thank you all for the warm welcome and helpful criticism!

Your all right in that I got unlucky on the pricing. The guy at the repair shop did seem a little smug about charging me 50$ for the bucket. Well that will never happen again. There is a nice car-scrap yard a mere 3 minutes from my house that I haven't checked out yet. Do you think that 5-10$ for a bucket sounds like a good price to stand firm on?

Temperature did stay on my mind the whole time. The constant ebb and flow of maintaining the fire and cycling the air on and off was a lot of fun. Zinc contamination paranoia had me scooping out the clips and dross the second the lead melted and I was trying to keep the heat just barely high enough to not allow the lead to re-solidify.

In the end I did spot a few pieces that didn't melt at all and floated to the top, but the final transfer to the muffin pan (and lawn when I slipped) poured like "unicorn blood" as the lady called it. Maybe in the future I'll process scrap on a small propane grill, but for now it's the old backyard-blacksmith furnace for smelting bulk material.

As far as fluxing goes I just crumbled some old wood by hand into the melt and most of the time left a thin layer of crumble and ash on the surface. When I remelt the ingots I'll probably use chunks of paraffin or beeswax. Does that make a lot of smoke?

That was a GOOD tip there DieselBenz! The pot was secure inside of the grill, but I never thought about the entire grill tipping over. Disaster averted! haha

Thanks again everyone for the awesome tips! Looking forward to hearing from you all again soon.

Currently surfing the "swapping and selling" section...

[geargnasher]

Did I miss what you fluxed with ?
I would think while I like your fire and the blower, it may be a little difficult to maintain a low enough heat level. Zinc WW are not always marked Zinc. Take that heat above 750* and they may not float, you don't want to melt the bogies. A little deeper C/I pot may be helpful also.
If the dross in that can is as shiny as it looks in the Pic. I would re-melt it.
THAT SAID
Welcome to the madness and our little fraternity of casters, shooter, mess makers,
cheap skates, scroungers, and man cave dwellers.
Your going to be fine with this ( can see your a thinker ) Keep us up to date.

Did I say welcome ?


Sam

Used wheel weights require no extra flux, the dog pee residue provides all that is necessary, and if the tire-changer dips Copenhagen, that's an added bonus. :-o

I keep collecting the valve cores, caps, stems, and other goodies to use around the property, it's amazing how valuable an extra little valve core can be when you slip up and one blows into two acres of tall grass when fixing a flat on a piece of equipment on a Sunday afternoon.

[WILCO]

some good ideas there............

Indeed! Welcome aboard. [smilie=s:

[*Paladin*]

Wow! I wasn't expecting so many nice responses so soon. Thank you all for the warm welcome and helpful criticism!

Your all right in that I got unlucky on the pricing. The guy at the repair shop did seem a little smug about charging me 50$ for the bucket. Well that will never happen again. There is a nice car-scrap yard a mere 3 minutes from my house that I haven't checked out yet. Do you think that 5-10$ for a bucket sounds like a good price to stand firm on?
Temperature did stay on my mind the whole time. The constant ebb and flow of maintaining the fire and cycling the air on and off was a lot of fun. Zinc contamination paranoia had me scooping out the clips and dross the second the lead melted and I was trying to keep the heat just barely high enough to not allow the lead to re-solidify.

In the end I did spot a few pieces that didn't melt at all and floated to the top, but the final transfer to the muffin pan (and lawn when I slipped) poured like "unicorn blood" as the lady called it. Maybe in the future I'll process scrap on a small propane grill, but for now it's the old backyard-blacksmith furnace for smelting bulk material.

As far as fluxing goes I just crumbled some old wood by hand into the melt and most of the time left a thin layer of crumble and ash on the surface. When I remelt the ingots I'll probably use chunks of paraffin or beeswax. Does that make a lot of smoke?

That was a GOOD tip there DieselBenz! The pot was secure inside of the grill, but I never thought about the entire grill tipping over. Disaster averted! haha

Thanks again everyone for the awesome tips! Looking forward to hearing from you all again soon.

Currently surfing the "swapping and selling" section...

The "right" price for a bucket really varies wildly across the nation, but, for example, I generally pay $20-30 for a FULL 5 or 6 gal bucket. Less than full, I just figure out about how much there is and subtract from my $20 offer as necessary.

[castblast]

Howdy neighbor! I'm next door in Fredericksburg.

That is an interesting setup with the forced air. I'd be a little leery about the whole side breaking off the BBQ. Lead is HEAVY!

Get a Harbor Freight dutch oven and a turkey fryer. Safe and effective. I went through a few turkey fryers. First one was from Gander Mountain. Had a 5 psig regulator. Almost couldn't keep a full pot molten. Wasted alot of gas with that one. Ended up with one from Home Depot I think (just the burner). 20 psig, what a difference! Makes short work of "smelting".

Please don't try to move a large pot of molten lead again. I did it once. Once!

I have never paid for wheel weights. Collected quite a bit. Try not offering any money. Just ask what they do with their junk wheel weights. I always ask for the service manager. Most of the time they say a recycler picks them up. Tell them what you're doing. Don't lie, this is Virginia! Show em' a dummy round (boolit of course). And no matter how much you have, make it sound like you barely have any. Some of them think it's pretty neat and want to help you out. I'm not saying everyone will give up free wheel weights. I probably average a hit at about 10% of the shops I try. Some of them even save 5 gallon buckets for you! Most places peter out after a while. I stopped looking for new places about 6 months ago. Still collecting from about 5. Hard work melting it all down.

[skeet1]

Sniper 4395,
Nice to have new people on board the forum, welcome. Turkey fryers are great, the one I have is called a Fish fryer and has worked very well it has an adjustable regulator and throws a good flame. I also use a China made Dutch Oven called Tex Sport and it works well and I'm sure Harbor Freight's Dutch Oven is good also. Next go to your local 2nd hand thrift store and see if you can find a stainless steel soup ladle for scooping our your molten lead into you ingot mould and a slotted stainless steel serving spoon for fishing out the clips and refuse. I got my ladle and spoon for a dollar, a great buy.

One more thing, this is a great hobby so have lots of fun!

Ken

[bingo]

welcome to the college of boolit knowledge. Nice cooking set up. I assume you are using wood not charcoal. If you can burn a nice size fire close you can add coals in small amounts when needed and regulate the temp better. A lot of tire places wont sell or it goes to the brother in law or sumpit but you can try some, ofering beer, dodnuts, or $. This year my pay guy went up to 50 cents a lb.

Try fluxing with a DRY piece wood, dowel rod. Scrape sides and bottom and stir alot.

Mark

[captaint]

sniper - I finally went the turkey frier and Harbor Freight dutch oven route too. I remember my first smelt!!! I never knew steel would float in anything.... Quite the learning experience. And fun. Welcome. I can tell, you're hooked already and you haven't even cast a boolit yet. Ha!!! enjoy Mike

[geargnasher]

Castblast, ya had me going there for a second, I thought you meant me. Fredericksburg, TX. is about 30 minutes from my house!

Gear

[sniper4395]

Hey guys!

You all have given me a lot to think about as far as finding WW and other scrap lead. Think I'll hit up my old Graphics Design teacher for some linotype. haha Really though with all your advice I'm going to try driving around and seeing if anyone is willing to let me take it off their hands for free (thanks CastBlast.) With all the local scrap yards, auto repair shops and the local land fill I'm sure to find something. Cant believe I never thought about this before hand. Maybe I'll carry some beer in a cooler in the trunk, especially since it's going to start getting hot outside! Of course 20-30$ is still reasonable if all else fails.

The fryer and dutch oven are looking more and more necessary for processing bulk material. I'll start keeping an eye out for garage sales and such to see if they don't have one on the cheap. A ladle and slotted spoon I can probably Dremel. Infact I think I'll do a ladle right now...

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/4593/tadao.jpg (http://img220.imageshack.us/i/tadao.jpg/)

Haha! Old soup ladle that had a plastic handle. It's now an old paintbrush handle riveted in.

Slotted spoon is next on the menu. Thanks for the idea!

To answer your question Bingo, the fire was mostly "homemade" charcoal that I pulled out of the fire pit in the yard and some wood added during the end to keep it going. I know what your talking about with adding embers, but from my backyard blacksmith days it's a lot easier to just slow burn bulk wood in a pit covered with dirt and collect the charcoal when it's done burning up. Charcoal briquettes from stores are just no good for anything IMO.

Thank you everyone for all the input so far! I'm learning a lot and looking forward to the casting advice you'll be giving me in the very near future. The mold arrived today!

[geargnasher]

My dad is a "perfessor", Art Dept, his best friend is the Dean of the Graphics Design dept. and certified printing tool nut. He's like most eduated folks with his moveable type, his drawers and drawers of font are his preeeeciiiiouuuuuuuuusssssesssss!!! He'd sooner sell you his children.

Gear

[bumpo628]

Wow! I wasn't expecting so many nice responses so soon. Thank you all for the warm welcome and helpful criticism!

Your all right in that I got unlucky on the pricing. The guy at the repair shop did seem a little smug about charging me 50$ for the bucket. Well that will never happen again. There is a nice car-scrap yard a mere 3 minutes from my house that I haven't checked out yet. Do you think that 5-10$ for a bucket sounds like a good price to stand firm on?

Temperature did stay on my mind the whole time. The constant ebb and flow of maintaining the fire and cycling the air on and off was a lot of fun. Zinc contamination paranoia had me scooping out the clips and dross the second the lead melted and I was trying to keep the heat just barely high enough to not allow the lead to re-solidify.

In the end I did spot a few pieces that didn't melt at all and floated to the top, but the final transfer to the muffin pan (and lawn when I slipped) poured like "unicorn blood" as the lady called it. Maybe in the future I'll process scrap on a small propane grill, but for now it's the old backyard-blacksmith furnace for smelting bulk material.

As far as fluxing goes I just crumbled some old wood by hand into the melt and most of the time left a thin layer of crumble and ash on the surface. When I remelt the ingots I'll probably use chunks of paraffin or beeswax. Does that make a lot of smoke?

That was a GOOD tip there DieselBenz! The pot was secure inside of the grill, but I never thought about the entire grill tipping over. Disaster averted! haha

Thanks again everyone for the awesome tips! Looking forward to hearing from you all again soon.

Currently surfing the "swapping and selling" section...


Congrats on the first smelt! Here are my tips & observations:

Is that a 5 gallon bucket in the picture? In any case, if you paid $50 and you got 50 lbs in ingots, then you paid $1 / lb. That is not bad and you got to learn the process yourself. Plus you saved the delicate backs of our postal workers. $5-$10 a bucket would be great if they want to sell it for that. I am currently paying $50 a bucket too, but it is very regional.

I would consider smelting in that stainless steel pot you have. It is deeper and you will be able to dip a ladle in there to pour your ingots. Pick up a cheap stainless steel ladle at the thrift store and you're good to go. A ladle is a lot lighter than a full pot of lead. Also pick up a slotted spoon for skimming the dross.

Try fluxing with sawdust instead of wood chips or wax.

Regarding the zinc weights, I separate my weights with a pair of wire cutters in one hand with a strong magnet stuck to the backside. That way you can check for steel or zinc without changing tools. Try to cut the zinc weights with the wire cutters and it will barely make a dent. Save the zinc in a separate can and one day you might have enough to sell to the cannoneers.

Place a large piece of plywood under your work area so you don't have to pick spills out of the grass.

Pick out the zinc weights from your dross pile and resmelt it. There seems to be a lot of lead left in there. You can try putting the whole thing in the cast iron pan, getting it up to temp, then lifting one end up. The lead should drip down to the bottom end.

[castblast]

Sorry Gear, I'm in the bustling motropolis of Frednecksburg Virginia. I didn't even know there was Fredericksburg Texas.

[cbrick]

It's a pretty rare day when I'll disagree with Gear but I guess Easter is the day.

Use saw dust to flux your WW (you did good), it will do a better job of removing what you want removed from the alloy and reducing (putting back into the melt) what it is you want in the melt such as tin/antimony. Oils, greases, wax will remove more tin than it reduces.

The result will be cleaner ingots with more of the tin when your ready to use these ingots for making bullets. When you use the cleaned ingots flux again with saw dust for a final reducing of antimony, tin and final cleaning.

Here is a short article that explains this process very well.

The Simple Act of Fluxing By Glen E. Fryxell (http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Fluxing.pdf)

Or in more detail in his book, From Ingot to Target: A cast Bullet Guide for Handgunners.

See Chapter 4 - Fluxing The Melt (http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_textonly2.pdf)

Welcome to the forum and the addiction, sounds like your off to a fine start.

Rick

[Dutchman]

Always nice to see young lads involved in the firearms ~culture~. It really is more of a lifestyle.

How about a little bio? Military? Haircut? Been anywhere interesting the last couple years?

Dutch
http://dutchman.rebooty.com
Swedish Mausers & rolling blocks

[sniper4395]

Happy Easter everyone! Well a few hours ago at least.

The Design people sure do treat linotype like it's a rare museum artifact. I am a Communication Design major so this is understandable, but it's so much more useful when your shooting the letters out of your gun. The pen and sword combined! haha

Bumpo I love your idea with tilting the pan while heating up the dross. It's definitely worth a shot to see what I can salvage from this. Probably the mesh strainer I was using to fish out the clips and dross was just too much and grabbed a lot of lead. I did make a slotted spoon today which seems to work better.

Slotted spoon made from a stainless steel spaghetti server that I dremeled to size.
http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/1976/slottedspoon.jpg (http://img847.imageshack.us/i/slottedspoon.jpg/)

The "best" flux seems to vary from person to person from what I've read so far. Most people seem to think that paraffin or beeswax is good enough, but I like the smell of wood especially over burnt paraffin. The added reassurance that you give me that sawdust is superior or at the very least on par with wax is all I need to keep using it. Does anyone use both? That smell might arrest my lunch though. haha

Today I did try casting for the first time. It's definitely something worth getting addicted to! It really is an art isn't it? You have to pour it the right way and have the temp correct and all these little things that will be the difference between the perfect projectile or a lump of lead falling out of a half-filled cavity. In the past I've read lasc.us a few times over and tried to follow the articles, as well as what I've learned on here from everyone in other threads, to compose a mountain of silvery boolits. The results were pretty good for a first time.

All in all I cast about 2000 bullets today, but the lady wanted to help so I asked her to sort through the pile when they cooled down and throw any bad ones back into the pot. This may have been a mistake...

Susie sorting through some of my freshly cast boolits
http://img863.imageshack.us/img863/2993/susiesorting.jpg (http://img863.imageshack.us/i/susiesorting.jpg/)

The final result was 425 exactly.
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/745/bucketobullets.jpg (http://img843.imageshack.us/i/bucketobullets.jpg/)

She left no room for error, tossing back anything with even the slightest dent in the nose.
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/5820/lineup3r.jpg (http://img26.imageshack.us/i/lineup3r.jpg/)

She did help a lot by sorting through all of them for me. At least my current pile is the cream of the crop from this rookie!

As far as bio goes I'll fill that out in my profile page soon. I'm not sure if posting that here would send things off on a tangent or if that matters to anyone.

If my constant flow of pictures is bothering anyone then please let me know and I'll cut down. The first few on this thread were only resized to 50% and the ones I'm posting now are at 25% to help with some issues that people were having.

[cbrick]

The "best" flux seems to vary from person to person from what I've read so far. Most people seem to think that paraffin or beeswax is good enough, but I like the smell of wood especially over burnt paraffin. The added reassurance that you give me that sawdust is superior or at the very least on par with wax is all I need to keep using it. Does anyone use both?

One of the things you'll learn about this "hobby" is that there are nearly as many ways of doing most things as there are people doing it. Does this mean that most of them are wrong and there is but one correct way? Definately not! What it means is that there are many ways of doing the various aspects of casting and the person posting "his" way is happy with the results "he" is getting and that is the "right" way for him.

That is why as you read through the lasc.us site there are conflicting articles published. I did this on purpose, it gives a much broader view of the numerous possibilities. I do try to not pass on the "old wives tales" of casting and keep it to the more scientific, modern methods of what has been learned in recent years about casting. Joe brennan's book <Cast Bullets For Beginner and Expert> is a perfect example of this, it was written by something like 60 different authors and has much that I don't agree with (but I still published it on lasc.us) and even disagreement on some topics between the chapters.

This web site "CastBoolits" is another perfect example of numerous ways of doing things. While some posters insist on keeping their eyes tightly shut and refuse to learn anything new, this site has done more for bullet casting and passing on more legit knowledge to more casters and potential casters than any other source in history. There is more collective knowledge and experience right here than all other casting info sources combined. It can at times take some weeding through it to see what is "my Grandpa did it this way so . . ." and what really is a better way. Legitimately better based on trial, error, testing and the science of it. Sometimes it's simply that "this is good enough for me" and doesn't mean there isn't a better way.

As for your question of saw dust and wax, oils etc. together, I started using saw dust at the recommendation of Glen E. Fryxell several years ago. Since then I have never been happier, I have zero contaminant build up on the sides of my pots which waxes, oils etc, does cause and it does get into your alloy. My alloy and my pots are exceptionally clean as are my bullets. Glen has a Phd in heavy metals and is an exceptionally experienced bullet caster, when he speaks of such things I tend to listen. No waxes or oils of any type in my pots thank you. Been there, done that, never again. Are there things I disagree with Glen on? Sure, too many different ways of doing things but not very much.

Hope this somehow helps give you a broader perspective on casting.

Rick