Did some smelting last night....

[jdgabbard]

Well, fall break is here. And I traveled down to my home town to see my son while he's on fall break. While staying over at my old man's house I decided to get into my storage and break out my smelting gear. Ended up doing about half a bucket worth, which is quite a feat considering my equipment.

I use a coleman camp stove, and a smaller cast iron skillet (which to my best estimate holds about 20lbs). Didn't have my ingot molds here, so went to the local walmart and bought three packages of stainless steel condiment cups for $1 a piece for four(4). One skillet would fill all twelve. And ended up with about 50 ingots at the end of the session, which to my best guess is about 70lbs. But I cannot be for sure.

Noticed there were a bunch of stick ons in this bucket, which I'll smelt separately and use for black powder loads. Best part is that I have about half a bucket in storage of stick-ons and about another bucket of straight clip-ons in my storage building. So if I can get to all of these in the evenings while I'm here, I'm guessing I'll be heading back home with about 200lbs of lead to run through the molds.

Not bad for an apartment caster....

[thegreatdane]

Nice job! I use those little steel condiment cups for various things on my bench too.

[jdgabbard]

They're great as makeshift molds. When I forget to grab my smelting stuff they're only a couple bucks!

[imashooter2]

Congrats on laying in a little more for the winter. :)

[jdgabbard]

I actually like smelting and casting outside during the winter. It's been about 55 degrees here, do its just perfect without a coat for me.

I ended up knocking out the rest of the bucket tonight, totaled 36 ingots and 6 stick on ingots. So should be a little over a hundred pounds. I'll try to get at the rest in the next two days, but doubt I'll get them all knocked out. Now I just have to find a place to put them. In a one bed apartment right now until I find a good house to rent. And two hundred pounds of ingots in the living room isn't going to work for the little lady.

[imashooter2]

I do the same. Just smelted the last of my scrap last weekend when the temps here dipped below 60. I hate standing over a 700 degree pot when the temperature is already in the 90's.

[Wayne Smith]

I actually like smelting and casting outside during the winter. It's been about 55 degrees here, do its just perfect without a coat for me.

I ended up knocking out the rest of the bucket tonight, totaled 36 ingots and 6 stick on ingots. So should be a little over a hundred pounds. I'll try to get at the rest in the next two days, but doubt I'll get them all knocked out. Now I just have to find a place to put them. In a one bed apartment right now until I find a good house to rent. And two hundred pounds of ingots in the living room isn't going to work for the little lady.

Do you have a pickup truck? They are excellent weights in the back end for winter driving.

[jdgabbard]

No Wayne, I don't. Drive an Altima. However, eventually I'm going to buy another 4WD SUV, but I don't have a lot of need for a truck. Not anymore, anyhow. Maybe if I ever moved back into the country I'd buy one.

[jdgabbard]

Two question though, the battery terminal clamps are 99%, right? And have any of you seen any stick ons that were not 99%? I melted the two together, and don't have a tester to check the bhn.

[imashooter2]

Battery cable ends can be anything from pure lead to zinc.

[jdgabbard]

All these melted at lead temps. Were pretty shiny for pure, but were pretty soft too...

[imashooter2]

Just saying there isn't a standard for battery cable ends. They could be anything.

[jdgabbard]

Well I'll just assume they were pretty close to pure. And see how hard they are after they've had a few days to age. If I can't tell a difference, I'll just mix them with the rest of the allow and shoot them as WWs.

[imashooter2]

Sounds like a solid plan to me. :) I've used plenty of "could be anything" lead over the years.