First melt questions

[BigSlick]

Hi guys,

I'm new here and a stone cold casting newbie. I've been reloading for about 20 yrs for 10 calibers both rifle and pistol.

I love to reload, I'm cheap.. err... thrifty and got my first taste of casting at a buddy's house last week.

I'm not certain, but it looks like I'm hooked on another aspect of reloading and shooting. I like adding a new dimension to the sickness.

I've learned (finally) to ask questions, learn about the process and get my facts straight before I spend the first dime. The only problem now, is I'm startin' to jones a little... I got to get started casting or I am going to need therapy for wasting all that money on commercial bullets.

The first thing I am going to tackle is doing the first melt and pouring ingots. I have been told, an aluminium muffin tin will work just fine for this.

For a furnace, I am looking at the Lee 4-20 bottom pour or the RCBS unit. The Lee unit is less than ?? the price, so I will probably start with it to see if the 20lb capacity meets my needs.

I think I will need something different to do the initial melt. I hope to make enough ingots to last for a while. I have been told, doing so with a small pot will run you nuts and sometimes take almost forever. OK, I can see that, but what are my options ?

My initial thought is to buy a big aluminium (30 qt) or cast iron fry pot (16 qt is the biggest I can find so far) and run it with my 175,000 btu turkey fryer burner and a thermometer. Using it to melt and make the first flux then use a dipper to drop the lead into the muffin pan(s) for ingots.

I have been told, the first melt of salvage wheel weights is a pretty nasty thing. Lot's of foul smoke and lot's of work.

I don't mind the work, this is a hobby, and it can potentially save money on bullet costs.

The large continual stream of foul/toxic smoke won't be too big of a PITA for me, but I am wondering about what the neighbors will notice/think. It is my hope that I can do this somewhat on the QT. I live in a suburban neighborhood and not all of my neighbors are shooters. Some are known anti's.

How can I minimize the smoke and smell ?

What't the most efficient way to make ingots quickly ?

Any suggestions for an equipment list ?

At this point I have a turkey fryer with a hell of a burner setup a few toy budget bucks and a whole lot of desire, with a shooting habit that won't let up.

Any comments or suggestions are most welcome. For the first time (if you knew how old I am you would realize how long it has taken to learn) I hope to keep the wasted money spent to a minimum.

Thanks for letting me just barge in like this, I will do my best to use the search function and not ask too many stupid/lazy questions.

I need some help from the BTDT experience you guys have.

BigSlick
________
New jersey marijuana dispensary (http://newjersey.dispensaries.org/)

[454PB]

I don't think anyone on this forum will recommend aluminum for smelting....too dangerous. It's possible to get near the melting point of aluminum while smelting, the pot fails, and you have molten lead on you feet, and everything else. The turkey fryer will work fine, as long as whatever base you use to set the pot on is strong enough times two.

For an ingot mould, it is probably fine. Lead won't stick to aluminum, and heat is shed fast enough that a failure is unlikely.

I use three Lee lead pots, two of the 10 pounders and one Pro 4-20. I like them, they have a few warts, but for the cost they are very durable and long lived. There are other more expensive and better built bottom draw pots available, since I don't own one of those, I'll let someone else tell you about them. My philosophy is to spend as little as possible to first learn if this is "your thing" before diving in. You can always sell the less expensive stuff and upgrade later.

[jballs918]

big,


if you have a harbor freight they have a dutch iron, best 14 dollars spent other then the 5 for the 7 hole cast iron cornbeard tray

[Crash_Corrigan]

I agree with jballs918, we are both in Vegas besides; get yourself one of those large dutch cast iron ovens with a top. I got mine in belz mall in a kitchin store. Bass pro shops has a dandy selection of cast iron stuff and I just last week picked up some tiny 3 1/2' cast iron ash trays with the bass pro shops emblem on the bottom. I do not smoke. They make dandy ingot molds and at only $4.95 I bought 8. I fill 'em with molton lead whilst they are perched on a handy 2 x 4 hank of wood and when I have about 4 filled I put down the ladle (a worn out soup ladle rescued from my trash bin) and carefull place the loaded 2 x 4 on the concrete deck to cool while I load another 4. About as soon as I get the 2nd four loaded the 1st set are cool enough to dump onto the floor. (You might want to keep your dogs, cats and kids away) and pretty soon your cast iron pot will be empty and you will have a pile of 3 1/2 " 3/4 thick round little ingots all over. They store well and do not take up much space. They also fit into my Lee 4-20 molding pot really well. I love it. One of our members suggested using a cheapo set of vise grips to hang onto the actuating rod to prevent leaks. Boy was that a good tip! Also BruceB, another Silver State resident, had the idea of keeping a small tray containing a towel or a rag soaking in water handy. This will be utilized to cool off the sprue plate on your mold oncst the sprue turns color from molton to silver. Flip over the mold and hold the hot sprue plate whilst is sizzles. Ya keep it on there for up to 3 seconds and they open the sprue plate and you won't get lead smears on the top of the mold. By the way hold the mold upside down after that operation and dump the boolits out upside down into a bucket of cold water. It should be covered with a piece of cloth with a slit in it. This will prevent any water from splashing up onto your work area and heaven forbid into your lead pot. Check BruceB's posts on this site. He is good....real good. There is a ton of info on Lee 6 banger molds. I have about 5 of them and I love them. They are fast and easy and put out a lot of boolits cheaply. I am going to try out some of the bull plate lube next as that seem to be a good deal also. Lurk on the forum and read up on past posts. There are a ton of decent people here who all were newbies at one time. I use wax that was wrapping cheese for a flux and it works just fine. If any of the nosy neighbors want to know what you are doing TELL THEM YOU ARE MOLDING SINKERS TO GO FISHING WITH! Good luck, Dan Corrigan :castmine:

[Bass Ackward]

Slick,

Welcome to the most expensive money saving hobby ever created. At least that's how my wife describes it. Welcome to the board.

You can seach this forum for the exact same questions that have been answered many times. The reading is worth while because of what you didn't think to ask.

Smell from WW is caused by things that burn. Clean / seperate your WWs ahead of time and this is minimized. You can sort through your WWs at the same time so that you can remove the ones that are pure lead and possible zink ones which are the real no no. Keep some canning parrifin on hand and if it starts to smell too bad, throw in a chunk of that. It will burn for all get out but it tends to get it over with quickly instead of dragging it out.

Remember, you can load up and take that setup out in the country somewhere that you don't have to worry about cleaning and just do what needs done.

[Wayne Smith]

I'm in the midst of suburbia and have had no complaints. Of course, years before I got into casting I was smoking meat, so the neighbors were used to smoke coming from my back yard!

I cast with a ladle and melt my lead on an old Coleman stove hooked up to a 20lb gas bottle. I have no problem with the set-up and have been using it now for about five years. I initially melted lead in an old castoff 1 qt kitchen pot, and still use it for pure lead. I bought a Lymna 20 lb pot and use that for ww's. In fact, I just bought another old 1 qt pot at a thrift store to use with my 20/1 mix.

With two burners going I can, and have, cast two different mixes with two different molds at the same time. I have also used this to cast bi-metal bullets. It's cheap and handy.

[44man]

You won't get a bunch of smoke unless you get a bunch of valve stems in the pot. I never have any smoke, just a little stink and once the steel clips are removed and the metal fluxed it all goes away.

[9.3X62AL]

The smell.......just do what Buckshot does--he gets into his Official Summer Weight Smelting Uniform (campaign hat, jockstrap, and huaraches) and tells nosey neighbors that the smell is from "the sacrifice". That should set the proper ambiance.

[Edward429451]

If you think WW's smell bad, you should try old plumbing drain lines sometime. Whoa!

I use a cast iron dutch oven for rendering down lead & WW's. 2 bucks at the thrift store.

[sundog]

...yea, and old shower pans. sundog

[ANeat]

Hey Slick; Glad to see you over here. Lots of great help and info. Ive been reading stuff for about a week now:coffee:


Adam

[cherok9878]

Slick
You are in the right place. there is more knowledge here, shared willingly, than any other shooting, loading site.
The Harbor Freight Dutch oven works great for the initial melt and any old soup ladle will work as long as it is steel. Watch out for the plastic handles.
I am new to casting also and saved a pile of $ by reading and applying the info to my situation.
Fired two groups yesterday with 03A3, 06 and Lee soupcan, 50 yd, three shots cut each other with one flyer in each group. I would not have been able to accomplish this, without this site. "It is the greatest source of casting info on the net". Welcome and Have Fun............larry

[Calamity Jake]

Don't but your hot lead on the concrete floor the heat will cause the concrete to break and chip out, dump um out on a piece of plywood or the like.
Use cast iron or thick walled stainless steel pot for smelting WW.
I smelt WW once or twice a year so my neighbors don't complain.
Just about anything works for flux, candle wax, motor oil, cooking oil, sawdust,
bees wax just to name a few, what ever you use, flux and skim well (5-6times) before pouring.

[mooman76]

Bigslick
The smoke is a little exagerated but it is there and it does stink so it's not something you want to do in the house for the initial melt. After it is cleaned up you can do it inthe garage or something as long as you have good ventalation. You could probubly find an old cast iron pot at a thrift store or garage sale for cheap. I sometimes use beer cans as a ingot mold. They come out to about 9#. You want them to be absolutely dry though. Liquids and molten lead don't mix and can explode! Make sure you don't use steel muffin pans or you will be pounding them out when they set up. Happy moulding!

[Edward429451]

<sawdust>

Huh? For real?

[Leftoverdj]

Yeah, neighbors should not be a problem because cleanup and ingot making is a once or twice a year thing. I use the turkey fryer, large dutch oven, and cornstick moulds. A bucket of WW at a go is about all the turkey fryer wants to melt. Any larger would be slow. Takes about three of the cornstick moulds to avoid having to wait for the alloy to solidify.

I agree about keeping the moulds and hot ingots off concrete, but I would not use wood to do it. Tried that once and got charring and a pine resin stink that was about as bad as the pot. I have some scrap soapstone slabs around, but if I didn't, I'd pick up a concrete paver or two at a home improvement store. They might crack, too, but at a couple of bucks each, I can live with that.

[wills]

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[montana_charlie]

My initial thought is to buy a big aluminium (30 qt) or cast iron fry pot (16 qt is the biggest I can find so far) and run it with my 175,000 btu turkey fryer burner and a thermometer. Using it to melt and make the first flux then use a dipper to drop the lead into the muffin pan(s) for ingots.
That entire description sounds pretty good, BigSlick...except for the size of the pot.

A large dutch oven is about eight quarts, which is easily more than 50 pounds of alloy. A sixteen quart container...full of lead...might crush the legs of your turkey cooker.
CM

[Dale53]

One gallon of molten lead weighs 92 lbs. So, you really don't need a gigantic pot. Just make sure it is cast iron or heavy steel (mine is welded up well casing that holds about 80 lbs). A wide pot is better than a tall pot for several reasons (will not tip as easily, easier to remove debris, and easier to dip from.

The friend that made mine up made a heavy duty bail that hands OUTSIDE the range of the turkey cooker fire so it never gets super hot. When I dip out most of the lead, I can pick up the container and pour the remainder into the ingot moulds. Using angle iron, I had him make me up a three or four ingot mould. This does five pound ingots. Scrap angle iron is inexpensive. You don't need ALL of them to be one pound ingots although small ingots (one lb and under) are handy when calculating lead alloy percentages.

I also keep a small, inexpensive calculator next to my scales to calculate alloy percentages. Very helpful.

Dale53

[44man]

The most important thing for shooters is NOT to have neighbors----You should live out in the country and have a range. That is the first problem to solve.

[stocker]

When I get a few hundred pounds of used wheel weights accumulated I wait till late evening or later and then go check out my local car and truck washes until I find one that isn't busy (there's only three in town). I dump the weights along a wall and go at them with the high pressure car wash nozzle. Sometimes I even wash the truck. Valve stems get bounced right out. Soap and rinse. Nearly clean enough to use again.
Take a small scoop shovel to load them back in buckets that have drain holes in the bottom. Let them sit several days to be sure there is no water in them and you're good to melt. Sure beats any other way I've tried to clean them. And, no mess at home.

[waksupi]

<sawdust>

Huh? For real?

Yup, real! Any carbon based thing you can put in the pot, will flux it.

[jar-wv]

I'm also a newby to this and am telling you info I've learned here, along with my own obsevations. I actually go thru the pain of sorting my WW. I get to the house with a few buckets full and put on the gloves and sort em out on the tailgate. Trash in one bucket. Soft stick ons in another, and clip ons in another. If they got rivets on em they'r most likely zinc, and they go in the trash bucket. I don't pressure wash my weights or car wash them. Thought about that and decided I didn't want to chase them all over the place. I smelt on a coleman LP stove in a 6 qt stainless stock pan bought brand new for $4 at a liquidators type store. I had the coleman stove on hand and never use it for camping. I spent about 9 bucks to get the stuff to use a large LP tank like yo0ud use on a bbq grill. You'l go thru a ton of the little tanks if you don't do this. I also sprung for a thermometer to make sure I didn't get any zinc weights in the mix. I found that with the setup I have it is damn near impossible to melt zinc, which melts at "I think" 783 degrees and the few zinc weights I've encountered spoon out with the clips, which float to the top. I flux with parrifin or stir with a wooden stick. If you flux with parrifin make sure you do the stirring while it's smokin heavy or on fire. If you use a stick to stir and flux be careful of the lead thats going to jump due to the moisture in the stick. while stirring during the flux try to stir air down into the mix and scrape the sides and bottom of the pot. With my setup I can do a mix that yields slightly over 100#, but that is probably over max for my grill and stove. Is a lot of weight for something that was designed to fry bacon. Make sure whatever you use for a base is capable of holding lots of weight. For ingots I use pop cans. One will hold about 6.5-7.5#. I cut them off at the top with sicsors. It takes them a while to cool. when cool I just strip the aluminum off the outside. Ya can't do it much cheaper than I do for smelting. I use a muffin pan for my ingots from the soft lead stick on weights. Mine is on of the steel ones that is not recomemmended from on of the earlier posts. I used Frankford Drop Out in mine and the ingots dropped out well. I have seen it posted here that grahite spray lube from NAPA is the same thing and much less expensive. For casting I have a 20# Lee bottom pour pot. Theres no better place to ask about anything casting as here.

jar

[Blacktail 8541]

Dale 53, is right on the money with his advice on pot size and type. I thought I needed the big deep pot also. I found out it is a real pain to dip lead out of. And very slow to boot. The 16 qt dutch oven is probably the biggest size that is useful, not to deep and plenty wide. Also when you are melting that much lead it takes all the heat a turkey fryer can produce to keep it in a liquid state when full.

[Goatlips]

Howdy BigSlick!

You got a world of good information above, but no pitchers as yet - here's a few you may find useful:

http://goatlipstips.cas-town.com/smelting.html

You're in the right place to delve into this insanity. :bigsmyl2: Good shootin' pard

Goatlips

[Howdy Doody]

Goatlips, great pics. Good job. I think that is the first pic I have ever seen of you. By your alias I had another pic in my mind. You will do:-D You probably have something in mind of what I look like too.
Yup, the muffin tins is the set up I use. The casting of the circus animals is right along thesame lines of stuff I do,but in my case I am a bit devious. I cast soldiers out. I paint them up and I take them to my favorite tire shops and give them to them to use for paperweights. In return they like to give me free buckets of wheel weights. I always bring them a bucket back too. I have never paid for weights yet. I do pay for pure lead though, but a good deal from roofer on that gully sheets keeps me casting balls too.
I sure wish I had a neat set up like yours. :castmine:


yer pard,
Howdy

[Dale53]

Goatlips web site should be VERY helpful to newbies (AND also some of us "Oldbies").

Dale53

[BigSlick]

Thanks for all the info guys ;)

I read in some of the posts, that the flux will usually light up. That's not a problem, but am I to understand the burning will help cut the smoke ? When I witnessed my first melt (RCBS Pro Melt), the black smoke looked like the derned house was on fire. The casting from ingots was a little smoky, but not much.

I think I will go with an 8 or 10 qt cast iron pot. I hadn't thought of the fact that melted lead takes up a lot less space than wheel weights.

Here's a pic of the burner setup I have, the burner shown is kinda Mickey Mouse, I burned it out in two seasons of chili and gumbo cook offs. I replaced it with a honkin heavy duty three row unit.

http://www.turkey-fryers-online.com/images/bayou/deluxea.gif

I use the pot mainly for gumbo, so it isn't a waste. The base seems pretty heavy duty, but I will make sure I put some paving stone of some sort underneath it just to make sure I don't sink it into the ground from the weight of the lead.

I run a 30 lb tank to fire the burner. I usually easily get three hours plus out of a tank running it full blast (175,000 btu). I'm thinking I can get the first pot melted withing the first half hour, and add to it carefully until full enough to still flux safely.

I know for a fact the stand pictured above will support 55 lbs or so of weight with no problem (5 gallons peanut oil, 12-13 lb turkey and the pot). I will dump a few cans full of bullets on it to make sure it can support more weight.

I have found a 1000 F thermometer, so that should work, I dropped by the local second hand outlet today and picked up a few cast iron corn bread ($4 each) and aluminum muffin tins ($2.50 each, not too wide but 3" deep), a couple of big slotted spoons, a big soup ladle (cast iron $5) and three boxes of broken up dinner candles (.29 cents each)

I saw a few decent sized dutch ovens, but I want to get a camp dutch with the legs on it, so I can drop the legs inside the frame so (I hope) it won't slide off if I jar it by mistake.

Dale53, thanks for the info on the weight on melted lead. That helps a lot. A 16 quart dutch would probably weigh way too much to handle safely on a small scale setup.

Excellent website Goatlips. Good to see some pics and a narrative that is easy to understand. Hell, this LOOKS easy :-D

Good to see some familiar faces here, I knew a couple of you guys had the sickness bad, but it looks like some of you have it awful bad like me ;) I usually hang out at THR, TFL and GT and a couple of other reloading forums. I couldn't resist getting into the good part of shooting any longer. I wanna make my own.

Thanks again for the kind welcome and the help. I will get the rest of the goods together and get my first melt done next weekend.

I'll snap a few pics so you guys can have a laugh or two. I'm not expecting to make perfect bullets the first time out, just melt a bunch of weights without burning the neighborhood down or poisoning myself.

If you happen to see a report on CNN that looks akin to Ms. O'Leary's cow being on the move, not to worry, it was just me ;)

BigSlick
________
Starcraft 2 Reps (http://screplays.com)

[Duckiller]

BS
I use the same cooker to render wheel weights. Suggest you may not want legs on your dutch oven. With a load of lead you are going to have to bump it REAL hard to make it move. If you do need to move pot i.e. to dump the lead you can't dip out, it is easier with a flat pot. To make your gas last longer, run close to wide open until the weights start to melt then turn gas way down. Doesn't take much to keep lead molten and you won't melt something you do not want to melt, like zinc.
Duckiller