Tempted

[jawjaboy]

Was reading a thread on another forum about the theft of metals to be sold for scrap by your local crackheads. One post was an article about the theft of S/S beer kegs from brewery's for said reason. It reminded me that I had a couple of these out at the barn. 15.5 gallon stainless steel. I have a 12 quart cast iron pot already. The one below, I cut out years ago to be used for cooking, as in boiling big batches of peanuts, low country boils, crab boils, etc....but I never use it. I'm "tempted" to cut it down to about 8-10 gallons and use it to smelt with. Shore would make shorter work of things. What cha think?

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g194/jawjaboy/IM000290.jpg

[pumpguy]

I like the strength and stability of my cast iron dutch oven. I got it from Harbor Freight. They put them on sale all the time.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=44705


Whatever you choose, just make sure your burner can support the weight. Remember lead is a tad heavier than water!!!!!!

[Scrounger]

Lead weighs about 24 pounds per quart. Eight gallons would be pretty close to 800 pounds. I get nervous thinking about that much hot stuff at once.

[crabo]

The Harbor Freight 12 quart dutch oven is on sale right now for $11.00. I called yesterday.

[ANeat]

I think the key when youre smelting is having a decent sized pot.... and enough ingot molds. If you have a 800lb pot of lead but only enough ingot molds for 100lbs you will spend an hour or three?? melting 800lbs of lead. Pour 100lbs of ingots, wait, pour, wait, etc etc.

If you have your 100lb pot, like many of us use. Melt 100lbs, about 1/2 hour; pour into ingots, melt another 100 pounds, when its ready the ingots are cool enough to dump, on and on.

Almost an assembly line approach without any bottlenecks in the flow hopefully.

Doing it like that I can process a lot of WW in a good half a day. Probably 1000 pounds if I got that much around. Personally I try not to get that far behind because then you spend the rest of the day stacking ingots.


Jawja; like you said; I think that big stainless keg would look better with some crab legs, crawfish, corn on the cob and taters in it

[mtgrs737]

Sounds like a good idea, however it might be a little too much to work with and take a lot of fuel to keep it hot enough. You can't beat cast iron for smelting, it holds the heat well and lasts a long time, thin SS could become brittle over time and with that much lead it would be deadly.

[carpetman]

I get the impression that some of you guys would buy a 4 wheel drive,diesel, air conditioned cab tractor to mow your lawn and an 18 wheeler to go grocery shopping. A mere 100 lbs of lead would be 2800 250 grain bullets. 250 grainers are much bigger than what I mostly shoot--lets see my 95 grain .243's would be 7368.421 bullets or my 58 grain .22's would be 12,068.966. Ingot molds for 100 lbs? Am I missing something? Do you guys dump the molds and refill? Maybe not. That might explain all the group buys on molds--enough molds to handle a 100 pound pour. Well better go mix up a small batch of FWFBL,I have 400 pounds of caranuba wax from cheese wrappers and 4600 lbs of beeswax,gallons of baby oil,got to make a batch to last me through next month as I have some Dr appointments coming up and may not have the time otherwise. Going to mix it in a cement mixing truck,have an old Army tank with a flame thrower for a heat source. .

[Scrounger]

You will have to forgive CarpetMan, his last job was in a clock...

[ANeat]

Carpetman here are my ingot molds. There made from channel iron and cast about 5lb ingots. I have 3 that cast 6 ingots each and one that casts 3 ingots. There made from scraps and cost $0

Your figures are right. WW and bullet metal in general are getting more difficult to find every year. Over the past year or so I have saved up a good bit myself. Ive probably smelted down large batches 3 or 4 times, might as well make it effecient. :drinks:

As bullets get more expensive I am happy in that fact that even if I never pick up another wheel weight I have enough for several years of shooting.



http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h165/aneat/Image033.jpg

[13Echo]

Carpetman,

You should get into BPCR. The lightest bullet I cast for the .45-70 is 405 grs and most are 500grs or more and the 50-70 Trapdoor takes a 450gr bullet. Thats 14 bullets per pound of lead for the 500gr projos. 30lbs of alloy doesn't last long if you like to shoot so you tend to collect a lot of lead.

Jerry Liles

[Drifter]

jawjaboy,
Those SS beer kegs make real good moonshine-stills but for smelting lead I'd go with a cast iron pot. The one I use will hold about 100# of melted lead and I've never had any problems with it.
Drifter

[jawjaboy]

Well, y'all done went 'n took ~'bout~ all the wind out'a my sail! ;) Reckon I'll just leave 'em under the barn a few more years. [smilie=1: