did a bad thing...tinsel fairy paid me a visit.

[mozeppa]

so there i was melting 110 pounds of lead when i remembered that i had about 2 pounds of range scrap
and poured it into the hot lead.....

somehow a live shell case (primer only) was mixed in.....and pow!

next thing i know hot lead hits everything within 10 feet! ........me included.
got a burn on my right eyelid and below the same eye.

thank GOD for it not getting into my eye! my shirt has splatter all over the right side and is ruined.
the floor in my building has a lead covering of 7 feet diameter there is lead on the walls and on the 10 foot ceiling.

yes i was stupid! .....i wasn't wearing eye protection.
lesson learned the hard way.

i was in very close to the explosion....and am lucky to have only 2 pea sized minor burns
on my face.

wear safety goggles!

try not to beat me up too bad....this will never happen again without the safety glasses!

now ....excuse me whilst i go buy a lottery ticket.

[Beagle333]

lesson learned the hard way.

But fortunately not the real hard way. :shock:

Whew!

[RogerDat]

Thanks for sharing a reminder on safety so that others may profit from your misadventures.

[Yodogsandman]

You got real lucky! Glad you'll be alright!

Get some pics of you scraping the ceiling for the lead.:kidding:

[Ragnarok]

Yeh...safety first!...I had my 'tinsel fairy' visit a couple years ago. I was lucky...was melting lead in a small pot in the garage...was wearing a hat..glasses..and a heavy long-sleeve shirt(was cold in the garage)....I had washed some dirty lead..and left it outside to dry for a day or so. Put some more washed lead in the pot..and must've been some moisture in it or on it. Lead melted down and then made a 'pop' shooting molten lead everywhere...including on me and on the ceiling, wall, floor, etc.


I suffered no injuries...even though I got a fair splattering of molten lead....stupidity caused it but luck saved me! Now I wear safety glasses..a hat and a heavy long-sleeve shirt when I melt lead

[hendere]

Glad you weren't hurt worse and thank you for the reminder.

[MaLar]

A lot of us have been visited by the tinsel fairy.

[Baron von Trollwhack]

For penance you must advise all newbies you encounter in anything related to liquid lead of your experience. The duty is in the warning. Bvt

[TXGunNut]

Tinsel fairy sounds funny but she's a mean b****.

[Minerat]

I told the wife is was a new silver safety coating for the tool box when she visited me.:smile:

It was very callous for me not to first say - glad you're OK.

[Muskyhunter1]

Glad you are ok. Lesson to be learned wear eye protection. Thanks

[EDK]

The tinsel fairy never sleeps...and will burn your a** in a heart beat!
I'm cheap and wear safety glasses all the time...work paid for an exam and a pair every year. Now I'm retired, but they're still worth the money.

[w5pv]

The only time I have been visited by the fairy was when I poured the smelt into a ingot mould with a spiderweb and spider in it.Burnt in several places on my arms and I consider myself pretty lucky could have been a lot worse.

[Dan Cash]

Glat you survived. Save the shirt; cut it up and feed it to your melt. You will recover your lead and flux at the same time.

[Beau Cassidy]

Glad you are OK. I have come close to putting live rounds in the mix on a few occasions. Luckily I have everything in ingots now.

[groovy mike]

Glad you are ok, thanks for the reminder. I tend to walk away from range lead when it heats so I'm not near the smoke billowing out of the pot as dirt and debris burn away. Avoiding the tinsel fairy is ANOTHER good reason!

[osteodoc08]

Glad you're ok. It happens when we least expect it.

[mozeppa]

here's this mornings picture ...as i said ...one pea sized burn on the eyelid ...one same size below eye.
picture taken after trying to get the swelling down...was completely shut this morning.
i was VERY LUCKY!

127411

[Foto Joe]

To help remind me that complacency will bite me in the rear I left the lead splatter on my garage wall when it happened to me. Luckily when mine happened I heard something funny immediately upon putting wheel weights into the smelting pot and had time to turn away and get just out of range before the explosion. No skill involved, it was just luck.

[Harter66]

Glad you're ok .
My visit had lead in my beard and hair as well as the roof and garage door . A chip from the pot was found some 20 ft away at the back of the garage. It is believed that a 9mm found its way into the hand presorted range buckets . Lots of you have seen these,I only had 3-4 blisters, the arm there was in a well worn jersey type long sleeve tee .

127421
127422

[freebullet]

Whew...I'm glad you didn't loose yer eye. Harbor freight sells a clear flip up face mask for 3$ that's what I use. It don't fog up like goggle type safety glasses and allows ventilation behind it.

When I smelt scrap down I do it about 150-200 lbs. at a time. I wear cotton pants, long sleeve cotton shirt, a cotton ball cap, and when near the pot or pouring ingots I add welding gloves and the clear harbor freight face shield.

I had a friend over to learn how I do it. Couple weeks later he calls me up at 10pm. He had 150 lbs melted over a wood fire with ingots stuck in his only muffin pan and zero ppe on hand. It was as if he didn't hear anything I said. No ppe- none and it was starting to sprinkle. I told him to make a makeshift roof over it and brought down gear to ingotize his melt. I explained again the risks. Said he thought I was exaggerating the risk. He learned from the little tiny micro splatters on his wrist why I wear the welding gloves. I told him how he almost coated himself, his, & his neighbors house in 700 degree liquid metal.

He still doesn't take the precautions I do. I hope you do.

[Markbo]

Holy **** were you lucky!

[Shiloh]

Glad you weren't hurt seriously. What did you learn??
You were taught a lesson and the potential burn scars are price of education. Cheap I might add. My dad (RIP Dad), always used to ask the same question when I did something wrong, dangerous or got lucky like you did. "Did you learn anything??"

Hot lead showering you and the area is a sobering thing.

Shiloh

[R3104D3R]

Glad you are OK. I have come close to putting live rounds in the mix on a few occasions. Luckily I have everything in ingots now.

Ingots may not be completely safe, either. Moisture in the ingot mold, pour the ingot, it sets... Some weeks later, one of those ingots blessed me with the tinsel fairy. A brief moment of violent boiling gave me just enough time to move back a couple feet before it volcanoed, spraying mostly straight up. Yeah I still wear some of it. My instinct was to raise my eyebrow in curiosity and look into the pot... My wisdom was to back the F*** away.

[ShooterAZ]

I have a small floodlamp over my casting area, so I can see better. This past fall I had a big moth buzzing the light, and apparently he got a little too close and ended up in my melt pot. He popped and sizzled a bit, but no tinsel fairy. The thing that I remember most is that fried moth smells terrible.

[odfairfaxsub]

Man this happens to everyone all the time in some way. I have a box in the reload room where I throw my nasty bullets that have tons of wrinkles or tons of deformeties or whatnot. I took the box and put all those bullets in my lee pot to melt....walked away from it and I heard a couple small explosions. Turns out there was like 3 live primers in there. Can't emagine what it woulda been like if I threw that box into a melted kettle of lead

[georgerkahn]

You are indeed blessed and lucky burns were above and below the eye. I do hope your recovery is quick, complete, and scar-free! And, THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS!!! Thirty years ago, while grinding steel, I caught a sliver of steel in my left eye which necessitated a hospital visit to have it drilled out. And, a couple of days ago saw me grinding in my shop sans any safety glasses -- even recalling what happened to me three decades earlier. How complacent one (I) gets??? Yes, I too have smelted many, many pounds of "stuff" in my attempts to produce boolit alloy ingots. Your incident reminded me that complacency's NOT the way to go -- I'll surely be donned in my leather welding apron and plastic face shield next time --and hopefully EVERY time -- I'm out there!
BEST RECOVERY WISHES!!!
georgrkahn

[dondiego]

I learned long ago to never add scrap to an already melted batch. Strange things happen.

[tazman]

Where I worked(now retired) we used large lead pots as a heat treating medium. They ran at 1500 degrees. Once a week we would dip all the lead out into large molds(approx 75 lb) so we could replace the lead pot itself.
These ingots would sometimes develop cavitations as they cooled. Usually it was just a deep dimple similar to what you get on a sprue when casting boolits except larger. This one went deep and wasn't readily visible. Turns out someone poured water into the hole. No idea who. Probably someone who had no idea the problems it could cause.
The operator put that ingot into the lead pot to adjust the depth of the lead. When it blew it took half the lead out of the pot(maybe 600lbs).
Most of it went straight up but enough came out at him to cause second and third degree burns across his stomach. He was in the hospital for 2 days and off work for 3-4 weeks while his skin healed.
After that we changed protocol for adding lead bars to the pot. We were required to lay the bar on the edge of the pot until it was hot enough to boil water before we could add it to the mix.
It is always a good idea to make sure there is no moisture on anything you are adding to a hot lead pot.

[Seeker]

Who could rightly beat up on you for owning up to a mistake? Glad you are alrght. You know, someone was watching over you. You are a lucky man.

[Markbo]

... The thing that I remember most is that fried moth smells terrible....

Thats funny stuff right there now.

[Polecat]

I met the Tinsel Fairey at young age. when us boys (11 or 12) would get a hold of some lead we would melt and cast it in a coco can lid that was our siver dollers. Well I had some leftover lead so I bored a hole in the ground with a tablespoon started to me pour an ingot. Thats when SHE showed up. I got a few burn nothing bad but I was very impressed.

[hornady308]

I would like to second the Harbor Freight full face shield. Its cheap insurance against an eye injury. I read recently that one of the fastest growing reasons for debt is accidental injuries.

[Sticky]

Glat you survived. Save the shirt; cut it up and feed it to your melt. You will recover your lead and flux at the same time.
LOL

From a newb, thanks for the reminder of how dangerous water and lead alloys can be!

[leeggen]

It is my policy to sort thru all wheel weights and scrap lead for those pestky shells that hide in the bucket. Glad you were not hurt any worse.
CD

[Orchard6]

I've been visited too. I used to use ingot molds made from angle iron and found out the hard way one day that rust does indeed hold moisture. Thankfully I heard and saw what was going on and turned away. A few splatters on my blue jeans and about 2 pounds of lead on the floor cured me from using rusty steel ingot molds. Got a couple nice shiny new aluminum molds now!

[TXGunNut]

I invited the Tinsel Fairy by pouring some leftover smelt into a rusty cast iron saucepan that was lying around. Never figured out what was in there but I heard the sizzle and ducked. I'll be getting one of those face shields, need one when I run the string trimmer too.

[MaryB]

maybe a cheap galvanized garbage can with vents but around the bottom the turned upside down over the pot when melting down questionable scrap, at least contain most of it... double duty as a wind block too...cut a slot for the regulator and hose to hang out of. Could get tricky and add a chute to slide lead into the pot without have to lift it off...

[wistlepig1]

Glade it wasn't too bad and you were very lucky. I hope you recover quickly.

[GaryN]

Another thing to remember: don't wear synthetic fabrics. They melt and stick to your skin. I know a guy who was in a cabin fire. The only ones that made it out alive were wearing wool. The synthetic wearers all died. He was in the hospital for a few weeks.

[retread]

My visit from the tinsel fairy was when using sawdust for flux. Keep in mind that saw dust from wood that has been inside for a long time still will hold some moisture. Let it burn on top of the melt before stirring into the melt. I had lead flying but was lucky I was well covered with proper gloves, clothing and safety glasses. Definitely will startle the H*** out of you.

[onehousecat]

so there i was melting 110 pounds of lead when i remembered that i had about 2 pounds of range scrap
and poured it into the hot lead.....

wear safety goggles!

try not to beat me up too bad....this will never happen again without the safety glasses!

now ....excuse me whilst i go buy a lottery ticket.
I can't berate you because I did something just as bad. It was at least thirty years ago when I received my visit from the tinsel fairy. I was not wearing goggles because they were just too uncomfortable in the summer heat. Even though I wear regular glasses, a droplet arced over the lens and hit my right eyelid. It did not damage my eyeball, but it scared the **** out of me (got what looked like a case of measles from other droplets). She has not been back to see me since, but I still wear goggles any time I plug the in the pot just in case. In case you are wondering what happened, I picked up a piece of lead off the floor, examined it for moisture, did not see or feel any, and dropped it in the pot. It is astounding what such a tiny amount of moisture can do when it gets below the surface of melted lead. Ever since that day, if a piece of lead hit the floor, I reserved it for the next casting session and put it in the pot *before* pluggin the pot in. Hard lessons are long remembered.

[mjwcaster]

I use a similar saying with my daughter- How'd that work out for you? Won't do that again, will you?
I have only been at this a short time, but have found myself getting complacent at times.
Take a break, then decided to check on the pot for something, and then realize that my face shield is on my head, but in the up position.
Forget to check that I am not wearing any synthetics.
Pick up a spoon and shove it into the melt, not lay it on top to heat up (casting on a real humid/wet day in between rain storms).
Get impatient and try to cast in between rain storms, should have just waited until another day. Knew as I started it was a bad idea, I was just impatient. Ended up getting everything set up and melted when the rain started again and I had to quit.
Yes I have to cast outside for right now, on a coleman stove.
Just start pouring full blast into a cold ingot mold, should heat them up or at least pour a little at first in case of moisture in the mold.
While I only add cold lead to a cold pot, I have cheated a few times and added lead before the pot cools off.
Why, it only takes a few more minutes of time to let it solidify and remelt, and lessens te chance of the tinsel fairy.

I need to slow down and take a little more time, before I have the tinsel fairy show up.
And since I know better, it will be my own fault.

If I don't start following my own safety precautions, my daughter will be asking- how'd that work out for you?

As much as she hates my sayings like that, I'm sure she will use them someday with her kids, along with- 'Stupid is supposed to hurt' and 'if your going to be stupid, you gotta be tough'.

We also make lye soap and I've had a moment or two when I did the same type of thing, started a batch and then had a little hot soap fly out of the pot. Stopped and went out to the garage to get my face shield.
Should have had it on in the first place.

Thanks for the reminder, now if only I will listen.
Matt

[R3104D3R]

Come to think of it, my tinsel fairy was not from an ingot. Yes I had a bunch of ingots that sounded like they were boiling water out of them, not enough to splatter. My tinsel fairy visited when I transferred molten alloy to a cold cast-iron pot that was enameled but had flaked a bunch previously so there was exposed, rusted, iron. As mentioned earlier, rust contains water, in the form of hydrated ferric oxide.

[DeputyDog25]

Very,very glad you are not hurt too bad. Very good learning experience for all of us.

[Side by Side]

I always try to remember the safety gear, but there are days I forget

[noob-leader]

I had a similar experience happen several weeks ago. I have two reloading benches, one with the machines and the other with case prep stuff and powder measure. I keep my lead under the case prep bench and had a ice cream tub half filled with oddball cast boolits that i needed to remelt. Well who here hasn't spilled some primers before? One must have bounced in that ice cream tub and when i was spooning some boolits into the furnace POW! Not sure how it happened but i didn't get a drop of lead on me but it pretty much covered everything else. I picked each boolit out after that.

[echo154]

I had a visit when I dipped my Lyman pouring ladle straight into the pot to stir some flux….cold ladle+hot lead=:dung_hits_fan:

[Certaindeaf]

Probably a molecule of moisture. That'll happen.

[Blanco]

Looks as though everyone else has covered most of the how and why. I learned early on to put the safety gear on around molten lead.
My little Lee 4-20 pot is the one that got me good. Dropped a fresh ingot in the pot and it just splashed. I happened to be wearing shorts and a blob the size of a quarter landed on my exposed knee. It cooled quickly and I ripped the still blistering hot splatter off and took a nice chunk of skin with it.
So ... wear long pants, along with all the other.
Lessons can be a bitch..... learn the first time

[Foto Joe]

A number of years ago I received 2nd degree burns on my right hand due to shall we say a severe lack of good judgement and about 50gr of black powder. The friend who I was with inquired several times about taking me to the ER and I declined each time. The last time he asked he ended his statement with, "Well I guess if you're gonna be dumb then you'd better be tough."

[3leggedturtle]

Man that sucks. Watched that happened to a friend, it flew everywhere, don't lnow why I didnt get hit. We were reloading and somehow a primer went flying and we could not find. Never thought to turn pot upside down and check.