Do I need to smelt?

[Woodchuck]

I will be starting out with a ladle style pot. Do I need to smelt first or can I just throw a few in the pot and pick off the clips?

[**oneshot**]

Best to smelt and clean the crud out before you start molding. It's not good for your barrel. Granted you can flux it and mold what you melted but unless you have a large pot your mold will get cold in between smelts and make the whole process very long.

[DLCTEX]

+1 on smelt it first. Flux and stir well , skim off dross, and do it again. When you melt the ingots for casting it wouldn't hurt to flux and skim again as clean metal makes better boolits. DALE

[HeavyMetal]

I always do the heavy work first. So smelt and make ingots! This helps in storage and allows you to have a supply of base materials ready to alloy.

My game plan has always been to have the base material's ready to go and then you can blend your alloy as needed.

The bigger the pot the bigger the batch of alloy you can make. the bigger the batch of alloy the more consistant the alloy will be.

If you decide to blend a specific alloy, like Lymans number 2, keep notes on how you did it and when. You might also consider some type of simple lot number system that can be written on the ingots to I.D. type and age.

Again consistancy is what your trying to get so that when your ready to make boolits the contents of the alloy are a constant! Then you get to blame something else for the wrinkles, lack of fillout etc etc.

[454PB]

It's no sin to cast from the same pot you smelt in, when I started out that's the way I did it. Do several fluxes and clean the melt well. Bottom pour pots are more troublesome in this regard, so try to avoid smelting in one of those.

Once I acquired a large amount of WW and other lead alloy, I began smelting in a separate container.

[looseprojectile]

in your casting pot dont't hurt nothin. I had been using my casting pot for more than fifty years to smelt my lead and wheel weights. Just last month I smelted down all my remaining raw stock.
Sure makes it easier to just drop in the ingots when casting. Also easier to tell what the alloy is.
I would flux what ever you do several times though. Cleaner is better.
Life is good

[corvette8n]

My first smelting setup was a cast iron frying pan about 7 in in dia. atop a single burner propane camp stove. I have now graduated to a 10qt cast iron dutch oven over a high pressure propane burner. I use the Lee alum ignot maker.
I've found my casting pot to be a lot cleaner when I smelt first.