Off the wall question

[armoredman]

Has anyone tried casting the really old way, over a fire? I am sure it would be der riguer for musket balls in pure lead, but I was wondering if a traditional fire pit would be hot enough for casting modern metals. Just curious, thanks for any replies.

[beagle]

I have done that and I have also cast in a firplace in cold weather which ain't half bad as the fumes go up the chimney.

It works but there are two definite problems.

#1. You have to wear gloves on account of the heat.

#2. It's hard to keep the heat constant. A good supply of fairly small kindling is required or the melt wil get cold on you.

And another thing is you must have a firm support for the pot.

I have a big batch of fire bricks ratholed. I'd intended to make a sort of blast furnace setup for smelting WWs using wood and an old vacumn cleaner for a bellows.

But, getting back to your original question, yes, it will work but is not the most desirable setup.

I've also cast on the wife's electric stove but that creates problems with management./beagle

[carpetman]

Armoredman---You want to be authentic,you have to use buffalo chips. When people had the unpleasant task of going into Oklahoma,they ran out of bullets. Either shooting rattlesnakes or Indians or buffalo. There is not a single tree in the whole state so buffalo chips had to be used. Many of the people crossing Oklahoma were enroute to New Orleans with a shipment of ice cubes from frozen lakes up North. A wood fire will melt lead,but using wood would be akin to having a chuckwagon equipped with a generator and electric appliances.

[45 2.1]

What you really need is an old laundry stove, set up for coal or wood, with the cooking ring removed with an adaptor Lyman used to sell holding the cast iron pot hanging down in the firebox. Not a bad way to spend winter days.

The old timers, if out from civilization, had a small mold that had metal handles they wrapped with buckskin to keep from burning their hands and a ladle they poured with and melted the lead in. Production was just enough for their use. Not many were cast at a time.

[montana_charlie]

Has anyone tried casting the really old way, over a fire?
Uhh, yessir.
During those 'rendevous shoots' that lasted three days, and everybody camped out in tents, it was usually necessary to refill your bullet pouch for the next day's matches.
If you can manage a bed of coals well enough to roast a rabbit without ruining it, you can cast bullets on an open campfire.

A 20 inch by 10 inch fire does well when you set your lead on one end...and use the other end of the fire to get wood burned down to coals - which you rake under the melting vessel.
If your wood is uniform and your coal pile is kept at the same density, your alloy temperature will remain pretty constant.

I used a skillet that was about two inches deep, and seven inches in diameter.
That is kinda shallow by todays standard, but it was stable on the coals. Since the molten lead (pure lead) wasn't very deep, it was the only time I found the Lee ladle to be the best choice...and it's capacity was sufficient for 128 grain round ball.

There was plenty of snappin' and cracklin' with embers and ash landing in the skillet, so you were fluxing (pretty much) all of the time. Having a wide top surface, it was easy to nudge crud out of the way to fill the ladle, while the overflow (and cut sprues) was allowed to just drop back into the melt.

The heat produced by good coals is plenty for pure lead, and other (modern?) alloys don't even require that much.

A rendevous shoot is supposed to be a return to earlier times and practices, and I found open fire bullet casting to be a natural...and satisfying...part of that experience.
CM

[Ricochet]

Pure lead has a higher melting point than any of the "modern alloys."

[snuffy]

I melted lead in a draft controlled wood fired furnace. It required just the right damper setting to prevent smoke from coming out of the front while the door was open. But it supplied plenty of heat to melt whatever alloy I was using at that time, rather quickly also. IIRC I didn't cast anything, I was melting sprues and a few WW to make ingots in a small lyman CI pot. Capacity was maybe 10 pounds.

[scrapcan]

you can melt aluminum with charcoal briquets. You can also melt ww and lino with charcoal briquets. but as stated you may want to protect your hands while doing so, the lead pt will get hot.

[waksupi]

Has anyone tried casting the really old way, over a fire? I am sure it would be der riguer for musket balls in pure lead, but I was wondering if a traditional fire pit would be hot enough for casting modern metals. Just curious, thanks for any replies.

I've done it quite a few times, and there was a thread on using buffalo chips about a year ago.
One of our shoots, the contest was to shoot a mark on a chunk of firewood, split the ball back out with your tomahawk. Start a fire with flint and steel, melt the ball and remold it. Load, and shoot a mark again to win. Fastest time I recall so far, is around 22 minutes.

[armoredman]

COOL! Thanks, now I can get to work on my emergency firepit...I mean outdoor barbeque. :) I was wondering about that, have this wonderful ladle a gentleman here sent me, and just need to find a good lead pot to hang over the pit.

Beagle, I always wear thick leather gloves, eye protection, and an apron.

Carpetman - gah. No buffalo out here, and I don't think dried lizard turds would work as well.

Waksupi - I wish I could go to one of those contests, sounds like a blast...no pun intended.

[TCLouis]

Of course 300-400 pounds of molten wheel weights or lead have quite a bit of radiant heat in addition to the coals used to keep it molten while I cast all those ingots. Casting ladle is a 1 quart pan with a 2-3 foot long rebar handle. This is why I went to multiple 1 1/2" angle iron ingot molds and by blind luck came up with molds that average 1 pound.

It is an all day project and best done in the dead of winter.

When I go to the effort to orient them correctly the angle iron ingots also fit nicely in the Lee 20 pound pot when I get ready to cast

[JIMinPHX]

My brother & I cast some ingots from pure lead by hanging a steel pail over a 55-gallon drum with a wood fire in it. We picked up the bucket by using a metal hook that was about a foot or two long, then poured the bucket into the ingot molds by tipping it with a pair of pliers. It was kind of clumsy, but it worked. It was really surprising how fast that bucket would cool off & start to solidify once you got it out of the fire. The ash that fell into the bucket didn’t seem to cause any trouble. It was kind of like automatic fluxing. Air holes in the bottom of the drum made the fire burn a lot better.

[Wayne Smith]

I have a footed melting pot that's supposed to be a copy of the original little pots the frontiersmen would carry with them. It holds maybe enough lead for three or four round balls. It's all cast - that handle gets hot! I've used it with my fireplace and with an open fire. Montana Charlie's right, it's coal management that's important.

[montana_charlie]

Carpetman - gah. No buffalo out here, and I don't think dried lizard turds would work as well.
Are those lizards...or newts?
You might have a valuable resource there.
CM

[woody1]

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=28654