Newbie questions for casting

[flrwizler]

Hello Group,

I've been reading posts here for a week or so and now its time to ask a few questions. But first a little information. At the beginning of the summer my uncle passed and I inherited all of his casting /reloading equipment and materials. Included are lead ingots about the size of a loaf pan (9"x4"x5") and weigh55 to 60 lb each. Each is marked as to what was melted. There are 55 marked WW, 31 marked Pipe, 33 marked roof. There are also several buckets of ww, many pieces of pipe and a pile of lead "sheet" to be melted. There is also a few half full buckets of reclaimed lead shot,and a bucket full of mixed cast bullets.

The smelter my uncle used is rusted badly in the time that he stopped using it and now. I would not use it as it seams rather thin on the bottom.

I'm planning on building a new smelter with a bottom pour. It will be 12" steel pipe with a 3/8 thick bottom plate. Im going to put a shroud arond it to help insulate and block the wind. I want to melt the ingots and pour them into smaller ingots that will fit into a Lee 20lb pot or somthing simalar.

Questions
Does melting lead to many times hurt or change the lead?

Will meling lead that is hardend take it bake to a soft or as cast hardness?

From experiance what is the best size or shape of ingot for a lee or simalar pot?

Is there a place where you can send a sample ingot and have it's alloy tested?

Should i melt as many large ingots as my new smelter will hold and make large batches of small ingots to be kept seperate from the next batch, or, get a melt started pour and keep adding to the melt?

Thanks in advance, Frank

[mooman76]

Welcome to the insainity! So many questions. You probably will get many oppinions but this is what I would do. keep the ingots as they are seperated. He obviously set them up to keep them this way. You can always mix latter on when you get some experience and figure out what they are better. The roof and pipe lead should be soft but that is just a guess on my part as these items were usuallymade of soft. You can usually compare them apart by trying to scratch with your fingernail. Not scientific but it will give you an idea which is harder.
I would melt them down into no bigger than 1# ingots. Anything bigger changes the pot temp as you add too much (as you are moulding bullets) and interups your work. If it cools down your melt too much you have to stop casting and start over when it heats back up. Shape doesn't matter too much as long as it will fit the pot.
You can melt lead as many times as you want That's one of the great things about it. Little waist. You mess up bullets, they just go back in the pot.
Remelting will not affect natural hardness of your lead. If it has other metals in it to make the lead harder like antimony and tin, it will remain the same. The only thing that will change is water dropped lead. Hot bullets can be dropped in water to change their hardness but this canot be done with pure lead, it has to have other metals for it to get harder.
You can get a hardness tester to test the hardness or ask someone here to help you out and send them some samples.
I wouldn't melt it all down myself, it sounds like you have quite abit but that is really up to you. I'd get a good working amount of lead to start out. Like maybe 100# of each or so. I have close to 1000# of lead and got tierd of making ingots so after awhile I made large ones to make them more manageable. Keep them marked good, you don't want to remelt them and not remember what you got. I use a majic marker myself but there are many things you can use. My larger ingots I marked with a chisle because I knew they would be around awhile. Good luck!

[snaggdit]

Hello Group,

I've been reading posts here for a week or so and now its time to ask a few questions. But first a little information. At the beginning of the summer my uncle passed and I inherited all of his casting /reloading equipment and materials. Included are lead ingots about the size of a loaf pan (9"x4"x5") and weigh55 to 60 lb each. Each is marked as to what was melted. There are 55 marked WW, 31 marked Pipe, 33 marked roof. There are also several buckets of ww, many pieces of pipe and a pile of lead "sheet" to be melted. There is also a few half full buckets of reclaimed lead shot,and a bucket full of mixed cast bullets.

The smelter my uncle used is rusted badly in the time that he stopped using it and now. I would not use it as it seams rather thin on the bottom.

I'm planning on building a new smelter with a bottom pour. It will be 12" steel pipe with a 3/8 thick bottom plate. Im going to put a shroud arond it to help insulate and block the wind. I want to melt the ingots and pour them into smaller ingots that will fit into a Lee 20lb pot or somthing simalar.
This would work, but I would be cautous (sp) about the bottom pour. You would need a ball valve that would only allow a smaller controlled flow or you will have a gushing stream of molten lead rushing out (not good!). The weight of the molten lead in the pot will cause the stream to be MUCH stronger than water. My advice, get a good steel soup ladle (like from a thrift store) and use it to transfer the melted lead to an ingot mold of your choice. Muffin pans work well to make one pound ingots, but avoid tin ones since the ingots will solder themselves to them. Commercial products are also available from lyman and Lee Lee ingot mold (http://www.midwayusa.com/viewproduct/?productnumber=361222)

Questions
Does melting lead to many times hurt or change the lead?
Nope

Will meling lead that is hardend take it bake to a soft or as cast hardness?
If you have heat treated hardened boolits, remelting will make them as soft as the original alloy

From experiance what is the best size or shape of ingot for a lee or simalar pot?
Muffins, lyman or lee ingots or home made angle iron ingots all work well

Is there a place where you can send a sample ingot and have it's alloy tested?
I think you could find a place but the cost would be unreasonable

Should i melt as many large ingots as my new smelter will hold and make large batches of small ingots to be kept seperate from the next batch, or, get a melt started pour and keep adding to the melt?
You can get a melt started and keep adding ingots but do not mix the types. And unless you buy a dozen molds you will be needing to wait for the small ingots to cool so use that time to melt another large ingot into the melt

Thanks in advance, Frank

Welcome to the addiction! Just use the search function a lot and if you can't find an answer post it here and we will do our best. We were all where you are now at one time (although some of us had to scrounge more for their stash :-o). Sounds like your uncle had everything labeled well. I would recommend you only smelt an ingot or 2 of WW first, and maybe one of pure (pipe or roof should be close to pure). This will give you a bunch of small ingots to begin casting with. Once you get familiar with casting and try loads you will determine what alloy you want for a given gun/load. Then you can smelt more as needed. Unless you start shooting 500 rounds each weekend, 100 pounds will last you a long time. I assume you got some molds with the stuff, too, right? Once you have ingots, post again and we can try and help you pick one to start with that will allow you to learn with less interference. Some molds are trickier to get working well.

[canyon-ghost]

:coffee: From what I've gathered reading, your pipe, roof and sheeting are all soft lead. If he was pouring mostly pistol bullets, that would makes sense. WW mixed with pure makes a soft pistol bullet that won't lead the barrel.
As far as ingots go, one pound ingot molds are made by all the manufacturers, other than that, any size ingot you can fit into the pot is usable. Nothing uncommon there, I have some sheeting, and wheelweight along with linotype. Pure lead can be used for muzzleloaders, alloyed with wheelweights for pistol bullets and to make slugs. WW, depending on whether alloyed with pure or used straight can be heat-treated to a hardness for high velocity rifle.

Have to admit some envy, wish I was that well supplied.

[malpaismike]

Being fairly anal, I started with 300# sheet lead, 150#ww and 100# soft lead ingots. Ingots were RCBS, ~1#; bal of ww and sheet I smelted and poured into muffin pans from Dollar Store. Muffins are ~1 1/2lb, stack easily and fit boolit melting pots. I now have 500# ww, so am thinking about bigger melter--cuz I know I'll do it again. hope this helps mm

[fredj338]

Whether you mix up an alloy from what you have or just remelt, that depends on what you want to cast. Just about any ingot size upto 1"x3"x5" will fit into most 20# pots. The Lee 10# really maxes out w/ the 1# or dbl. 1# ingots. I have some ingot molds from 3' channel iron that make a 2#-5# ingot & I usually go w/ 2.5#-3# max fo rmy 20 & 40# pots. It does take a bit more time to come back to temp in the 20# but only about 5min. if I keep the pot full. Adding 3# ingots to the 40# doesn't even drop the temp 20deg.
You can go w/ three diff. 1# ingot molds; Lee, Lyman & RCBS to keep track of the diff. alloys or just write the alloy on the ingot w/ a Sharpie. I wouldn't put much money into building a smelting pot. Cheap dutch oven w/ a ladle works fine.
The roof lead & plumbing lead are probably near pure lead. The ww could be clip-ons or tape & clip-ons. It would be nice to know. What you could do is get a lead hardness tester & make up some 1# ingots & test tham a few days after casting & sort tyhem by BHN. For ingots, you would need a Lee or http://www.buffaloarms.com/browse.cfm/4,5924.html

[JIMinPHX]

"pipe" ingots are probably melted from lead pipe
"roof" ingots are probably melted from lead roofer's flashing
Both of these are usually "dead soft" pure lead (about 6 on the Brinnel hardness scale)

"WW" ingots are probably melted from wheel weights. If you slow cool them, they will come up somewhere around 10-14 Brinnel (BNH). If you water drop them, they will probably come up about 20-25 BNH. If you heat treat them carefully, or if you mix them with richer alloys, you can get them even harder than that.

You can melt pure lead as many times as you want & nothing will change very much. If you heat the WW over & over again, some of the other metals that are alloyed into them will cook off & oxidize. You can get most of it back by fluxing the crud that forms on top of the melt.

Most guys use 1 pound ingots. Many guys use ingots that are 2-10 pounds. What is best for you depends on the size of your pot & how much lead you use up in a casting session.

Many of the guys here on this board have hardness testers. If you tell us roughly where you are located, someone in your area may volunteer to test yours for you. You can buy a hardness tester from Lee for something like $50. It's not the most convenient one to use, but it is accurate. Many of the guys here on this board prefer the tester that is made by Cabintree. I believe the guy that makes them is a board member here. I'm sure that someone here can give you his contact info if you want to get one of his.

Don't worry too much about a smelting pot being rusty. If you can't bang a hole through it with a hammer, it's probably fine for melting lead. The rust will not mix in.

[JIMinPHX]

Hardness tester info -

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?p=677244#post677244

[45-70 Chevroner]

The Brinell hardness of pure lead is 3.9 Machinery's Handbook. Not trying to be too technical hear but It helps to know where to start from. as for your dellima with all the stuff you have I would get a Lyman reloading manual and read ever word on casting and molding bullets. There are some veriations on melting lead and making bullets as the Lyman information is not allways gospil. But it is a good place to start'