First smelting done, casting tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone that's helped out. I smelted today for the first time and I'd say it was a success. I already had a nice natural gas burner stand that hooks up to my house's NG, I use it for brewing. I bought some decent utensils instead of the flimsy $.99 ones, glad I did. Also bought the stainless cart from Sam's for about $120, it performed quite well, I'll also use it during casting. I had already sorted my wheel weights but wasn't 100% sure I got all the zinc out and was nervous about getting zinc in my mix. Knock on wood it was easier than I thought as heating up the wheel weights give a good window to get out the zinc. I ended up catching 2 zinc weights while I was scooping out the clips. I'd say I was probably still 150 degrees under the zinc melting point at the time I got them out. I tried to get the lead to about 700 to flux and pour, the highest I ever measured it was 725. I ended up getting 85 pounds of ingots from 120 pounds of mixed weights. I'm highly considering hoarding lead as I don't see it getting any easier to get or cheaper any time soon. 3000 - 5000 pounds should last a lifetime, better get collecting.

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Nice job....welcome to the whole process!
One tip: if my eyes are correct, the smelting pot is stainless steel. Better get one that is cast iron ASAP. One of these days that pot will fail....not a matter of IF but WHEN.
Great job......a thermometer is also handy.

Congratulations! Those look great. I am jealous. I chose to work on a wood clothes hamper for our mud room. Soon, though.

Muffin tin ingots! They work great. I use a mini-muffin tin, as the little ingots fit better in my 10# Lee bottom pour furnace. Congratulations on your first effort.

I did my first big smelting today, outside in the driveway. I bought a turkey deep fryer at a pawn shop, runs on propane. And I used a stainless steel stock pot. But I will have to look for a cast iron pot according to fishforbugs above.

I was smelting down some lead pipe and roofing sheet lead. Most of this will go into Lyman sabot slugs for my shotgun. My Remington 870 with rifled barrel likes them.

But, thank you for the report and the great pictures. And again welcome to the fraternity.

MichiganMike

So why will the stainless pot fail? The handles aren't that great but they're just used at the very end when I have to pour out what I can't get with the ladle. I could see aluminum not being good due to its low melting temperature.

The SS pot is a little thin and deep, but it should work OK. A heavier SS pot (about 6 qt) from Goodwill, might be a somewhat better choice.
I'm envious, as I started with a 1/2 qt pot on a white gas Coleman, many many years ago.
Before filling the cup cake pans, allow the melt to cool to just above melt temp, and the pans will last longer. I over heated mine and the aluminum cups expanded to the point they couldn't release the ingots.

cut in old Propane tank in half for your pot

It looks like your "Beginners Rig" is a lot better than some of the stuff those of us who have been doing this for a while use. I think that you'll find that after another smelting session or two you'll probably just leave the thermometer on the shelf. Catching zinc's isn't that hard if you just keep the melt at the point where it solidifies a little bit when you drop in more weights.

I always use my thermometer. I just looped a hanger around the stem. Ends hang over the pot and thermometer stays in the center until I am ready to start fluxing. Nice job on your first smelt!

I'm curious about the dimensions of your stainless cart from Sam's. I have a use for one of those in my shop I think.
Rick

I think the cart is 49 x 24 x 39 with the wheels, shorter if you use the included feet instead of the casters.

Here's my first bullets. I was having a tough time at first since the bullets weren't filling out well but I found out my mold wasn't hot enough even though I was certain it was. Soon I was dropping perfect boolets. On my 3rd batch of lead the damn Lee valve got stuck and took quite a while to get working right again. I can see why people have a love/hate relationship with them, it worked perfect except for this. All in all I got about 700 keepers in about 3.5 hours, not bad for my first go.

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Oh and I measured just one on the scale and it came out to almost 207 grains not the 201 spec'ed, I'll weigh some more but I expect they'll all be a bit heavy. Probably something to do with the COWW alloy.

Nice boolits! Don't fret over the extra weight, just shoot them. You didn't say if you added tin to your COWW ingots. Adding a little tin would reduce the weight a little, but why add the expense if the boolits are well filled out?

No tin just straight WW.

they are fine mine rrun 205 or so

Nice looking smelting rig...I would get a steel pot old propane tank seems the way to go. I use a freon tank, smaller in diameter but has smelted over a ton of lead.wanting to cut down a propane tank soon...good looking boolits too...tx.

I cast many thousands of boolits with just straight COWW's and no tin. Then one day I picked up a new mold for .358's and it didn't like the straight COWW's at all. I started adding 2% tin and the problem went away. Nowadays I add tin for all boolits and as Larry Gibson told me I went from good boolits to great boolits all the time. It's a personal choice but one of these days if you give the tin a try I think you'll like the results.

I just looked at pure tin on rotometals and its almost $20 a pound, pretty pricey stuff.

yep.
there are way's around that if you look hard enough.
solder, pewter, garage sales, thrift stores, radiator shops...

Nice setup, sounds like you have been paying attention to what's being said here. Boolits look good, too. Congrats!

$20 a pound sounds a little spendy and yes there are ways around spending money on tin but I've been using Roto Metals for over a year now and found that a few pounds of tin goes a long way. I did an order with a friend down in AZ last winter and it broke the $100 mark so shipping was free. I usually order a pound of "Popcorn" tin (expensive) and a couple of pounds of 1/2" wire tin (cheaper). I use the popcorn tin to fine tune the weight when adding tin to the melt and the wire tin makes up the majority of what goes in. I've never trusted pewter found a garage sales simply because I don't want to get caught with fake pewter that has zinc in it and wind up with a 15-20 pound door stop in my pot.

I would definently go with the propane tank cut in half (it is what I use) and I can also tell that your muffins on the right were the first ones you poured in that muffin pan. Those bubble looking marks are from where the teflon burned off. Axe me how I know. :roll: :Fire: