wooden ingot molds

[Willoughby]

I was asking a friend about what he used to cast a lead ingot he was showing me , and he said that he cast ingots in hollowed out regular old pine 2x4s ? - Im guess gonna try it -
but I think Ill make it 8' long with dividers instead of trying to hollow it out Ill just screw 3 2x4's together and add dividers every 6"
he also showed me some wooden molds he uses to make snag hooks (lead weighted treble hooks)
has any one here ever used wood to cast lead
also has any one here dropped lead into water to make small irregular lead pieces -instead of normal ingots ?

[VHoward]

It works fine. The mold does eventually burn away, but you can get many uses out of it. I wouldn't just screw 3 2 x 4's together to make the mold however. Use a plunge router bit to carve out the center part and taper the wall slightly out from bottom to top.

[dsbock]

I did this for my pewter ingots. I had some hardwood flooring scraps and used a router to create an ingot mold. There are metal volume calculators you can use to get the dimensions to make your ingots a specific weight.

I'm also planing on doing something similar to make decorative item molds to use up some of the zinc wheel weights I have piling up.

David

[GoodOlBoy]

back when all I cast were fishing weights as a teen I used 2x4s and plywood for ingot molds. I could cast plenty of ingots before I had to worry about replacing wood. Yeah eventually you burn it up, but it is what it is. My great grandad did all of his melting in a metal coffee can using a pair of pliers to lift and pour it after pulling it off the fire. Most of his sinker "molds" were holes punched in the sand in his driveway with a finger or a stick. Years later he got molds as a gift, I don't know that he ever used 'em as much as he did the sand.

GoodOlBoy

[country gent]

Wood can be used life span is much shorter than metal due to burns and cracks breaking if casting stick. But can be done. I have made 1 time use moulds from sand, wax image and plaster of paris. Set these moulds on top of pot while heating to make sure they are completly dry. and on plaster of paris to melt out wax image. Alot can be used for 1 off or short use moulds.

[bhn22]

However pouring molten lead into water sounds a bit too adventurous for my tastes.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

wooden ingot molds

WHY ?
when a "professional" looking 4 cavity ingot mold can be as cheap as $9.99
http://www.natchezss.com/lee-ingot-mold.html

[GoodOlBoy]

no I would never just pour molten lead into water unless I was making something like swan shot where you pour in a wee bit at a time through a pattern...

GoodOlBoy

[Mal Paso]

WHY ?
when a "professional" looking 4 cavity ingot mold can be as cheap as $9.99
http://www.natchezss.com/lee-ingot-mold.html

3 pounds at a time? 1/2 pound ingots? I used 400 of the Lyman 1 pounders cast by someone else and found it much less conveniant than 2, 5 pound ingots in the Lee 4-20. As cute as those are I'd use a 2X4 first.

DRY WOOD! Trapped steam will launch lead.

[Walter Laich]

used wood all the time to make ballast for radio control sailplanes.

[bangerjim]

Just make sure it is dry! I personally would never do it because I have a dozen pro molds. And I like ~1# ingots!

banger

[Cowboy_Dan]

At an estate sale a few weeks ago, I found a couple of jars of mystery metal of some sort. It is a bunch of little flat blobs that look like the maker just poured drops onto a hard surface. Haven't done anything with it yet, but I am hoping it is tin rich, and the purpose of the "ingots" is to add a little tin at a time.

Strange enough, I didn't see any other evidence he was a caster of any sort, but it was the last day of the sale. I asked a lady who was obviously in charge if she knew what the metal was. She told me she was afraid of it and she thought it was Mercury. When I told her I thought it was lead, she told me I could just have them.

[claude]

back when all I cast were fishing weights as a teen

Was that (with a smile) just before dirt was made?

[GoodOlBoy]

no we had dirt, we just had to make it ourselves from rocks

GoodOlBoy

[CastingFool]

I cast some slugs to slug .30 cal barrels by drilling 5/16" holes in a piece of oak. worked just fine. A finer grained wood such as maple would have worked well, too.

[Rustyleee]

Old mountain folks used to make bullet molds out of soap stone.

[upnorthwis]

I've made several weights for inserting into stock for recoil reduction. Forstner bit drills hole in pine mold and stock.

[mold maker]

As a boy, Dad showed me how to cast hollow sinkers, by pouring lead into holes in our NC red clay. The steam would erupt leaving a hole through the center. We called it "Pour n Duck", but it worked.
Yeah we were an adventurous lot.

[C.F.Plinker]

I made several wood ingot molds out of old 2x4s and found out that it took quite a while (over a minute) for the ingots to solidify. Other than that they worked fine.

[too many things]

JonB its the nature of this place to do the CHEAPEST way possible . No matter the time
love the post about pouring lead into water.
Hey bubba watch this.