New Smelting Rig In The Works

[Alan in Vermont]

I'm in the early stages of putting together a bigger/better smelter. I have a sanitized 20# propane tank for the pot. It will be surrounded with 2" of Cerawool insulation. Pot and insulation & jacket will be separate from the burner & base for convenience in transporting.

Now I'm debating what to use for a burner. I would like to get away from the roar of the burner on a plumbers furnace but I have one of those I could mount to a commercially made stand. I can buy a 200K BTU(10" dia.) banjo burner which would be quiet to work around but I'm not sure how much heat I really need. Smaller banjo burners are available. I was thinking that the 10" burner would put flame over just about all of the 12" pot diameter.

I spent some time on the 'net trying find out the BTUs on a plumbers pot burner to use that as a starting point. Only thing I found was one that was rated for 43K BTU, which seems a bit small.

I smelt 5-700 lbs. once every couple years and I'm not a patient person. Waiting for lead to melt rates right up there with watching paint dry.

What works for burners under propane tank pots that some of you guys have?

[D Crockett]

if you are only doing 5 to 700 pounds a year or so all you really need is a simple set up nothing fancy a turkey fryer and a 20pound propane tank pot you can do 700 pounds in 2 or 3 pots full one of my pots will hold 300 + pounds per batch D Crockett

[lightman]

Don't worry about too much heat, you can always turn it down. My smelting pot will do right at 400# and like you, I don't want to spend a lot of time waiting.

[Alan in Vermont]

if you are only doing 5 to 700 pounds a year or so all you really need is a simple set up

True, but that isn't what I want. I already have the "simple setup" which due to some physical issues I have trouble working with. What I "want", as opposed to "need" is to get the top of the pot lower than the current 10" tall SS stock pot on top of a propane fired plumbers furnace.

As it is I have to dig the tank about 6" into the ground in order to be (marginally) able to lift a full ladle over the top of the pot. I'm also not real comfortable with the weight all being carried on the supports built into the furnace burner. That was originally made to carry 50# of pot & lead, not the 150#+/- that it gets loaded with now.

Virtually everything I have to smelt is range scrap so there is 25-30% waste that all has to be run through the pot. This is jackets, sand if it comes off the indoor range or a mix of sand/clay off the outdoor range. To yield 700# of product I have to run right around 1,000# of "ore" over the burner. It is my experience that range scrap takes an appreciably long time to clean up than anything else I deal with.

Besides all that there is the satisfaction of using equipment that I made myself.

lightman, what is the burner you use with your setup? Any idea what the BTU output is?

[lightman]

lightman, what is the burner you use with your setup? Any idea what the BTU output is?[/QUOTE]

My burner is homemade and is really simple. Its a 1/2 X 12 inch pipe nipple with a very tiny hole drilled in it and a piece of 1-1/4 inch of pipe for a chimney, tack welded over the tiny hole. One end is capped and the other end has the valve. The hole is so small that it was difficult to drill it without breaking the drill bit. The 1-1/4 inch chimney is 4-1/2 inches and is spaced to be about 4-1/2 inches below the pot. This is all mounted on an angle iron stand, sturdy enough to hold the weight. The pot is separate. Its about the same concept as what a weed burner works on. It works off of tank pressure and is loud. I think it is around 500K BTU's. Melt time will vary depending on the material but 1 and 1/2 buckets of clip on weights will melt in 20 minutes or so.

You would need to be able to weld or know/pay someone that does in order to build a burner like this.

I have looked at the burners on Tejas Smokers web site. They offer several and post the output. I would like to have a quieted burner, possibly using natural gas, but what I have was cheap and works well. Except for the noise, its pretty loud.

[Alan in Vermont]

Made a little progress on the new smelting pot this morning. Finally had a decent day to get outside so I set the donor propane tank on top of my existing plumbers pot, put two gallons of water in it (the valve has been out for a couple weeks now and it has been filled to overflowing with water and drained then left sitting) added about a cup of TSP, then lit the fire. I screwed a street elbow in the valve hole so that if I got too frisky a boil it would spit away from me instead of straight up. After a short time with a low flame it was steaming nicely so i eased the heat up enough to increase the boil until the tank was rocking some. After 15-20 minutes I shut off the heat and dumped the water out. No more propane stink so I think I'm ready to carve the top off.

I'm leaning towards a complete Bayou Classic KAB4 High Pressure Banjo Cooker as the heat source. The complete cooker, via Amazon, is about the same money as just the burner plus the orifice & regulator/hose and the stand looks like it might be fine,as is(rated for 120 qt. water), or with minor modifications.

Now I'm debating how much insulation to wrap around the pot. 1" has to be better than naked steel but 2" wouldn't be much more expensive nor add all that much bulk to the pot. The insulation should pay for itself in propane savings over a few sessions plus making it a little more comfortable to be working near.

[bajacoop]

I use the KAB4 setup from amazon and have no problem with a 14" dutch oven filled to within about 2" from the top. That is around 200-250 lbs of lead.

[Alan in Vermont]

Baja, Thanks for the input. I really didn't want to end up with a Beta by ending up with something that wasn't going to work right. The first good day we get I plan to do a test run with the new pot using one of the plumbers pot burners I already have. It's not insulated yet but I just don't have the patience to wait for that. I've got close to 200# of outdoor range scrap "ore" to process and if I can't smelt over the weekend, which looks likely, I will work at getting a couple hundred pounds of indoor ore put together.

[Walter Laich]

True, but that isn't what I want. I already have the "simple setup" which due to some physical issues I have trouble working with. What I "want", as opposed to "need" is to get the top of the pot lower than the current 10" tall SS stock pot on top of a propane fired plumbers furnace.

looking at this problem a different way--could you dig a hole and put the burner assembly so many inches below ground? That would lower the top of the top reference to ground level

just from outside the box here

[Alan in Vermont]

looking at this problem a different way--could you dig a hole and put the burner assembly so many inches below ground? That would lower the top of the top reference to ground level

just from outside the box here

That is what I have been doing. That works alright for getting the pot lower but the ground where I do my smelting is miserable clay liberally laced with rocks. Not fun digging a hole big enough for the base I have the tank attached to.

There are other inconveniences(is that a word?) with the plumbers pot that I want to get away from. Since the burner has to be attached to a special tank/valve unit and the tanks are very expensive, over $200, I have been making do with only one in the past. Last summer I lucked into a second tank and a pretty battered burner assembly. So now I can at least have a spare tank on hand.

But, running out of fuel with a full kettle half melted, requires shutting down and waiting for the pot to cool, then recruiting help to lift it off the burner. Since there is no way to slave another tank to the special one it is quite possible to freeze the tank up and have to wait for the tank to warm back up.

Going to a new burner/base all I have to do is set the base on the ground and hook up a hose. Also, with a few $$ invested in a special hose I can buss two tanks together and ease the freezing problem. If I have valves on the connector hose I will be able to isolate and swap one tank at a time and never have to take all the heat away from the pot. I'm able to score enough free 20# tanks so I can have 4-6 of them loaded and ready to pipe in.

Besides all that I'm a dedicated gadget-head. What more need I say?

[Walter Laich]

Besides all that I'm a dedicated gadget-head. What more need I say?

I totally understand that statement. good luck on the task ahead

[Alan in Vermont]

Progress is being made, albeit slowly. I have the pot well under construction and even tried it out briefly. No insulation or new burner/stand yet, I'm going to have to peddle some "stuff" to fund all that.

For the present I'm working on things I can do with material I already have. I decided I wanted a taller second pot I could run really dirty, think mucho plywood debris, range scrap in. I have a really bad condition plumbers pot tank that I'm not even going to consider filling. The valve assembly will be removed and plumbed so it will run off a separate tank and mounted on a low stand. The taller pot can sit there with a full load of of the low grade ore on moderate heat until the plywood has burned off. I can set it downwind for where I'm going to be working and not have to deal with the smoke.

I have also gotten pretty handy at getting the valves out of empty tanks and now it's about a five minute job to secure the tank and wind the valve out.

I know, no pics or it never happened. Computer snafu is making pics iffy for me right now.

[Alan in Vermont]

Moving forward, finally. Haven't been able to do much outdoors, weather has stayed way cold for then past couple weeks and then I was down with a serious cold last week.

Ordered the big burner/stand from Amazon, should have that in hand late Tuesday. Don't have insulation on the pot yet but that can wait a while. I'm still debating whether to go 1" or 2" thick with the pot insulation. Any opinions on that?

First heat will be to consolidate a little of this/that into one uniform batch. With the new pot it will be possible to do it all at once. Then a bunch of samples go off to BNE for analysis. Once I know what I have it will be easy to make more to match.

[Alan in Vermont]

AWRIGHT!! The new burner came in yesterday and the rain held off this morning. I had most of a five gallon bucket of linotype spacers that were all over the place for hardness. So, I figured I would melt them all together and have a sampled tested so I would know what I was dealing with. The excuse to use the new pot & burner was purely secondary. Really it was.

Everything worked beautifully! I'm going to need to raise the burner stand about 6-8 inches so I won't have to bend over to dip from the pot but aside from that I'm happy. Also need to add some pegs to keep the pot centered over the burner, right now it could slide off.

And, I got pics, so it really happened!

The pot holds 3 gal., so 250# should be fairly do-able. The handle for the lid used to be part of the valve guard, reuse,recycle, etc. The lid is perforated on the side away from the handle which should also be away from the user in a (probably vain) attempt to avoid campfire smoke syndrome. The support collar is welded continuously around the outside to help get heat absorbed by the collar transferred to the bottom of the pot. I think I will add a second bead around the inside of that seam as well for better transfer. The original bottom collar is still on the tank and I will weld that solid too.

No insulation yet and I think I'll hold off for a while, just because I have more pressing things to do before the weather gets too warm. It has been cold here so far and it may snap right into 75° days at any time. I need to get ore out and smelting done before it gets too bad.

[Alan in Vermont]

I did the batch of mystery metal this morning. Fired up the pot which I had already stacked full of various ingots/chunks and 55 minutes later I shut it down with 170# of all one alloy, poured into ingots. I'm liking this!

[lightman]

It looks like you have a nice set-up. 170 pounds in less than an hour is pretty good production.

[Alan in Vermont]

That was all metal that was clean to start with so there was just about no time spent cleaning it. I didn't have enough ingot molds here so I had to wait for the first batch to cool enough to tip them out.

One issue that cropped up was that there is no way to run this for more than one batch as it freezes up a single tank in just about an hour at 45°F ambient temp. Judging from the frost line on the tank it looks like I used about a half tank between the 70# +/- of lino spacers I did Wed. and yesterdays 170#. It will take a little time to learn how hard to run it to get get best fuel consumption.

I think I have four, maybe five, 20# tanks in all and a connector to couple two tanks into one outlet. Problem is that the coupling has all POL fittings and the regulator has the new OPD style female connector.

I searched for the right adapter to go from POL-OPD locally, this morning, and came up empty handed. I have the adapter on the way from Amazon, should have it on Monday.

I was hoping to try smelt some of the range scrap I have on hand over the weekend but that will have to wait until I can get two tanks hooked to it. Over the weekend I will drag more of my ingot molds home from the club, where I last used them, and get whatever empty tanks I have filled so I will be better prepared for the next session.

[lightman]

Yeah, not having enough molds will slow you down. I usually run 8 or 9 of the Lyman style molds. Even then, after 4 or 5 cycles I'll have to slow down and let them cool off. Thats not really bad, after I have ladled 120+ pounds of lead I"m ready for a little break.

If I had not found most of those molds for a bargain I would build some from either angle or channel. I probably would size them to fit a flat rate box, just because, and shoot for something between 3 and 5 pounds.

[Alan in Vermont]

I built a bunch of angle iron ingot molds out of 1½" & 2" angle iron. It was all stock that had been used for other projects and the length of the molds was determined by the random lengths of the stock. 7" pieces worked out to the least waste for the first batch and I have kept that length as I added more molds as the stock came available. I ganged them together with whatever flat stock I had at the time. I think there's on small one that has seven cavities but mostly they are 5 & 6 cavities. I've got more angle that I have to get the rust off and I'll add as many as I have stock for again.

I'm not sure how many I have now but it's a pretty fair number. The small ingots weigh a strong 2½#, the big ones about 4½#. There is also one BIG mold which I bring out if I know I will be alloying that material. That mold makes four 19# ingots so it will make a fast dent in even a big pot of metal. I used that one yesterday along with two of the normal sized ones. There are no handles on any of them but there is provision to clamp a Vise-Grip somewhere to flop them over to tip the ingots out. Crude but efficient and enough of them(if they are all together) to handle beaucoup metal in a hurry.

2x2 mold on the left, 1½x1½ on the right, both 6 cavity.

[lightman]

Those look nice! Looks like you are ready to go.