Me and Biggin just finished smelting our last haul. Photobucket dumped all of my older pictures so I thought I would post some new ones.
This is my smelting pot sitting on my homemade burner. We dump the clips into the dutch oven and the metal can sitting on the floor.
This is Biggin standing beside the pot as the pine sawdust burns off.
This is the pouring zone with the ingot molds lined up on a piece of 1/2in steel plate used as a heat sink. We can do about 3 cycles before they get hot enough to cause us to pause.
This is the landing zone where the ingot molds get dumped. We line them up neatly to aid in counting them. We have had as many as 7 layers at a time.
This is Biggin's cut of the finished product. This was not our total, just his part.
This set up is not much different than what many of you do. By my count, we processed about 5700# of lead over the last few weekends and produced nearly 2 30 gallon barrels of clips. We've tried to make it as user friendly as possible while minimizing the amount of turning, bending and stooping required and to reduce the number of steps that need to be taken.
The burner produces around 500,000 BTU's and the pot will hold about 400# of molten lead. Loading it to about 350# per batch leaves enough room in the pot to flux, scrape and stir. The ladle is a Rowell and the ingot molds are a mixture of Lyman style molds.
|
   
   
|
|
Reply With Quote
