Smelt and cast with one pot?

[Duckiller]

Life is simpler and everything works better if you use seperate pots for casting and smelting. With some looking you can find a suitable pot (not aluminum) at a thrift store. Home Depot, Lowe'sm, Bass Pro or Cabela's will have turkey cooker on sale. Get one for around $30.00. Will wok great for smelting. Either a Lee 10# or 20# bottom pour pot will cast great boolits.

[solman]

OP here again.
Although I used one pot for years a Lee 10# bottom pour I have never run into serious leakage problems. Maybe I was just lucky I guess. I think that I will make the move to a separate pot for smelting as all are recommending. Do I need to empty and clean the lee pot for casting?
Yes the Lee 10# pot is too small for cleaning up the dirty WW lead. I did it but it was always a pain and I also would get leading problems from time to time in my 44mag revolver. I guess my alloy was not too consistent. Is the home depot type burner enough for smelting?

[William Yanda]

Often, those having difficulties with Lee bottom pour pots trace at least some of the difficulty to debris getting in the valve. One way to eliminate this is to use a different pot, as simple as a stainless steel sauce pan, for converting wheel weights and other "raw" lead to ingots. See how I avoided the "smelting" controversy. By using a separate pot, only clean lead will be introduced to the Lee pot, eliminating dirt from wheel weights etc.

[bangerjim]

IMO, the reason so many complain about Lee pots dripping, they smelt in them & empty them. My 2 Lee pots have never been completely emptied nor do I put anything in them but clean ingots. In almost 20y, they do not leak or drip.

+++++++1 on that ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[country gent]

I have smelted cleaned or alloied ( how ever you want to say it) for a couple reasons. One when working dirty lead its easier to stir and skim in a bigger pot. The dirt and crud dosnt contaminate my casting pot doing it separate. And last in the bigger smelting pot ( mine is roughly 300 lbs) I get a bigger batch of alloy that's consistant for a longer run of bullets.

When I clean lead and alloy I do several pots full of an alloy. Ingots are 3-4 lbs each. These are labeled as to pot number and date. If I do 3 pots on a Saturday. when casting the ingots 1 ingot from eack pot goes into the casting pot together, this helps to even out the differences in the alloy pots also. Making for 900lbs of identical alloy. So instead of blending every 10 lbs I'm blending for a year or two. If your casting a lot of 22s - 32s (light bullets) then 10lbs is a lot of bullets but when you get into the 400-550 grn bullets then 10lbs of alloy dosnt go very far.

[dpoe001]

I use three pots, a turkey fryer base with a 20 gal propane tank with the top cut off to smelt my wheel weights/pipe/range scrap into ingots. Then i will ladel some of my two cavity molds while the turkey fryer is out,I also use my lee bottom pour.

[lwknight]

I'm in the "back in the day" before internet group. I bought a Lee pot and soon learned that I did not want the nasty junk in my pot after a couple times disassembling the spout to clean stuff out. So I got a cast iron skillet and burner for the initial smelt. It really does make things better.
Fast forward to now I use a turkey fryer burner and a large dutch oven pot to get things done a lot faster. I still use that original bottom pour pot but the spout is now permanently plugged so it is only for pre-melt like a nurse pot.

[mdi]

Every once in a while, whenever I think about it, I'll empty my Lee pot (Pro 4-20) and wire brush the interior (I never run the pot completely empty via the bottom pour, I just dump it). While I'm at it I'll clean and seat the needle and valve seat. I rarely have any dripping. Jes plain old preventative maintenance...

[RogerDat]

If one uses a ladle for casting, using one pot is acceptable. When I started with a SS pot on a Coleman stove, I used a ladle and was able to cast clean bullets, not so with a bottom pour pot...

I do ladle casting, have a cast iron Dutch oven from Harbor Freight that was around $25 new. Plus some smaller pots from thrift store, the ones with all metal handles are best, followed by wood, last is the black synthetic.

I use them all over the $40 fish fryer from Walmart. But after I bought that I saw decent ones for $10 at garage sales, and a very good $100 one for $40 at an estate sale. Alas my haste cost me money. But did get me up and running fast and for not much money

At one time I ladle cast and made ingots on the same burner, later I bought a Lee Magnum Melter (not bottom pour) and cast from that feeding it clean ingots only. I don't have to concern myself with clogging a spout but I just don't want a bunch of crud in my bullet casting pot.

Angle iron dropped across fish fryer to support small pot. I still do scrap solder or pewter this way. Note the all metal handle (pointed away from camera on small pot)


Harbor Freight Dutch Oven over fish fryer.


Have been known to cast from either one but mostly I just use to make ingots for use in an electric Lee pot.

The bread loaf pans are for making big slab ingots for storage. I use muffin tin pucks or angle iron ingots from molds such as DCrockett makes for feeding a Lee pot.

[mold maker]

It seems that we all started with a minimum of equipment and smaller batches. Stopped up nozzles or annoying drips soon lead to improvements. Unless you ladle pour, the second pot and clean ingots will greatly improve your boolits and disposition.

[RED BEAR]

I still use a single pot save wheel weights and scrap until their is enough to make it worth while ( over 100# 200# is better). Then take apart and clean the pot well. Use wire wheel and fine wet dry paper. Put back together and cast. I have far more time than money. One day I might get another but fore now this worked good for me. Last time I made ingots got 750# of scrap lead and 250# of wheel weights. So don't have to do it often.

[Shiloh]

You will get a lot of smelting slag in your casting pot that would best be left out of it. Clean metal in your casting pot.

SHiloh

[Tom W.]

Smelt and cast with one pot? Sure. Smelt in one and cast in one....


Yeah, I know, I'm just being a smartazz.......