I melted down about 40-50 lbs of sheet lead with a pound or two reclaimed .22 pellets from my pellet trap. I had all my PPE and was using one of those Lee 20 lb production pots.
It went... ok... for a while.
It seemed I had to constantly adjust the screw to keep the Lee from rapidly dripping... and it would go from not dripping, to randomly almost going to a solid stream.
Finally, (user error) when I was spooning out some dross, I popped the little rod out and... well... it was a good time!
I managed to catch most of it out of, what was the last pot anyways, and I've since cleaned it all up and put the rod back in. I'm kind of meh about the Lee pot as of now. I'm not sure if it's all me or if I got a finicky one.
No burns... a small pile of pure lead put away and I've got about as much in weight worth of wheel weights to melt down... then I can start casting some SWCs for my .38!
Some of the lead has a slight purple hue to it... nit sure if that's from running too hot. I had it at around 1/2 most of the time when pouring/spooning to clean... with it cranked up when trying to melt down the sheets.
Now that I've done a little... I can *definately* see why folks go with cast iron pots and propane stoves.