Casting with Iron pot and Coleman Stove

[Paper Shredder]

I hear this, sniper. And I'm going to take precautions. I'll remember your advice regarding the natural fiber clothes and I've got some welding gloves somewhere.

[country gent]

I wear does skin leather gloves when casting they fit a little better and give a better feel than the welders gauntlets. Another often over looked piece of saftety gear is a hat. getting lead spatter in your hair can be really annoying. A base ball cap covers it and the bill helps shield.

[Walks]

I've actually worn cotton overalls when casting all my Life. MOM INSISTED. All her boys had to have PROTECTION when casting, our Cowboy boots too, with long sleeves too & leather gloves, ball caps & safety glasses.
Most of it was hand-me-downs from my older Brothers. MOM was real insistent. That's why we all had to wait until our 8th birthday. That just happened to be when my oldest Brother started.

BOY HOWDY ! That being able to cast bullets was more important then any party or gifts.
The only change since then is a pair of welding gloves and a full face shield when mixing alloy in the big cast iron pot over the big turkey fryer.
Since I got that turkey fryer 20yrs ago it's been a lot easier then the ancient plumbers pot. That 20lb propane tank is a whole lot better then buying white gas for that ****ed junk plumbers pot. Easier & Safer too.
I have an old style COLEMAN single burner stove that uses a 16.1lb Propane bottle. A RCBS cast iron 10lb pot is just the thing for casting pure lead balls & MAXI's for BP cap & ball sixguns and T/C HAWKENS & White MTN Carbines.

Satisfies my need for dipper casting too. After casting thousands of bullets from a bottom pour electric, it reminds me of how I started.

Although I'm thinking about one of those casting gloves that BUFFALO ARMS sells.

[Dragonheart]

Sniper I hear what you are saying, unfortunately for some they believe if they can't see it can't hurt them or it hasn't happened to them, yet, it can't happen.

But talking about a casting pot exploding I would like to tell my experience. This occurred 50 years ago in my college years when I was in an Industrial Engineering Lab. As part of the Engineering Department my University had a Foundry that could and did melt pretty much everything. Built like an industrial facility the cauldron was located in an underground gas fired pit and was utilized by chains and overhead crane/trolley system. This was housed along with other industry operations in a huge commercial like metallic building.

I was in a freshman class, which started out with aluminum casting processes. We had just finished a pour of a number of casting and had returned the partially filled cauldron back to its nest to melt down more metal. The professor went back to his office for something and instructed us to refill the pot. We had a large bins of mostly donated metals and my classmates and I were digging through the aluminum throwing small chunks of scrap aluminum into the pot. I was in the process of gathering a couple of handfuls of scrap when I turned to see one of our football players with a propeller blade from an airplane at the edge of the pit. For those that haven't guessed, the blade of a aircraft propeller is no small piece of aluminum and is several feet in length. The professor had already gone over safety issues and as a bullet caster I knew what could happen, or at least I thought I did. But at the same time I yelled "NO", our big football player heaved the prop into the pit and into the cauldron.

I have to say this was indeed a learning experience for me and something I will never forget. If you think dropping a cold bullet of drop of water in a little casting furnace make a pop you should have heard the boom when that propeller hit the molten metal. This huge cauldron literally emptied itself in an eruption like a volcano, blasting molten aluminum out of the pit hitting the top of the metal building then falling down like metal rain drops.

I had ducked behind a support beam at the time of the blast, but could hear our professor yelling, "What in the hell is going on here", as he ran from his office from the other end of the building with bits of metal still falling.

What was amazing was no one got a single burn, probably attributed to the commercial design of the facility and just plain dumb luck. Needless to say we got numerous lectures on safety and spent the remaining time and next two class periods cleaning the building.

Over the years I have often thought about that incident and seen many others where a laps of judgement or a moments carelessness has generated a life changing event.

[Paper Shredder]

This is what I've cobbled together so far. If anyone sees a major problem. Feel free to comment...

[country gent]

I too have seen this in an industrial setting. Our main metal came into the plant molten and was pumped into 50,000 lb furnaces from the pot on the semi truck this always went smoothly and little problems. Also old or bad castings were added back in to the pot as they built up to be remelted and recast. One evening they had a bunch of castings and were adding them back to the furnace to remelt after the dump and filling of the casting machines. In this container was a water bottle with water in it. this all was dumped in the pot Ussually remelt was left to "warm on the shelf for 2-3 hours before actually being dumped in. Either someone cut corners or a mix up it was dumped in with out preheat time. The cold material and bottle encapsulated in the molten metal and the water turned to steam the resulting explosion shook the whole plant and blew several hundred pounds of molten metal out of the furnace. 4 people were seriously burnt (One lost an ear). Mish metal covered most of the ceiling above the pot. Shortly after this what we called the pizza oven was brought in remelt was put in it and brought up to slump point then added to the furnaces. This pre heat start very low and brought up to temp gradually any liquids or moisture was burned off here.

[Mr_Sheesh]

country gent - Dang. Glad they fixed their process to make it safer! The Tinsel Fairy's meaner big brother gets NASTY!

Paper Shredder - Well, the obvious only - Needs lots more fuel stockpiled, lots more lead and alloy stockpiled, and maybe some ingot molds You're heading there I'd imagine A pot to melt in would be nice too but I imagine that's coming Not a bad mold preheater there!

[Paper Shredder]

Thanks. Go the pot yesterday. I hope I can resist buying too much stuff.

[eck0313]

Looks like you’re ready to “cook with gas” (couldn’t resist). In the pre-zinc WW days, I melted many a hundred pound of WW on a plumber furnace that was gifted to me. Now I prefer to render in an electric pot where I can monitor the temperature, and weed out the “bad actors” that won’t melt at WW temps. I continue to be dismayed at the diminishing number of real lead WWs we find.

My suggestion is to keep the temp only as high as necessary, and cull any weights that don’t want to melt - you probably don’t want them in the mix.