I see some of you guys melt hundreds of pounds of lead at a time.
I'm just trying to reduce large chunks and range scrap into clean stackable 1-lb ingots that will later melt easily in my electric Lee and Saeco 24 pots. These little pots are too small for melting junk and I don't want to dirty them up. Dross and dirt get stuck around the rod for the bottom valve. It's just easier to melt, skim and flux scrap in a larger vessel.
For the burner, I looked all over the place and couldn't find one, so I took caster jmort's suggestion and bought the $60 210,000 btu burner from https://www.webstaurantstore.com/bac...554BPHP17.html
But notice the tips of the 1/2" support rods, while strong, don't come together closely. They're designed to hold a large boiling or turkey fryer pot. When I put my smaller cast iron pot on it the first time, I felt it was not stable.
I also consider the burner to be mounted too low -- the flame is too far from the pot's bottom.
And the burner is so wide that a lot of heat was escaping around the pot, slowing the melt and wasting propane. My initial melting test took forever for the lead to melt and I felt a lot of heat/propane was wasted. It could be more efficient.
So I --
1. Welded 2" extension rods onto the existing tips to bring them closer together. Much safer now, especially for smaller pots.
2. Raised the burner about 2" so the flame is closer to the pot. This was a matter of drilling holes in the sides of the main body and finding longer 6mm x 1mm pitch metric screws.
3. Made a stainless steel heat-conserving ring that's about 2" wider in diameter than the burner.
(You could cut a 5" section/ring from an old 20-lb propane tank, and gain a melting pot too, but I haven't found a source for the dead tank yet.)
This ring directs heat to stay around the pot and not dissipate. It also protects the flame from drafts.
It started as a 6" x 47" piece of stainless sheet metal that I've been saving for 20 years because it was just too nice to throw out. You could use thin galvanized sheet metal or whatever you have laying about.
I trimmed it to 6" x 38" or so to create a ring that's about 12" in diameter. It could have been 5" x 38". I used 6" because my piece of stainless happened to be 6".
I slotted it so its top edge is about 4" above the surface of the support rods, so it is more or less even with the rim of the pot. I punched holes for 1/2" conduit fittings with an electrical box knockout punch (I could have drilled, but sheet metal is tough to get a nice hole with a large drill) and cut the sheet metal using my ancient Harbor Fright electric sheet metal shears that cut a 1/4" strip between two cutters, leaving a flat, clean edge.
Melt begins 3:52 PM
That hunk of lead is about 25 pounds. I was tired of kicking it in the garage and wanted to reduce it to manageable size. I have another giant full-size commercial ingot that's about 55 lbs. I'll need to cut it in thirds, I believe.
Anyway, the improved burner melted that chunk in 15 minutes. Not bad in my opinion.
4:03 PM, block tipped over. Note to self: lay the block over, don't stand it up. It fell over into the pot suddenly, with a clunk. No spillage but...kinda scary.
4:07 PM, Ready to pour
I poured some of the lead into my old 4-cavity Saeco mold and some into my homemade V-mold which I welded together from 1-1/2" x 1-1/2" x 1/4" thick angle iron. I angled the cuts on the ends of each of the four V's by 5 degrees so the blocks could fall out easier. May weld a handle to it so I don't need to use ViseGrips when inverting it to let the ingots fall out. The ingots are about 1.3 lbs. My working surface is a sturdy cast aluminum patio coffee table, a piece of particle board on top of that and a piece of Wonder Board tile backer on top of that.
To remember the alloy, I stamp letter codes into the ingots using a Harbor Freight 1/8" Letter Stamping set: PB for lead, WW for wheelweights, RS for Range Scrap, etc.
This was a test, but a successful one. Very pleased. Thanks to all who contributed to my previous post where I asked what kind of Big Burners and molds you guys used.