Figured I would share my weekend story here. The significant other was once again unimpressed with my time management skills and the dog, though a great listener, gave the usual “nice story Dad” lick and tail wag and went back to sleep.
So the plan seemed simple enough, we held our Thanksgiving Saturday which involved the annual frying of a Turkey. Nothing like 5 gallons of of 350deg oil to produce a perfect turkey in an hour. Sunday was a cold, rainy day in Virginia so a good a good opportunity to go out to the garage and clean out the turkey fryer of its oil and melt down some lead. Still after all these years I have still yet to find a decent way to get the peanut oil out of the pot without making a huge mess. We only use the fryer once a year so the oil is not retained (tried it once but that did not work out so well). The cleanest method so far is to scoop one cup at a time with a handled mug or the ubiquitous red solo cup back into the original containers via a funnel.
The lead situation- I currently have 2 casting pots, a 20 lb Lee full of ~10bhn range scrap which I have been using for. 38 wadcutters and a vintage 2.5lb Potter full of 14 bhn for my rifle boolits. Unfortunately for me when I melted down the 35lb block of 14bhn lead with the turkey fryer and dutch oven all I had on hand was a single Lee ingot mould and a large muffin pan. The large ingots will feed the 20 lb pot just fine, but not so much for the little Potter which is where I really need them. I have about exhausted all the small ingots created on that first run for the Potter so it was time to make some smaller ingots from the large ones.
Not wanting to set up the big burner and big cast iron pot I threw 4~5 lbs of the muffin ingots into a 5lb cast iron melting pot and set it on my 1100 watt Wally World special electric burner and set it to high and turned my attention to cleaning out the turkey fryer oil pot. Half an hour later the ingots had yet to melt down so I set the electric burner to max and went back to scooping out oil from the turkey fryer one Solo cup at a time (still the cleanest method). 15 or so minutes later when I went back to check progress the bottom ingot had mostly melted and re-solidified then would melt a bit more and solidify as the burner cycled on and off. Obviously it was too cool in the garage to get the pot up to a good temp with the electric. More heat was required.
I left the melting pot on the burner and set up my Vietnam vintage M1950 squad stove running off white gas, I have a post about using it somewhere on the site.
As a side note, for those unfamiliar with these small white gas stoves here’s the general operating process. Fill with fuel, generally you’re trying to pour from a gallon can into a hole about the size of a dime, and wipe up all the subsequently spilled fuel. Funnels help but generally add to not being able to see how full tank is and adds to the spill when you pull the half full funnel out of the over full tank. Now pour some fuel back out of the stove into the can to make room for the combination fuel cap/air pump assembly and again clean up the new fuel spill. Generally the idea is to pump in about 10- 20 strokes or so of air to pressurize the system. After about 10 useless pumps or so you remember to disassemble the pump assembly and oil up the dried out leather piston seal and reassemble. Now the 10-20 pumps or so has the system pressurized. To start, hopefully far away from the fuel spill and not on anything flammable or precious, open the valve and allow some fuel to dribble and collect in the cup or wick built into the burner and light the collected puddle or wick for a nice fireball. Of course this is after flicking the empty Bic lighter a dozen times and finally tossing it in the trash and finding the “good” one. This controlled burn (ie fireball) step is important because it preheats the generator (fuel nozzle) to aid in vaporizing the fuel for the burner. About the time the flame is about to go out slowly open the fuel valve. If you timed it just right you should be awarded with a nice blue flame from the burner as the flame goes out on preheat the wick or cup. If not warmed up enough it’s now a sputtering ball of flame, not quite burning correctly, you can now play around with opening and closing the on/off valve until it warms up enough to settle down and burn cleanly or shut it all down and start from step one again. Once you reach this point you can now heat up whatever you’re heating up possably occasionally pumping the pump as the fuel level drops on a long run. This is now a good time as any to go back to the spilled puddle of fuel from the fill process and light it up and watch it burn off unless it’s on your tailgate or you’re in one of those places prone to wildfires like most of California. Once you have completed your heating task you can now set the stove that’s about the temperature of the sun aside and wait for it to cool down to be put away after opening the fill cap/pump assay to relieve any remaining pressure.
This arduous process is probably what led to the development of the kinder and gentler white gas stoves cousins, the propane bottled stoves which only require a lighter for those uncomfortable working with the balls of flame during the preheating and starting process. Once the zombie apocalypse happens and there’s no one around to make propane cylinders the white gas stoves will likely be back in vogue until the fuel runs out and we will be back to campfires.
After sloshing it around to see if there was fuel in it I fired it up and set the pot on top, it quickly started melting and I was just starting to stir the mix a bit and skim off some dross when the burner quit.. out of fuel. So set the pot back on the weak electric while I re-fueled the squad stove after it cooled off some. As is par I overfilled it and had to dump some fuel back out of it and dried it all off. Pumped it up and lit it off again into a very nice large ball of flame, just not all where I wanted it. Apparently the fill/pump port was leaking a bit and became a second burner nozzle. Grabbed it with a pair of pliers and out the garage door into the rain. A blast with the compressor air hose put it out the flames and I was able to loosen the fill port and relieve the pressure. Unfortunately in my haste to relocate the flaming object outside I snapped off one of the spot welded arms rendering the stove near useless until it can be repaired.
Sigh.. stuck again I pulled the turkey fryer burner over and sure enough the center loops of the burner grate are just far enough apart that the small pot will not sit comfortably to be worth the risk of tipping over and I don’t have anything handy as a spacer to set the pot on while on the burner.
So now I’m down to the last chance of the day, I pulled out my First Gulf War era Whisperlite International stove, a present from my wife while I was deployed. I must have burned a minimum of 50 gallons of jet fuel through it while we were deployed over there doing everything from a gallon of coffee for our vehicles crew in the morning to MRE and T-Rats in the afternoon and a whole bunch of ramen noodles in between. The last time it was put to serious use was following Hurricane Isabell in 2003 when the power was out for 2 weeks to make coffee in the morning, a priority at the time (it occurs to me that that is also likely when I bought this can of fuel). I filled it with fuel, pumped it up and it promptly started leaking from dried out O-ring for the on/off/control valve. Not wanting to repeat the squad stove fireball, a new O-ring later we were off for try 2. Pumped it up turned the valve to fire it up and again another leak at the bottle to burner connection. O-ring #2 installed and now leak free. It lights up perfectly after the flaming, I mean controlled pre-heat, it was burning away just like the day I got it and a credit to the manufacturer.
I retrieved the still pre-warmed pot of lead from the electric burner and set it on top, 5 minutes later I had molten lead which was skimmed of dross from the pot, was poured into a new to me Lyman and Lee Ingot moulds that were preheated on the electric burner.
Not wanting to tempt fate any further and I had not yet lost any eyebrows or arm hair I shut it all down and went back to the final scrub out of the long emptied turkey fryer. 3 hours later I finally got that darn turkey fryer pot cleaned up and stored away til next year.
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