Guys I am starting all over again after many years (50 or so) not casting anything. Many years ago a marriage gone really bad & her dad being the county sheriff prompted me leaving in the middle of the night with the clothes on my back and traveling far. I had a lot of reloading gear, casting equipment, guns etc etc. No idea whatever happened to all of it as I never looked back.
Well I want to start casting again so have been slowly accumulating stufffff to do it. Managed to find a bunch of wheel weights but my old memory tells me that stuff is pretty dirty but good when cleaned up to nice lead. Don't want to put weights into my new pot so I'm going to build a cleaning set up using a propane burner, old cast iron skillet, thermocouple and a PID to manage heat using a 110 V solenoid to turn the fire off and relight it. I made custom knives for many years and used molten salts to heat treat with and a PID controlled heat at +- 5 degrees and set point was 1550 F. I am a hobby blacksmith and my forges are also PID controlled. So I will make this, melt weights in it, not hot enough just in case of any zinc, scoop out the crap, flux the crud out of it and cast into a muffin tin for ingots. Those ingots can then go into the good bottom pour pot. Any of you folks doing this?