I used a plumbers pot for smelting for many years, I melted down several thousand pound of WW and linotype with it. Unfortunately, when I moved to a new house two years ago, the plumbers pot didn't. All my ingots did make the move, so I really had no need to do any smelting on a large scale until recently. A friend gave me two counter weights from his small tractor, which are pure lead and too big to get into any of the casting pots I have.
I stopped by an appliance repair shop near my home, and asked if they had any electric range elements that had been removed from scrapped stoves. They did, so I bought two matching elements for $2.
My casting/reloading room is electrically heated, plus I have a 40 amp 240 volt outlet for my welder. I made this rig up in about 30 minutes as an experiment, and it worked very well. The supporting base is a coffee can that I stabilized by filling it with 30 pounds of lead. The heating element has three metal supports incorporated that fit into some notches I filed into the top of the coffee can. I also had to cut a small slot in the side of the can to clear one leg of the heating element.
I connected a cord to the element and plugged it into one of my 20 amp 240 volt heater outlets. I then put one of the 35 pound tractor counter weights in an 8" pressure cooker pot and turned it on. 25 minutes latter, the counter weight was in ingot form.
I'm well aware that there are some safety concerns here, and the setup needs some modification, but it was very stable and worked great.
Here is the heating element as received. I used a clamp on ammeter to determine that it is 3000 watts
This picture shows one of the notches I filed in the top of the coffee can to stabilize the element and weight of the pot.
This is the result, and it worked quite well for a $1 dollar smelter.