Well ain't this a treat!

[imashooter2]

I just set up my Christmas Turkey fryer and Harbor Freight 12 inch Dutch oven for my first big smelt on the new equipment. Looking forward to making 1300 pounds of range scrap into 1000 or so pounds of ingots. Got it all GTG. Loaded the DO with half a bucket of scrap and lit the burner.

The forking Dutch oven split all the way up the side as soon as the fire hit it. [smilie=b:

So much for my day...

[hivoltfl]

AHHHH CHITTTTTT that suxxxxxx

Rick

[monadnock#5]

I can feel your pain from 800 miles away.

Ken

[imashooter2]

Just got everything unloaded and I'm headed to the local HF to get an exchange on the oven. I don't have any receipts or anything, but my current mood hopes they decline to make it good.

[No_1]

If you are saying it split before the lead melt than I would consider yourself lucky. I would also take that pot back for a tradein.

Robert

[jawjaboy]

Just got everything unloaded and I'm headed to the local HF to get an exchange on the oven. I don't have any receipts or anything, but my current mood hopes they decline to make it good.

Pick yourself up a good jug of korn likker on the way back home. That'll help your feelin's! :wink:

[imashooter2]

Well, I'm back in the game. The lady at HF was completely apologetic and even had one of the guys go fetch me my new pot. It's on the fire right now.

I'm thinking I'm unlikely to finish by dark, but I should be able to make a good dent in it.

[montana_charlie]

That is the second Harbor Freight pot I have read about this week which cracked on the first try.

Maybe HF pots need to be annealed before use...now there's a project to write about.
CM

[454PB]

This is the reason I don't like cast iron pots.....they shatter too easily. If you know a welder or own one, weld an 8" to 10" piece of 6" pipe to a piece of 1/4" steel plate and attach a lift handle.

[mike in co]

GuYs...a 50 Cal Ammo Can! 5-6-7 Bucks And You Can Do Over 100 Lbs!

[imashooter2]

Turns out I ran out of gas before I ran out of light. Only 5 buckets done. Disappointing. I could do 2 - 3 buckets on my Coleman stove with a $2.50 gallon of gas. Anyway, I have a nice little pile of ingots for my trouble. 485 to be exact:

http://www.imashooter2.com/pictures/smelt1.jpg

[Dale53]

Imashooter2;

First of all, you done GOOD!! You might want to examine your set up. Many times a couple of "tweaks" can greatly increase the efficiency. If it was windy the day you were working, a simple windshield around your set up can help, big time. Further, you may benefit from a wind collar between the burner and the bottom of your pot.

I have a fabricated steel pot that will hold 80lbs completely full. It is really about a 60 lb working capacity. I can melt that in 15-20 minutes but realistically, can do, complete from cold to ingots in somewhat less than thirty minutes. A fair assessment would be 120 lbs per hour. That is just to give you a suggested range in which things can work with a simple turkey fryer burner and an 80 lb container. If you are producing less than this (you could easily do more) you might try refining your technique.

To conserve gas, you might find that turning the burner down where it will keep a pot of lead at 650 degrees (no more because of possible zinc contamination) will be more efficient use of gas than having it on full bore all the time. In other words, try starting at the approx. 650 degree setting (have the burner at that point).

At any rate, the turkey fryer is certainly much faster than the Coleman stove (been there, done that).

You might shop around for a less expensive gas bottle supplier. I have found that there is a difference. My present supplier charges by the actual amount of gas delivered to me plus a standard handling fee. I get a full 20 lb tank, and I don't pay for gas I don't get. YMMV

Good luck!
Dale53

[imashooter2]

Thanks for the tips Dale53. I'll have to look into making a wind screen. There wasn't a lot of breeze today, but there certainly was some.

I'm getting a $15.74 tank exchange from the local China Mart. How does that compare to your local prices? Going to check the next one I get for weight. Seems this one went awful fast.

[leftiye]

Must have been one of those pots the chinese made when MTT told them they needed to increase their steel production.

[Randy in Arizona]

$1.827 per gallon here. (Tucson) Some 20 pound tanks will take 4.9 gallons some less. I usually buy 75 or more gallons at a time.

[arkypete]

This is the reason I don't like cast iron pots.....they shatter too easily. If you know a welder or own one, weld an 8" to 10" piece of 6" pipe to a piece of 1/4" steel plate and attach a lift handle.


One of my coffee drinking buddies is a retired engineer who helped lay Colonial Pipeline from Texas to New York.
I told him about my troubles in finding a good flat bottomed pot for cleaning WWs. He got one of the welders to take a 10 inch high by 14 inch, maybe 15 inch section of pipe and weld it to a piece of 1/4 plate. Works like a charm.
Jim

[imashooter2]

Got another nice afternoon with nothing pressing on the to do list, so I took care of the rest of my range scrap. The last 5 buckets of scrap yielded 478 more ingots. All I have left is a 137 pound bucket of WW, and I'll leave that for another time. Wife is happy to have her garage back and I'm happy to have a couple years supply of ingots ready to go.

Dale53, I tried a makeshift "wind screen", never turned the gas up past 3/4 turn open and turned it way, way down once melted and pouring. I'm left with about 1/3 tank of gas. Still pretty expensive next to the Coleman. Trading money for time I guess...

[Newtire]

Beautiful pile of ingots there! I would watch out not to overload that table!

[Duckiller]

How many ingot molds do you have? With two it took me 1 1/2-2 hrs to do 60# of wheel weights yesterday. Mostly waiting for lead in molds to cool. Duckiller

[tomf52]

imashooter2 - Where abouts in PA are you? I'm here near Scranton and found the best propane prices to be at the propane dealers themselves. $13.00/20lbs at Keystone Propane in Throop.

[imashooter2]

How many ingot molds do you have? With two it took me 1 1/2-2 hrs to do 60# of wheel weights yesterday. Mostly waiting for lead in molds to cool. Duckiller

I ran 5 molds plus the 2 large cavities in a Lee mold. By the time I finished the last fill, the first was ready to knock out and refill. It went pretty quickly. The 5 buckets/478 ingots were done in 6 hours. I think the range scrap takes longer to smelt than WW do. It has a lot of rubber/oil in it to burn off before you can pour. But since it is the only free lead I can find...

[imashooter2]

imashooter2 - Where abouts in PA are you? I'm here near Scranton and found the best propane prices to be at the propane dealers themselves. $13.00/20lbs at Keystone Propane in Throop.

I'm in the squalid Southern suburbs of Philly.

[Crash_Corrigan]

Went to the local male fantasy store here in Vegas (Bass Pro Shop) and found some neato cast iron ashtrays on the cheap. They cast neat round ingots of about 2 1/2 pounds. I bought eight. I scoop out a load of lead from my cast iron pot with a cut down alum. can and a two pairs of pliers and load the mini frying pan. By the time I have the eighth loaded the first is cool enuf to dump onto the plywood scap. I keep on loading and dumping until the smelting pot is almost empty. They sell these mini fry pans with little spouts on the opposite sides to rest your cigarette and they have the bass logo cast into the bottom. They work great and the price is right. The ingots store easily and melt well in my Lee 4-20 casting pot. The ingot/frying pan/ashtray dealies also store well and will last forever. :castmine:

[Sundogg1911]

imashooter2,
I'm using the exact setup. Today I made;
280# straight Lead
220# Lino (sadly it's the very last of my Lino)
and 160# WW's
hopefully with what I already have in ingots, I'll have probably one more smelting session for the year.
the setup works great!