Ohio Rusty
04-21-2007, 10:48 AM
I finally had a chance to melt down some of the wheel weights I've been collecting. This is the first time I've used/melted wheel weights so I went out to the garage,, set up my coleman propane stove, a 2 quart cast iron pot and modified myself a cast area next to the open garage door as shown in the pic. Advice to anyone who wants to begin smelting WW's and any future archive readers looking for smelting advice: DO NOT even think about doing this in the house !!! Man o'man do they stink !! All that melting and burning paint, tar, grease, opposum parts, and anything else that stuck to the wheel weights made me keep my distance until the smoke and smell cleared out. It took a long time for the lead to melt but when it did, all the clips and gunk scooped off easily. After fluxing with sawdust, I ended up with some very nice molten silver. I set about to casting right from the pot using a ladle. I made many excellent bullets using straight WW's, no tin added. The rejects I found usually came from metal that wasn't hot enough, or my casting fault of not pouring fast enough or at a correct distance between the ladle and the mould. After the first session I needed to change a couple of things. A coleman stove is great for bacon and eggs, but the grate sets too high for fast, efficient lead melting. I removed the coleman grate and put a smaller grate in that sets your pot closer to the fire. That stopped alot of the heat energy loss as more heat is applied upward to the bottom of the pot and less heat loss out the sides. I'm going to find a stainless metal pot at a thrift store and use it. The Cast iron takes a long time to heat up, using alot of my propane fuel just to get the pot up to temperature. Cast iron is also porous, and I find alot of lead sticking to the walls of the pot. A stainless pot is smooth walled so less should stick, and being thinner, it should heat the lead faster giving me more efficiency from my little propane bottles. The second casting session went better with the pot closer to the flame, and I'll tweak my smelting set up this weekend to get the most from my little set up to make lots and lots of nice shiny boolets !! I can't wait to to shoot 'em !!
Ohio Rusty
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Ohio Rusty
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