evan price
08-27-2012, 05:05 AM
Had time Friday so I decided to take care of the four 5-gallon buckets sitting on my driveway full up with range scrap mined from the berm. A good mix of cast boolits, shotgun slugs, odd pieces of buckshot, and FMJ and plated bullets along with the pull-down 22LR bullets from bad ammo.
Weather was nice, I had my big fan blowing on me. Wound up with a couple gallons of dirt and slag. A 5-gallon bucket of jackets (about 60 pounds). Drank a gallon of water (Why do I pick hot days for smelting??)
Total haul was 220-pounds of the 4.5-# 'hockey puck' ingots and another 250-pounds of the smaller Gem-pan ingots. That's 470-pounds of ingots in three pours. Started around 1 pm, finished off the last of the pot after 9pm in the dark with the porch lights.
47187
Had a gallon pot of unfired cast boolits that had been scrapped for being in a basement that flooded. All sized and loobed and most had copper gas checks. No way to save them, oxidized and cruddy. Mixed well with the other scrap and it all went to new alloy. Loob made good flux.
Note- even after sitting in the sun for a month, and appearing dry, there must have been water trapped under the gas checks, because they sounded like popcorn going off in the pot and threw the gas checks a few feet away if the lid wasn't on.
Weather was nice, I had my big fan blowing on me. Wound up with a couple gallons of dirt and slag. A 5-gallon bucket of jackets (about 60 pounds). Drank a gallon of water (Why do I pick hot days for smelting??)
Total haul was 220-pounds of the 4.5-# 'hockey puck' ingots and another 250-pounds of the smaller Gem-pan ingots. That's 470-pounds of ingots in three pours. Started around 1 pm, finished off the last of the pot after 9pm in the dark with the porch lights.
47187
Had a gallon pot of unfired cast boolits that had been scrapped for being in a basement that flooded. All sized and loobed and most had copper gas checks. No way to save them, oxidized and cruddy. Mixed well with the other scrap and it all went to new alloy. Loob made good flux.
Note- even after sitting in the sun for a month, and appearing dry, there must have been water trapped under the gas checks, because they sounded like popcorn going off in the pot and threw the gas checks a few feet away if the lid wasn't on.