Built a bottom pour smelter and smelted 260 lbs of wheelweights today

[BK7saum]

Built a smelter out of 10"heavy wall pipe and 1/4"plate welded on bottom. Spigot was two 3/8 black iron elbows with a 3" nipple. Valve is a 3/8 piece of rod that I tapered and lapped into the elbow on the bottom of the pot. Took about 3 hours but got 260 pounds of wheelweights smelted.

Used RayinNH's skimmer and bar ingot mold. Ray's tools are great. I had built some boxes out of 3/4" plywood for my RCBS ingot molds and the bars from Rays mold fit perfect at 4 across. Six deep for about 120 lbs a box.

I built a shelf on my fish fry stand so that the spout sits about an inch above the mold. Only had spout freeze once when I poured at just above slush stage instead of letting the pot get a little hotter.

I'll post a pic when I can get it uploaded from my phone.

Now I only have about 7 more buckets to go.

[altheating]

I would love to see a picture. Going to build one soon. Found the 12" heavy wall pipe today. Now to get my buddy to weld it all together.

[BK7saum]

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee467/BLK7mm/2013-02-03180506.jpg

[BK7saum]

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee467/BLK7mm/2013-02-03193157.jpg

[BK7saum]

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee467/BLK7mm/2013-02-03193123.jpg

[BK7saum]

Altheating,

Went together pretty good. Got less than 10 dollars in it. The plate and pipe were given to me by my brother.
Got a 13" pot welded up but need a different stand or a wood fired smelter

[S&W-629]

now that is cool

[BK7saum]

The pot is a little too deep. If it was full I guess it would hold a 100+ pounds. I only filled it about a third full. I could cast 4 ingots and still have about 2" of lead left in the pot to heat and melt the next batch of weights

[runfiverun]

those are street ell's b.t.w.

[BK7saum]

Your right runfiverun.

Just got another 190 lbs smelted. Ive got about 6 gallons of clips.

Ive been running half full which is approximately 40 lbs

[Lizard333]

How are you valving the lead? I'm thinking about modifying my propane tank pot, and converting to a bottom pour.

[BK7saum]

Pretty similar to a Lee bottom pour pot. The threads on the 3/8" street elbow that is welded into the bottom of the pot were ground off (to fit in the hole because I didn't have a 3/8 pipe thread tap for the hole). I ground a taper onto the bottom of the metal rod (shown sticking out of the pot). The taper is long and the tip is ground down further to keep alignment with the hole. I put the rod in the drill and used 220 grit lapping compound to get a good seat of the tapered rod in the end of the street elbow.

The end of the rod (to keep alignment with the elbow) is approximatley 3/4" long and about 1/8" - 3/16" in diameter. Then there is a step where the tapered section starts. The tapered section is approximately 1" long and goes from the step up at 1/4" to the full diameter of the 1/2" rod.

Well, I picture would be worth a 1000 words here.

[BK7saum]

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee467/BLK7mm/2013-02-05092455.jpg

[BK7saum]

The valve seems to work great.

I had another occurrence with the spigot freezing up. I'm planning on reducing the length of the nipple to 2" or maybe 1.5" to keep it closer to the heat/flame.

When the spigot freezes up, one of two things has occurred. First if I've opened the valve, then cut back the flow, the lead will solidify in the spigot. If the valve is opened and sufficient flow is maintained, everything works okay. Secondly, when I've reduced the heat/flame prior to valving off the lead, I've had the lead to solidify in the spigot. When cutting back the propane to the pot, it also reduced the heat that was keeping the end of the spigot up to temp.

Another fix/upgrade is to cut about 6" off of the bottom of a 5 gallon metal bucket, notch the sides about 3" up to fit over the three pieces of round stock the pot sits on and cut a fourth notch for the nipple and street elbow. This would allow for a more efficient use of propane. I'm not sure how much more efficience but it should keep the pot and spigot warmer with less propane expended.

[BK7saum]

The flow through the 3/8 pipe seems about right to me. If I open the valve up too much, then the molten led tends to splash over into the next ingot cavities. I definitely wouldn't go to half inch or larger unless your running a 1-500 pound smelter. And I don't think I would go smaller either, because you would probably have more instances of the spigot trying to freeze up unless you made provisions to transfer heat directly to the spigot.

Since I'm only working at 30-40 lbs at a time, I can fill RayinNH's 4-cavity 4.75lb ingot mold quickly enough. A ~5 pound ingot cavity fills in about 10-15 seconds.

[shadowcaster]

Looks good.. Glad to see another bottom pour smelter join the ranks! I enjoy using my bottom pour smelter much more than the lade method. Just putting the 2 street elbows together may help solve your spout freezing problem. I also had to modify my burner so that the flames would lick at the back of the spout. !3 inches is tall.. Do you find it difficult to stir, flux, scoop, and flux again? How much time is involved in heat up? Good job by the way :)

Shad

[BK7saum]

Shad, this one is only 6,5" deep. So its pretty easy to stir and flux. Heat up is probably 10 minutes with a 1/2" or so of lead in the pot. What I like is that when up to temp with 15 or 20 lbs in the pot I can add 10 or so lbs of wheelweights and it will cool down to a slush but comes back up to temp real easy. That works much much better than pouring almost all of your melt into ingots before adding back to the pot.

[BK7saum]

Just cut up a metal solvent can for a heat shield. WOW! Had to turn the burner way down to keep melt from overheating.

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee467/BLK7mm/2013-02-05170913.jpg

[shadowcaster]

A vented lid also helps with heat up and temp regulation. I do the same by starting out with a large chunk from a previous smelt session. 6.5 inches would be much easier to work than 13 inches. Mine is only 4 1/2 inches deep and is 17 inches across. It holds up to 400 pounds molten lead. I usually run it about 2/3 full.

Shad

[BK7saum]

A lid is my next addon. I have two buckets of range scrap to smelt. I don't want any lead geysers from the encapsulated bullets

[Nose Dive]

I dunno Joe.... Galvanised Pipe Fittin's?? Contamination will lead to frustration....

I would try mallable iron fittings...butt weld instead of screwed since I see some welds...

Galvanised will leach. But very little and will pass with the gas.... GOOD POT... Lets see some ingots!!

Nose Dive

Cheap, Fast, Good. Kindly pick two.

[BK7saum]

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee467/BLK7mm/2013-02-06011457.jpg
http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee467/BLK7mm/2013-02-06011520.jpg

[savingprivateyang]

Nicely done.

[Charlie Two Tracks]

Great jobBK7saum! I really like that setup.

[Nose Dive]

U DUN GUD BUD!!

Nose Dive.

Cheap, Fast, Good. Kindly Pick Two.