The difference between casting and smelting

[Pepe Ray]

I just read a posting about a guy building a hugh bottom pour smelter.
WOW!! Am I impressed ? You bet!! I can't imagine having those talents and resources.

The following comments are based on my own experiance and I believe, reflect the status of most
struggeling beginners. Casting VS Smelting




Smelting; It’s been argued that the word, as used by most of our fraternity, is not correct. As long as we all understand its context, we’ll continue to use it.
The process is so much different from casting Boolets it needs to be addressed.
Many Boolet casters don’t need to smelt. They purchase clean, pre alloyed lead
from a commercial supplier. Casters using this material should be able to cast on the kitchen cooking range as long as it’s not needed for dinner at the moment. I’ve done it. It works. True, you should have a cooperative partner and you always clean up your own messes.

Smelting is a dirty, noxious and sometimes, dangerous job. No thinking person would try to do it in an enclosed area. Extraordinary venting may allow it but that goes far beyond the resources of a hobbyist reloader. The scrounged materials by there nature is Junk. Wheel weights from the local garage will contain cigarette butts, chewing tobacco plugs, razor blades, syringes, chewing gum and wrappers, truck tire valves, nuts, bolts, urine etc. Depending on the source, the degree of contamination will vary.
Other scrounged junk includes lavatory traps, roof jacks, chimney flashing, water main joints (sewer main included), battery posts and clamps, Babbitt from various industrial applications, type metal of various alloys, target range reclaim, diving wgts, sail boat keels, machinery counter balances.
It’s beyond the scope of this post to try to describe the many different alloys found in this assortment of junk. That’s work for another horse.
Smelting inside will coat all exposed surfaces with a black carbon like residue that will tempt you to torch the building. Smelting is an outside job. You should do it on a day when a breeze will dissipate the obnoxious smoke.
Are you a gambler or a thrift nut?
A gambler dumps all his junk into a large pot, turns up the heat and hope that all the impurities will float to the top to be skimmed off. This is faster but includes the risk of contaminating a lot of good alloy. Once you pour the Coke Cola into the Jack Black you’re done. That mistake can’t be corrected, pass the beverage to a gal who may appreciate it, and try again.
A thrift nut spends a lot of time and worn out gloves to separate the good junk from the bad junk. Within a few hours you’ll be able to tell the Zink (Zn) from the iron (Fe) from the lead. One of the advantages of separating now is that you can get a better price for the junk that you take to the recycler. The affirmation of having contaminate free alloy is a big plus when trying to investigate the causes of poor boolets dropping from that new mold.
Trying to make boolets while smelting is a waste of time. It’s doable with a dipper and experience but when using a bottom pour pot it fouls the pot and the pour spout.

Comments please,
Pepe Ray

[MBTcustom]

Good writeup. That's exactly the way I see it.

[cloakndagger]

Yup, was thinking about that yesterday evening, "smelting" compared to "casting" must be nice to have clean pre alloyed stock to start with lol

[shadowcaster]

I agree with what you wrote as a whole.. it's well said.

As a hobbyist caster and reloader who started out with the very basics in casting and smelting, graduating on to bigger and more efficient equipment can be done without lots of talent or resources. I tend to be a scrounge (like most) and have put my setup together on a tight budget.

Casting indoors.. lots of guys do it safely with little ventilation. Smelting, I can and do smelt in my garage with the closed doors rain or shine. My bottom pour smelter is efficient (300 # at a time) and the homemade hood and blower setup remove all of the fumes and smoke associated with dirty lead. Keeping things simple have allowed me to expand my setup and remove some of the hassles involved

Smelting and casting at the same time, you hit the nail on the head. For me it's do one or the other, not both that's such a pain.

Shad

[TrapperXX]

Well written, thank you Pepe Ray.
I am a scrounger so that is half the fun of this hobby for me.

[Case Stuffer]

Years ago I had a small custom reloading and combat games ammo operation ,FFL ,insurered and did a rather large amount of casting. My meltering was on the order of 100 pounds per batch with a home made bottom pour made from a section of welding tank and propane fired. I did this outside during sunny moderate temperatures and it was the part of the operation I liked the least. Only good part was back then printers type was very reasonable and wheel weights were mostly decent alloy and even less expensive than the printers type. Iused a Saeco hardness tester which I still have along with all of my molds and RCBS bottom pour as well as my smaller Lee bottom pour which I started with. The Saeco was used to check a few poured from each batch smeltered and each ingot was stamped with a hardness number.

[crydaddy]

Ahhhh....and so my journey begins...

[kidmma]

Yes Pepe, nice write up. I struggled for years trying to melt wheel weights in my 10# Lee bottom pour pot to cast bullets as I went. Not the way to do it!
Now I have a good set-up to clean my scrounged lead, then cast my boolits with less struggling. :)

[Packntchr]

Thanks for the info. My problem is getting a supply of wheel weights. Most tire shops I've talked with will grudgingly give me a "handful" (sometimes literally) which usually runs to about 10 - 15 lbs. It's beginning to look like I will have to actually purchase lead from local scrapyards. I read in the 1911 forum that over in this forum there are folks selling ww. any possibility of that?

[txnative1951]

I guess I'm a "gambler". I don't have any guns that would really benefit from soft lead, so I just put everything in a cast iron pot and then skim off the clips and other junk that floats to the top. My alloy will probably not be as hard as someone who separates all their clip-on from stick-on wheelweights, but it seems to be good enough for my usage. Just got through smelting down a bunch of wheelweights that I was given by a local auto tire and repair shop that was doing some work on my truck. If you figure the cost of the lead by the amount I paid for the work on the truck, it ended up being rather expensive lead. I started out with what was probably a kitchen trash can full of wheelweights and I have 31 ingots afterward. I think I usually get around 10 lbs each on the ingots, but I didn't fill them as full this time around so that they would fit in my casting pot a bit better while also hopefully not dropping the temperature of the pot as much when I add them. Worked out to be an average of 5.6 lbs per ingot this time for a total weight of 173.68 lbs.

NOTE: Don't allow the quick oil change places to top off your fluids -- do it yourself and put the right fluid in the right reservoir. Power steering fluid in your brake system can get a bit expensive, especially when your spouse / significant other decides to keep driving the vehicle even after noticing that something is wrong and nearly melts the calipers and discs. :(

[Arkansas Paul]

Once you pour the Coke Cola into the Jack Black you’re done. That mistake can’t be corrected, pass the beverage to a gal who may appreciate it, and try again.

HEY! I resemble that remark. :)

[DrewTenney]

So have never smelted or casted, (but i'm trying to start) Smelting is taking raw **** material and getting the nasties out of it and casting it into ingots right? I'm looking for a furnace right now, I like the ones with the pour valves, but would these be suitable for smelting, while just skimming off the top or should I get a dippable furnace for smelting, and a pour valve one for casting boolits?

[2wheelDuke]

So have never smelted or casted, (but i'm trying to start) Smelting is taking raw **** material and getting the nasties out of it and casting it into ingots right? I'm looking for a furnace right now, I like the ones with the pour valves, but would these be suitable for smelting, while just skimming off the top or should I get a dippable furnace for smelting, and a pour valve one for casting boolits?

I like my Lee 4-20 for casting. Some molds prefer a ladle still, but I get alot done with Ol Drippy. I use a cast iron pot over a fish fryer burner for smelting. You don't want to be dealing with the crud of smelting in a bottom pour pot, you may never get all the crud out. I wouldn't want to use an electric furnace for smelting, even if it wasn't bottom pour. I just don't have the patience.

[DrewTenney]

I have a good supplier for wheel weights, do I need to smelt these or just melt em down and pull out the clips? So I wouldn't actually have to smelt them right?

[DrewTenney]

Disregard, I spent a few more hours researching here and have educated myself!

[prs]

I have always before referred to scrap lead melting to recover the good and clear away the bad as "RENDERING". Smelting is what the refineries do to obtain lead from ore; but I agree, so long as we know what is meant, communication is achieved. So we say smelt instead of render. Then I alloy, that is, intentionally add other elements to PB to get, maybe, what I want. Then I can use that product in my casting adventures.

Good write-up.

prs

[Preston]

My experience with the word rendering is cooking down pig fat to get the tallow for soap. But guess in essence it the same process. Cooking down one to get out of it what you need.

[Baron von Trollwhack]

Actually, SMELTING is the conversion of elemental ore into metal, i.e., LEAD, in our discussion.

That is why those lucky enough to have virgin lead, as in a strip of 5 pound lead ingots as cast, by a SMELTING COMPANY, see and often comment on the shiny, brilliant colors of purple and gold they see when MELTING the virgin lead for use. Those colors are produced by trace mineral and metallic elements in the ore that was used.

When we scrounge and convert lead alloy junk into usable bullet alloy, that is MELTING the scrap containing lead, to make it into boolits. SMELT ore, MELT scrap or virgin metal.

BvT

[dtknowles]

I reclaim my range scrap and wheelweights in my Lee bottom pour pot and store as ingots. I keep my lead shot, typemetal some wheelweights and solder in its original forms until I use it. I could never cast in my house, I use a lot of corn cob and saw dust for reducing, fluxing and to form a barrier on top of my pot. The ash causes a lot of dust and smoke. I save my dross and reduce it in a crucible on a gas burner with a lot of saw dust and wax to get what I can out of it before I toss the residue, what I recover must be mostly lead or tin as it is no harder than my range scrap.

I collet range scrap about equal to what I shoot so I don't need much more lead than I have gathered over the years, around 200 lbs. I don't do any heavy duty "smelting" my biggest chore is jacketed bullet range scrap.

Tim

[shadowcaster]

Actually, SMELTING is the conversion of elemental ore into metal, i.e., LEAD, in our discussion.

When we scrounge and convert lead alloy junk into usable bullet alloy, that is MELTING the scrap containing lead, to make it into boolits. SMELT ore, MELT scrap or virgin metal.

BvT

You are correct that in the true sense of the word that we DO NOT smelt our lead. We melt it, clean/render it into ingots for future use. Now .. with that said, most everyone here uses the term smelting in place of cleaning/rendering our scrap lead for the sake of simplicity.

Shad

[Ubet]

I just found this thread. I'll admit I didn't realize the difference either, I've been melting down wheel weights and fluxing several times to pour ignots for later use. Then when I'm ready to cast I use the ingots to cast from.

[Ola]

As English is not my native language, I had no idea what smelting actually is. Because I've seen it hundreds of times here, I thought it means "melting AND fluxing un-pure lead to usable form". Because of this thread I translated it for the first time to my language and it is: "reduction melting" (pelkistyssulatus).

I know what reduction melting is, but is that translation correct?

[dtknowles]

As English is not my native language, I had no idea what smelting actually is. Because I've seen it hundreds of times here, I thought it means "melting AND fluxing un-pure lead to usable form". Because of this thread I translated it for the first time to my language and it is: "reduction melting" (pelkistyssulatus).

I know what reduction melting is, but is that translation correct?

Ola, I think it is a proper translation but smelting as used here is more like you originally thought. All the lead people here use was previously smelted from ore to metal at a real smelter (reduced, oxides turned to base metal). Smelting here is a cleaning, undeforming process with only a small amount of reduction going on.

Tim

[Ola]

Thanks Tim. But then, why is it called smelting, if it isn't? Because you do not have a better word for it?

Btw. We call it "cleaning", as "Today I'm going to clean some WW's". (I'm not sure if that makes sense to you, but that is what we say in Finnish. )

[Grendl]

Smelt; best eaten lightly floured fried in butter with salt and pepper and often during the early spring.
Smelting: the act of net dipping for said creatures or otherwise bringing them to table.
just throwing it out there... :popcorn:
rick

[dtknowles]

Thanks Tim. But then, why is it called smelting, if it isn't? Because you do not have a better word for it?

Btw. We call it "cleaning", as "Today I'm going to clean some WW's". (I'm not sure if that makes sense to you, but that is what we say in Finnish. )

I expect that if they called it cleaning people might think you were using soap and water. Purifying, blending and ingoting would better describe what they are really doing.

Tim

[dtknowles]

Smelt; best eaten lightly floured fried in butter with salt and pepper and often during the early spring.
Smelting: the act of net dipping for said creatures or otherwise bringing them to table.
just throwing it out there... :popcorn:
rick

I went smelting once, they requested that I bite the head off the first one I caught, it was thru the ice on a hook and line.

Tim

[Pepe Ray]

Why is it called smelting?
You'd need to ask the gent who first published the process.
However I'm thinking that he's been buried many decades hence.

I think it's called "common usage".
Pepe Ray

[JSnover]

We figured if we called it smelting we could keep the Finns out for a while.
Just yanking your chain, Ola.
Smelting is close enough for our purposes and a lot easier to type.

[Ola]

Tim: soap and water... ok, .. I have to admit I've never thought about that :)

Everyone: I'm fine with the word smelting. I'm just plain curious and trying to expand my vocabulary. And I really like to understand what all the words actually mean. It helps, because some times translating English-Finnish-English some information is lost because the meaning of the words in languages are not excactly the same..

And like in this case: it also has other meanings. Thank you, smelt eaters!

[BAGTIC]

Smelting is the process of reducing lead bearing compounds to elemental lead. Lead does not normally occur in the elemental form. For example ggin galena (lead sulfide) the most common lead ore the ore is smelted to separate the lead from the galena.


As for common usage how many would support a policy of accepting the most commonly given answer to the question of how 3x2+7 if that was the answer most respondents gave. Well don't ever criticize the younger generation for their ignorance if we are fostering the acceptance of false or erroneous information just because it is wisely believed. Personally I come here to learn not to listen to fallacies perpetuated.

[dragon813gt]

I see you've learned common core math. I will politely tell you you're barking up the wrong tree. These threads never go well. Smelting is used to differentiate cleaning up a lead source, such as wheel weights, from casting bullets. Care to take on Boolit versus Bullet next?

[lightman]

I melt my dirty wheelweights in batches of 350-400 pounds, but I don't consider myself a gambler. Since Zinc started showing up, I hand sort all of my weights. If I do miss a Zinc weight or two, there won't be enough contamination to hurt a 400# batch. In the past, I did not separate the stick-ons from the clip-ons as there were so few of them. I do now, just because there are more and more stick-ons. I also use the word"Smelt" when melting lead and casting ingots, and expect most casters to know what I'm doing.

[Doggonekid]

Good information! Now I know the correct definition for smelting, I think I will continue to say I cast boolits and smelt my junk lead and alloy it 100 pounds at a time and poor it into ingots. Most people know I don't have a lot of lead ore in the garage. It is good to know that I am using the word wrong. But who cares? No offense to anyone.

[flintlock62]

I always thought smelting meant this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelting

[Nose Dive]

Geezzzz... Man...is our hobby getting complex or what?

Smelting,, Easy tasks
1..take trash you got...smelt it,,,clean it up as much as you can. pour it out to save..

Casting..

1. take the 'trash' ingots...remelt, check quality..clean up again with items to get smelt up to quality...
2. add alloys to bring BRN and pour ability up to snuff
3. pour into ingot size to fit your casting pot
4. get ingots into cast pot
5. cast and drop your boolits.

Now here, we can water drop...age...size...lube...you know...get fancy...

Nose Dive

Cheap, Fast, Good. Kindly pick two

[mikeross]

I also agree with what you have written.

[country gent]

I have always called the process of melting to remove impurities trash and other materials, smelting. When making a batch of alloy Im blending and when making bullets sinkers or jigs Im casting.

I smelt and blend in the same big pot some times at the same time. I will fill the pot with a known amount of wheel weights, range lead, or scrap. melt flux until clean then pour a couple small ingots and let cool then check hardness. Add the need tin and anatomy to get where I want to be flux again and pour ingots. My smelting blending pot is 400lbs so I end up with nice big batches of the same alloy for future use. These ingots are stamped with a personal Id number and pot number. This is so if I blend the same over multiple pots I can add ingots from each pot when filling the casting pot, this makes 4 pots of the same basic blend the same for every pot cast from rather than the small differences that might occur. As an example If I blend and make 3 pots of 96 2 2 each ingot is marked 96 2 2 P 1 or P2 or P3 depending on which pot Im on. These are stacked in groups. when filling my pot 10 lbs pot I use a P1 P2 and P3 ingot his way instead of having 3 400 lb batches I now have 1 1200lb batch.

I find the larger batches tend to "smooth" things out more from batch to batch.

[gomerfyle13]

Newbie to the forum. Don't know if this is the place to post my question.

Little history first...been planing on reloading for a few years so in the mean time have been acquiring supplies and equipment. Have a foreign made cast iron pot for smelting my raw materials. A cast iron bread stick mold pan for ingots. 20 lb Lee bottom pour casting pot and various Lee bullet molds.
My lead stockpile consists of ingots made from some unknown lead from my father-in-law (was with some sinker molds which disappeared) so most likely melted down wheel weights. Some housing lead from a carpenter friend, and some utility bar stock from an old lead underground cable splicer. The utility bars are marked as sn30pb70.
My first casting session, I used mostly the wheel weight ingots and the bullets came out good. Went thru the resizer easily. Cast some bullets today using the pure lead ingots and utility ingots on a 3 to 1 ratio.
Tried to size the bullets and cant. 0.356 Lee mold and Lee 0.356 sizing die but the bullets are sticking in the sizer requiring so much pressure to push thru that I pulled a lag screw loose from where I had it mounted on a 2x10 c-clamped to the kitchen table. Hardness problem or is there a problem with my mold?

[Springfield]

Sounds like the larger amount of tin you have in that mix makes the bullet much harder than you need, plus the as-cast diameter is probably a thou or 2 larger than the wheelweight bullets. Try putting a lubed bullet through the sizer every 5 rounds or so and see if that helps.

[Froogal]

"Smelting" is the process used for separating the lead from the ore. The only folks who do that are employees of the "Doe Run Company" in southeastern Missouri. The rest of us only melt down the scrap and pour it into ingots.

[gomerfyle13]

Thank you for the reply. Upon further examination my cast bullets are miking at the .0359 all the way up to .0365 range coming out of a Lee .0356 mold. Guess I will be remelting back down to ingots. Any ideas why my mold would be throwing that large bullets? Also could I use some of the larger (.0365 x 120 g) for a Makarov? Only can find loading info for 95 g bullets. Just wondering. Like I said, newbie here. Lead hardness tester is next on the purchase list for checking ingot hardness. Thank you again for the reply!

[pworley1]

I have been melting wheel weights, roof flashing, Linotype, range scrap, solder and any other lead items that I could find to use for casting bullets for over 50 years, but I have never smelted any ore.

[kevin c]

I think I'm going to just call it "lead processing": per Wikipedia a process is a set of activities that interact, resulting in a result or product. So my processing pot takes scrap lead in various forms, I apply heat to melt out the lead and separate it from unwanted jackets, clips, and trash, which are removed, I then clean and reduce the alloy with sawdust and wax, then pour storage ingots, which I may later reprocess in the same pot by adding tin and antimony and repour into casting ingots.

Sorta generic, it's true, but accurate enough for my purposes.

I'm not touching the word "flux". :roll::roll:

[country gent]

I call what I do alloying since Im mixing different metals to what I want. Smelting doesn't accurately describe our process of cleaning up or blending a mix. I haven't worked with range scrap wheel weights or savaged metals in a long time. I normally buy what I want premixed and melt and cast. I used to though. Wheel weights, lead pipe, range scrap from an indoor range, and other forms were melted cleaned and blended 350lbs at a time.

[Walks]

I think lead processing is an excellent term. I used to go through all sorts of **** to alloy into a cast iron pot, fired by propane out front of my garage.
Sorted everything first.
It just took too long to sort/process to melt down 50lbs of range scrap to get 34lbs of usable alloy. I just didn't have the time and patience to waste any more 1lb cans of propane.
The old COWW's were fine. But I haven't seen any around here for almost 20yrs.

Now I just buy from trusted sources. It's so much simpler that way.

If ya got access to free or cheap lead, go ahead. As long as you have the patience and time for it.

I'd rather just spend that time casting bullets.

As they say, been there, done that. Don't care about the blasted t-shirt.

[skeettx]

Yes, I smelt alloy into ingots,
this can be all wheel weights, or all range scrap, or all pure lead.
I can then have ingots of lead, softer alloy (range scrap) , harder alloy (wheel weights), or HARD alloy (linotype)
I melt ingots to cast boolits.
Well said
Mike

[alamogunr]

This thread was started over 6 years ago and contains several posts trying to explain the correct usage of the term "smelt"(not the little fish). It has had no effect either here or in several other threads over the years. I learned the "correct" meaning of the term in a metallurgy class in engineering in college. Now I just smile and pass on over the common usage on this board. I can live with the usage here as well as reading about lube "groves" on "boolits".

[Alferd Packer]

enjoyed by us here at the Rendering Works.
Used to mean melting and skimming animal fat, but some of that still gets done too.