Straight wheel weight in the pot.

[Mica_Hiebert]

I see most people smelt their ww into ingots but I have in the past just melted down my wheel weights into my pot and skimmed out the clips and threw in a glob of wax and stirred it in before casting. Any one else do this?

[triggerhappy243]

you can do that, but your lead is still pretty dirty. and all the crud is sticking to the pot.

[rancher1913]

not to mention your breathing in all the nasty burn off fumes.

[jeepyj]

Something to consider every time I smelt off my bulk there is always some fine grit left in the pot. If you melt into your bottom pour than you have greater chance of ether clogging the spout or contaminating your boolits. Best method is to clean it best you can outdoors on a cooker to get rid of the contaminates and start inside with nice clean lead. I think you gain better consistency all the way around if you do. In the past I've seen some nice how to You Tube videos showing the process. Good Luck.
jeepyj

[6bg6ga]

I melted down wheel weights and skimmed off the clips and durt for years. Have had no problems. As for fumes... if we were really concerned we wouldn't be casting now would we.

[Seeker]

I've smelted a lot of cowws. I know what the inside of my smelting pot looks like.

[Sasquatch-1]

I also did this for many years. Just have to clean your pot more frequently. I would drain all the lead and clean the inside with a wire brush. I would get into the spout with an old 22 cal. cleaning brush and run a piece of wire from the outside in on the spout.

[WRideout]

Since I bought the small-size Lee dipper pot, it is a lot easier to get two muffin tin ingots in it, than to smelt and clean up straight WW. Also a lot faster casting session. I like to get the crud out of the WW before they go in the mold. When I used to use a cast iron pot, I molded a lot of boolits directly from WW just like you said; it didn't seem to hurt anything, but back then I was heating with a gas burner, and using a lot more lead at a time.
Wayne

[jsizemore]

It will work fine but you need to keep a #4D smooth finish nail clamped in some vice grips handy to clear the spout when it clogs.

[Mica_Hiebert]

I've been doing it with my old small lee dipper. I'm upgrading to a rcbs pro melt so might go to smelter rout. I was just curious how many people just skipped that step. My brother in law and I came into 3 logs of rock hard lead that is presumably printers lead either mono or lino or mix of both and have a 5 gal bucket of sodder drippings from a radiator shop. I need to find about 300 lbs of roofing or plumers lead and figure out a way to smelt about 600 lbs in one shot for a good semi hard 15-18 bhn batch. This of coarse is totally unrelated to the original posting I'm just rambling after getting off grave yard.

[mfraser264]

Yes your method works but if you are stopping to melt the raw wheel weight clips are your molds cooling down?

My best castings (bullets) have been made by setting up a routine of keeping the same time between open and close of the mold. Goes considerably smoother when I have a batch of metal ready to replenish my supply and maintain a even level in the pot as I bottom pour. I keep a small cast iron pot of 20 pounds on a second gas burner to replenish the pot I cast from. This process is partly from my industrial experience from working in a few casting facilities. Take the scrap material to the furnace and keep a steady continuous supply to the machines.

[C. Latch]

I only own one pot. I don't smelt often - I mainly use ingots I buy here - but when I do, I smelt in the pot, and clean it out afterwards.

I have melted COWW, cleaned them up, and cast bullets from them while they were still hot. Works fine, you just have to actually have them clean.

[hydraulic]

By smelting in a dutch oven and a turkey fryer I redeemed my drip-o-matic.

[6bg6ga]

I melted down wheel weights and skimmed off the clips and durt for years. Have had no problems. As for fumes... if we were really concerned we wouldn't be casting now would we.I should have clarified. I used to use a 10lb pot to melt wheel weights skim the **** off and then pour the molten lead into ingots. The then clean ingots are ready to send to my Ballisti-cast bullet caster. Once melted again the metal is cleaned again and fluxed. The result is very clean bullets.

[lightman]

I'm another that did it in the past and now use a different pot. I have fewer issues with my pot dripping by using another pot to smelt in. I also like doing larger batches so that I have a larger batch of the same alloy. Someone else mentioned that you can cast faster using clean ingots than when skimming the clips and trash out of the casting pot.

[Don Fischer]

I always just melted the WW and skimmed off the top before pouring into the ingot mold. When I remelt to cast, I melt the ingot's then put some wax in the pot and stir. Every time I flux I also scrape the side's of my pot. I always get some black stuff on the inside walls of the pot.

[Hardcast416taylor]

I`m down to using 3 lead pots. The first is an old LEE bottom pour, high clearance, pot for pure lead only. The second is an RCBS 22 lb. bottom pour pot that is used for any other casting not done with the LEE. My third pot is a home made contraption electric smelting pot that holds about 80 lb. of smelted lead. In this pot I smelt, remove clips and dirt with fluxing by 2 methods of wax and sawdust. I scoop the lead into molds and then mark them as to what they are when cooled. I flux again when doing casting in the other pots to be sure the dirt is out. I always have an old oscillating fan blowing from behind me and out an open window or door while doing any melting. I`ve lost count of how many metal coffee cans of smelted dirt I have gotten rid of.Robert

[MT Chambers]

Well I'm usually smelting a couple of hundred pounds of ww at a time for future use and alloying, this doesn't dovetail at all with boolit casting.(for me) When casting i don't have the time to fight as much with the dirt which clogs things up, or removing the clips everytime you want to add lead.

[ulav8r]

Adding wheel weights without smelting first has two major drawbacks. It greatly increases the chance of casting dirty bullets and it does not provide consistent hardness-ductility-size-etc. Wheel weights from different manufacturers can be different alloys, by combining large amounts you can determine if additional alloying agents are needed, such as tin to improve fill out or silver to increase hardness or ?

[C. Latch]

Adding wheel weights without smelting first has two major drawbacks. It greatly increases the chance of casting dirty bullets and it does not provide consistent hardness-ductility-size-etc. Wheel weights from different manufacturers can be different alloys, by combining large amounts you can determine if additional alloying agents are needed, such as tin to improve fill out or silver to increase hardness or ?


Ten pounds of WW is going to be pretty consistent. And it's not like people are melting a pot full then casting without fluxing.

[gwpercle]

Been doing it since 1967. Had a free unlimited source of WW's so used straight WW metal for everything. No one around back then to tell me "don't do that" , so I just stick them in , melt , flux well about 3 times and cast. Still works so I'm not stopping. I ladle cast so I don't use a bottom pour pot.
But I'm not very scientific about casting , Some folks would call my methods crude , but it works for me.
Gary

[Nose Dive]

Well... I have on occasion dumped some 'cleaned' COWWs into my casting pot. Not too often though. I smelt a lot trash and corruption so I need to flux...mix...flux...mix...flux...mix with a lot of sawdust. I finish with some wax and skim and pour ingots into cupcake tins. Since my smelt is so nasty, I just don't put a lot of 'junk' like that in my casting pot. Now, I have plugged up the pot on many occasions, but that was due to my carelessness and inattention to what I was trying to do.

Now, Like Gary, I am not casting to put my boolits in the 10 ring 600 Ms down range. More like my 45 down range at 7 or so yards and, thus, any real imperfections in my castings are not really seen by me, or my fellow 'bangers' at the range.

Now don't get me wrong here. I do some 'serious' casting for a buddy of mine with a 50 cal long rifle. His molds, my casting expertise of what there is of it. He shoots targets out to 500 or so in competition. Mix is serious, alloy is serious, water treating is serious, and each boolit is individually weighed and inspected by the consumer. Some of the long rifle, black powder fellas really get serious about how well they can send those hunks of lead down range. I can't see that far so simple up close and easy is good for me. HIS lead is store bought, his tin is store bought and all is provided to me, all is alloyed, cast, water treated, aged and again, inspected by the consumer. Rejects are remelted and recast in the next casting session. None of my 'range scrap' and trash make it to his smelt/alloy pot efforts. Contamination you see.

Nose Dive

Cheap, Fast, Good. Kinldy pick two.

[RogerDat]

Cast iron Dutch oven & turkey fryer allow me to be productive making ingots in a way that mini 10# batches would not.
Ready to go clean lead ingots allows for more productive casting time and only casting tools laid out in the work space.
Pucks and ingots of clean lead take up a lot less space to store than buckets of loose WW's
I have seen at least a full BHN difference in COWW lead, large batches reduce this variation.
Having pre-cast ingots make it a whole lot easier to make an alloy. This much WW lead + this much Linotype + this much pewter to get my rifle "recipe" is a whole lot easier to get consistent in 80# batches where an ounce or two won't matter. In 10# batches actual alloy content will vary more and a couple of ounces of pewter will make a big difference in a 10# pot in an 80# pot? Not so much.


Better buy your plain soft lead already in ingots, you don't want to see what nice sheet lead with construction adhesive & drywall bits stuck to it will do to your pot. Hint, construction adhesive burns and smokes, a lot, drywall is gritty and fine after the lead melts.

Having the tools required for one job, laid out in a manner most convenient for that one job helps me have a better work flow and more focus on doing a specific task well.