Smelting day-Printers Lead-

[SWANEEDB]

So we got up before breakfast & the sun too. Temps told us that it was a casting or smelting day, smelting won out. Took a few pic's of what and how we go about our smelting fun. Pot and burners we use were made for us by a couple friends, frame is angle iron, pot is stainless steel, measures 20 x 10 x 5, can do 250 lbs at a time with no problem. When the pot gets low we just use a cordless and run down the bolts on one end and it lets the smelt run to the other end, we can scoop out just about all except for a couple lbs. Smelt time per pot is right about 2hrs or so, maybe a few more minutes. Pic's are 4 smelts done today, two of the smelts were of the same printers lead, all mono is why the bigger 'pile', other two were all printers lead but was a mixture of lino-mono & foundry. Now will get samples off to BNE, hopefully to fine tune our casting alloy. The blocks/bricks of lead we posted earlier will fit in the pot real nice, that's how we break down the B&B.
Todays 'fun' netted us about 850lbs (maybe a little more) hard alloy to mix with our 99 to1.

Buckets behind the lead stacks are also full of printers lead, think their are a couple more here somewhere covered up, had a lot more than first thought.

Not bad for a '77' yr old kid huh. I'm bushed tho.

[Oklahoma Rebel]

super cool, where did you get that 12 cavity block mold, and how much does each one weigh?

[SWANEEDB]

super cool, where did you get that 12 cavity block mold, and how much does each one weigh?

It's an old bakery bread pan I think, should have bought them all at a local flea mkt. Normally we pour just one ladle which holds about 11/2 lbs and use them when ready for casting, but today we filled them up, about 5lbs or so cause they'll be smelted again with our other soft lead when we get the XrF reading back.

[Skunk1]

Looks like fun. need to do the same with mine.

[MaryB]

I need to get off my butt and smelt wheel weights, have 2 full buckets...

[Grmps]

super cool, where did you get that 12 cavity block mold, and how much does each one weigh?

I picked up a couple of those at goodwill, now I prefer my DIY angle iron molds.

SWANEEDB I like you smelting setup

[lightman]

I'm probably going to do the same with the mixed type metal that I have. It will be near the end of the year for me though! Did it take much fluxing to get it cleaned up? Mine looks to have quite a bit of ink on it.

[lightman]

I need to get off my butt and smelt wheel weights, have 2 full buckets...

Me and our new member Biggin have 20 buckets sitting in my shop and we plan to go get some more! Kinda have mixed feeling about this, somewhere between dread and excited.

[SWANEEDB]

Me and our new member Biggin have 20 buckets sitting in my shop and we plan to go get some more! Kinda have mixed feeling about this, somewhere between dread and excited.

Know what your saying, kinda had to push myself to get this done today, we to have some buckets of w/w's, will not happen for some time, what we have is really nice and clean stuff to work with, maybe spoiled now.

[SWANEEDB]

I'm probably going to do the same with the mixed type metal that I have. It will be near the end of the year for me though! Did it take much fluxing to get it cleaned up? Mine looks to have quite a bit of ink on it.

Used cedar chips, first flux used quite a bit and left ashes on a bit, moved it around gently, skimmed off and a light touch of more chips, came out OK, but when we do the smelt for casting we'll do a couple more fluxes.

[lightman]

Thanks! I was a little worried about this very rich alloy being hard to work with. Prolly overthinking things on my part!

[lwknight]

You were worrying for nothing. Type metal is already clean and it is easy to melt and mold.
It is much less of a job than cleaning up old lead/WW junk.

[308Jeff]

Great setup! Looks like a good time.

Another couple of weeks to a month, it'll finally be cool enough here to start melting stuff again!

[rancher1913]

those 2 pound "cast boolit" molds make some neat ingots, prefer those over the laymans nowadays.

[Oklahoma Rebel]

I have one (cast boolit mold) but haven't used it for production yet, just for when I empty my pot, do they take a long time to cool and solidify when you have used it for smelting a bit?

[SWANEEDB]

Added a little help yesterday on our smelting tours, a PID rigged up on a stand alone lamp fixture, PID is about 5 foot above the pot, just wanted more control over the heat, think we have been using more than nessesary, had burners set just enough to melt, ended up with a good smelt and took much less fluxing to get a real nice "silvery" top on the smelt. PID only helped in getting a good adjusted burn but the readout was pretty darn neat, smelt read at about 700 degrees. Just thought we'd share.
This smelt was done with 99 o/o and lino at 4 to 1, will check on the hardness in a week or so, also a sample will get to be XrF'ed by BNE.

[lightman]

Looking forward to how your mix turns out. My PID has a 2 position switch and I need to look into it and see if I can wire it just to use the temp readout from the 2nd switch position.

Your lead bricks look like nice clean lead. Whenever I get time to melt my type I plan to use cable sheathing to blend with mine as its the largest amount of soft lead that I have. I'll post up some pics when I do mine but I expect it will be early next year. Got a trip planned, hunting season is getting close and just have lots of stuff going on.