ghh3rd
05-22-2009, 01:11 AM
I was off today, so thought I'd do something productive and opened my "little black book" of lead contacts. Three of them each had a 1/2 3-gal bucket of WW for me, two were free and one was $5. My wife was in the truck for the third one, and couldn't understand why I wanted it when I already had two :???:
I fired up the turkey frier after the rain stopped about 10:00 pm and started smelting. This time, I melted everything in the dutch oven on a very low heat -- each time I added a couple of handfuls of WW the lead would get a bit slushy on the sides of the dutch oven. I had to wait a moment until it liquified again to skim off the clips. Although it was slower this way, it was easier since I was sure that any missed Zinc weights got skimmed off with no chance at all of them melting. I didn't have to spend extra time worrying as much about Zinc so overall, I probably broke even timewise.
I tried an experiment and tied a piece of wire to one WW marked ZN and left it in the pot the entire time. It never did melt, which proved to me that my method was working for me.
I have some large chunks of very hard wax, and couldn't break off a small piece, so I got lazy and chucked in a piece about 1"x1"x1". Wow, did that smoke for a long time, but that lead was sure pretty afterwards.
I only smelted one dutch oven full tonight, and got 57 lbs of ingots, according to the size of them, although this time I filled my Lee ingot mold to the very top so the two 1lb and two 1/2 lb ingots are all connected. I'm sure that I've actually have well over 60 lbs of ingots since the mold was so full.
I don't know why I didn't think of pouring ingots this way before now. It sure went fast, having the mold on a several layers of very moist towel cooled them off rapidly, and it was a lot easier to put away 19 3lb+ pieces than 76 individual 1 lb and 1/2 lb ingots. I found that they really aren't too hard to break apart when done this way, and they really stack up nice.
I have about the same amount of WW to smelt tomorrow. My 11 yr old son asked why I want to go through all of that again tomorrow, and I told him that I need to empty my buckets so I can get more lead :-P
Randy
I fired up the turkey frier after the rain stopped about 10:00 pm and started smelting. This time, I melted everything in the dutch oven on a very low heat -- each time I added a couple of handfuls of WW the lead would get a bit slushy on the sides of the dutch oven. I had to wait a moment until it liquified again to skim off the clips. Although it was slower this way, it was easier since I was sure that any missed Zinc weights got skimmed off with no chance at all of them melting. I didn't have to spend extra time worrying as much about Zinc so overall, I probably broke even timewise.
I tried an experiment and tied a piece of wire to one WW marked ZN and left it in the pot the entire time. It never did melt, which proved to me that my method was working for me.
I have some large chunks of very hard wax, and couldn't break off a small piece, so I got lazy and chucked in a piece about 1"x1"x1". Wow, did that smoke for a long time, but that lead was sure pretty afterwards.
I only smelted one dutch oven full tonight, and got 57 lbs of ingots, according to the size of them, although this time I filled my Lee ingot mold to the very top so the two 1lb and two 1/2 lb ingots are all connected. I'm sure that I've actually have well over 60 lbs of ingots since the mold was so full.
I don't know why I didn't think of pouring ingots this way before now. It sure went fast, having the mold on a several layers of very moist towel cooled them off rapidly, and it was a lot easier to put away 19 3lb+ pieces than 76 individual 1 lb and 1/2 lb ingots. I found that they really aren't too hard to break apart when done this way, and they really stack up nice.
I have about the same amount of WW to smelt tomorrow. My 11 yr old son asked why I want to go through all of that again tomorrow, and I told him that I need to empty my buckets so I can get more lead :-P
Randy