First Smelting Today ! ! !

[Randall Kepley]

Hey guys finaly got to try my hand @ Smelting today, take a look @ the pix and tell me what you think! All comments welcome, I want to learn all I can. Thanks R.K.

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x294/randallkepley/Casting%20Bullets/Picture003Medium.jpg


http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x294/randallkepley/Casting%20Bullets/Picture002Medium.jpg


http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x294/randallkepley/Casting%20Bullets/Picture001Medium.jpg

[Randall Kepley]

Heres a few more.

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x294/randallkepley/Casting%20Bullets/Picture005Medium.jpg

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x294/randallkepley/Casting%20Bullets/Picture007Medium.jpg

[runfiveswife]

they look good to me randall keep up the good work

[40pa]

Those look horrible! Send them to me and I will get rid of them!:mrgreen:
Seriously though, that is a nice looking setup-nice and safe. One thing I learned is the plastic handles on those spoons soon fall off due to the hot metal melting the plastic enough over time.

[runfiverun]

you got it way, waay too hot ,fill that pot up.
the blue is too hot for ww's,and if it turns gold you got tin,etc floating on top.
i fill mine up, heaped up .and fill it up some more as it melts down.
then turn down the temp asap, skim clips [shake as much lead as you can back into the pot] scrape the dirt out/off,and flux. and then ingotize.

[Echo]

+1 for R5R - that's my scheme, too.

[thenaaks]

i agree that you got it too hot...you ought to keep it just above melting so you don't accidently melt any zinc weights...if you keep the temp a little lower, the zinc will be very obvious...you can crank up the heat and flux once the clips are all skimmed off....and fill up that big pot...as long as your burner will hold the weight

the mini muffin ingots work nice in the pot, but can be a pain to stack/store in large quantities

[Randall Kepley]

Thanks for the advice guy ( and gals ):mrgreen: . As you can tell , even though Ive tried to read up as much as I could, being the first time me and my casting partner were flying blind so to speak. We only had about 2/3rds of a 5 gal bucket of lead to work w/ and we culled out anything that wasnt lead before we started cooking to try to avoid any zinc that we could. I didnt weigh the bucket before we started but what we ended up w/ was 49lbs of ingots, so needless to say we were pretty happy.

Our next attempt will be w/ about 150lbs ready to go , so when we start we can fill that 6qt pot up and keep it rolling!

To address some of the posts, the plastic handle utinsells are sleeping w/ the fishes! They didnt last very long and mid-way through I sent him to the store for all metal! Worked much better.

I learned real quick I dont care for the muffin pan deal. I dont know what we were doing wrong but we couldnt hardley get them out once they were hard. I saw someone else here who had welded up angle iron molds and I think that will be my next path I go on. The muffin pans cant take much abuse at all .

When I fluxed , I wound up fluxing and stiring 3 times to try to make sure I got all of the crudd up and out, do you think I was overkill on this ? Im want to learn all I can and thats why I stated in my first post, " All comments Welcome! " Another thing I didnt add any tin or ( solder) to this mix. Did I screw up or can it be added later when I cast? Thanks for everything. R.K.

[Tom W.]

Just remember that if you're going to "keep it rolling" that you don't put ANY wet w/w into the pot if there is ANY molten metal in there...And that wet w/w are sometimes hard to spot....

[mtgrs737]

I think you have a good start, the pot and burner look good. The plastic handled skimmer spoon is a bit of a concern, get yourself a all steel skimmer at the big box outdoor sports store. I will try to post a picture of mine, it works great. Ingots will stack better if you can afford enough of them to keep the lead flowing, I have six ingot moulds. Like the others said, keep the heat down and you won't risk zinc contamination. RCBS or "The Antimony Man" sell good thermometers to keep track of the temps. You may need to make a wind/heat sheild to go around the burner and lower part of the pot to keep the heat in and the wind from blowing your heat away, they are easy to make with some scrap sheet metal. I think you are doing a great job of getting set up and I like the long pants, gloves, and I hope safety glasses/face sheild. Good luck and thanks for posting!

www.theantimonyman.com

[Randall Kepley]

Man 737, that is a stack and a half!!! The skimmer you have is exactly what I was telling my friend we needed. My wifes family is in the food concession business and we use skimmers like that to cook pork skins w/. And no worries, all of the plastic handle utinsils are gone. You know what they say, Live and learn. R.K.

[Echo]

My old guru Ralph told me to render as cool as possible, so I suggest NOT trying for speed!! Let the process move along at a reasonable pace, reducing the oxidation obvious in the pics. Of course, fluxing reduces the oxidation loss, but...

[Randall Kepley]

When using the muffin pan method, how do you get the ingots out? Mine were unbelievably hard to get out? R.K.

[lead slead]

smoke the muffin pans. I used a pice of pine scrap that I lit on fire and used it to smoke the muffin molds. Once cooled they fall right out.

[RP]

On the muffin pans find some aluim ones with no coating sticking will be gone new one with teflon are a PITA but smutting them will help. Was that a new pot first thing you got to do is start hitting the second hand stores and yard sells reloaders hate to pay full price its not in thier nature.

[runfiverun]

rust is an excellent release aid.
i wash my ww's prior to smelting them.when i lived iin the boonies i would spread them out on the gravel on some sheet metal, toss a bit of gas on them and ignite.
it just got all the gunk off,others call it flux :]

[WHITETAIL]

Randle, Welcome to the forum!
Good start!:cbpour:
Now you need to hit all the yard sales
you can.
They are a great source of smeting equipment.

[Randall Kepley]

Yea, I know what ya mean. The bug has bit pretty hard ! ! ! ! Cant wait to start casting. R.K.

[jsizemore]

Randall, If it was me I would move the pot and burner far enough away from the table so I could walk between them. If you need to get to the other side of the pot, you don't want to have to walk around the tank or step over the hose. Things happen, I want lots of options if things go bad.

[jsizemore]

I looked closer at your pictures and you can see where the edge of your table got scorched. I'd look for some old metal coffee or paint can for my dross and clips.

The rest looks good, especially the ingots.

[SciFiJim]

It looks like there is still some lead in with the clips in the box. Save any dross that contains melted lead. Once you have a good supply you can remelt and reflux it and recover more of the lead. You can definitely generate enough heat with that set up. The clips should be hot enough to be mostly lead free when skimmed. You might want to get something metal to place skimmings in to cool instead of a cardboard box. A sheet pan, a wheelbarrow, a metal can will all work.
Other than that...Great Job!!
Welcome to the addiction. If an enviro expresses concert, you can tell them that you are actively recycling what would otherwise wind up in a landfill.

[HangFireW8]

To address some of the posts, the plastic handle utinsells are sleeping w/ the fishes! They didnt last very long and mid-way through I sent him to the store for all metal! Worked much better.

I'm pretty new at this, started this year.

I found a fry cooker wire basket with handle, all welded steel. Before that I was scooping out wheel weight clips one or two at a time with the tiny Lee lead spoon. Boy that got old fast. I found the wire basket and get 99% of them in one pass.



I learned real quick I dont care for the muffin pan deal. I dont know what we were doing wrong but we couldnt hardley get them out once they were hard.

I've had good luck with large and small muffin pans. My first was a full-size muffin pan, steel with tin plating but well seasoned with years worth of baking grease. The first set of muffins came out with boiling bumps all over the bottom. I figured the grease was now gone so I hit it with Midway's (Frankford Arsenal) spray carbon release agent "Drop Out" and it worked great after that.

Then last month I bought a new 6x4 mini-muffin pan for 10 or 12 bucks from Wally World. It is steel with Teflon. I was concerned about the Teflon but before using it I hit it with the same carbon spray and have done a couple hundred of perfect minimuffins and every one falls right out.



When I fluxed , I wound up fluxing and stiring 3 times to try to make sure I got all of the crudd up and out, do you think I was overkill on this ?

Keep fluxing until all the crud is out. You may need only one flux to get the metals to alloy, but if crud keeps coming up, you need more than once to keep it coming out until it's all gone. Scrape the sides and the bottom a lot until it is all out. With wheel weights, between the paint, tar, sand and dog piss, there is a lot of crud to get out.

I use more than one kind of flux when smelting, Midway "Frankford Arsenal" (sic) "CleanCast Lead Fluxing Compound" and beeswax. When ready to cast bullets, I only need the beeswax. Smells great and burns off clean.



Another thing I didnt add any tin or ( solder) to this mix. Did I screw up or can it be added later when I cast? Thanks for everything. R.K.

The more times you melt, the more tin and antimony you lose to oxidation. I do my final alloying right before casting, in the casting pot, if it doesn't all fit I drain some out into ingots, and throw the rest in and then do it again, after a while everything has been through the pot once or twice and it is all pretty well mixed. That hasn't been necessary lately as now I have more and smaller ingots. Generally I make a lot of 1/2 pound ingots as well as near-one pound ingots, and my tin is in little solder drips, so I can maintain a mix ratio very at 5-6 pounds at a time in a 10 pound Lee pot.

Everybody has their own methods, none are wrong as long as you get a consistant, repeatable mix. You can burn off half the tin if you want, as long as you do the same thing every time! :-D

I guess I'm still just getting starting as I weigh my results in pounds not tons like some of you all. [smilie=1:

-HF

[Jaybird62]

My 17-year-old son welded up some 2-inch angle iron ingot molds, and they work real well for making 3 to 4-pound ingots. I learned after the first smelting that I needed to beat the ends of the molds out slightly to get the ingots to fall out. They want to get stuck if the ends are welded at right angles to the bottoms of the mold.

Good luck and welcome.

[inuhbad]

Any advice to others on how to better identify ZINC wheel weights in your batch before you melt them down???

All my wheel weights have sets of letters / markings on the sides, and I was wondering if that's a way to tell if there's any Zinc on them?

Any other ways to cull the Zinc WW's???

[HangFireW8]

Any advice to others on how to better identify ZINC wheel weights in your batch before you melt them down???

I look for rivets, they are always Iron or Zinc wheel weights when found. I also feel them, Zinc weights are lighter in the hand.



Any other ways to cull the Zinc WW's???

Buy a thermometer (you might as well get one anyway), and keep the melt temperature below 610 degrees. Skim the ones that don't melt off of the top. I got a bunch of them that way last week.

-HF