First time smelting outside/will this work?

[SteelyNirvana]

I'm getting ready to smelt my first batch of lead outside and need to know if this will work. My plan is to use some cinder blocks to build a squared "Pit" and fill it with scrap peices of wood that I pick up off the jobsite (Pine 2x4's, 2x6's, etc). I then will use a grate from a charcoal grill to set ontop of the cinder blocks/fire. I will be using an old plumbers cast iron pot ontop of the grate to smelt in. I've got a 5g bucket full of wheelweights and about 60lbs of pure lead to melt.

Will this setup work? Will the fire get hot enough?

Thanks in advance

[Netherwolf]

I'm getting ready to smelt my first batch of lead outside and need to know if this will work. My plan is to use some cinder blocks to build a squared "Pit" and fill it with scrap peices of wood that I pick up off the jobsite (Pine 2x4's, 2x6's, etc). I then will use a grate from a charcoal grill to set ontop of the cinder blocks/fire. I will be using an old plumbers cast iron pot ontop of the grate to smelt in. I've got a 5g bucket full of wheelweights and about 60lbs of pure lead to melt.

Will this setup work? Will the fire get hot enough?

Thanks in advance

Me thinks you'll be standing over the pit a "long, long, long long long time."
Netherwolf

[Bret4207]

It'll work, it'll take some time though. Directing the exhaust from shop vac towards the fire will make it burn hotter. Start a good distance back from the fire.

[cajun shooter]

If you have any treated pieces in that scrap; "Beware" the fumes are poison and can put you in the ground if enough of it goes down the old pipe!!

[docone31]

It will work, however,
The pit fire needs to be directed to the bottom of the pot. Anything on the grateing will add to the grateing sagging! Wood fire can melt steel if it is directed. Construction debris can get extremely hot.
Then you are going to have to get near the pot to ladle it into ingots.
If you take those factors into consideration, you should be very well able to melt some serious lead.
Keep the Wheel Weight seperate from the pure lead. You can mix and blend later to make the sweet alloy.
Rather than a grate to set the pot on, you might consider suspending it over the fire. With a little ingenuity, you can make a swinging set up so you can get the melt so it can be swung out from the fire to ladle out.

[fourarmed]

docone31 is right about the grate. Heat it up with 100 pounds of WW on it and it will sag or collapse. You need something heavier. I built a wood smelter, and it works fine, but it's a little slower than propane. Scout the salvage yards for welded sewer grates or cast iron furnace grates.

[SteelyNirvana]

Thanks for all the reply's so far. Kinda looks like I might be better picking up a turkey fryer or one of those fish fryers that I saw at Wal-Mart.

I do have an old plumbers in-fared propane furnace that I was messing around with a few months ago but when I'm not burning the hairs of my hand trying to get it to light, it sputters like crazy. I would like to use this if I could ever get it to stay lit. Any ideas on what could be causing the sputtering? fuel pressure regulator maybe?. I am using a real old tank/old gas that's at-least 25 years old but I've read several places that propane doesn't go bad. Could it be bad propane?

[Dale53]

Years ago, our local club smelted a couple of thousand pounds of indoor range scrap using a 50 gallon drum (with some holes punched in the bottom) and a large iron pot suspended over the drum (with the pot actually inside the drum with the top of the pot about even with the top of the drum). Using wood scrap it worked extremely well. After it got going there was nothing slow about it. It actually was a pretty dern good set up for just smelting and pouring into ingots.

Dale53

[inuhbad]

Briancraig,

I started out using the bonfire method, and I can tell you that it officially SUCKS.

It'll WORK just fine, but I found I get the best results when I do the following:
A.) Build a HUGE WOOD FIRE, then let it burn down to a large bed of red-hot coals! Then throw on your cast iron pot directly on top of the leveled coal bed. Then Stack MORE firewood around the sides of your cast iron pot, fill the pot with wheel weights, and let the sucker burn even hotter...

B.) Use a fish / turkey frier.

With the firewood method you CANNOT control the temperature very well at all! So if you have some ZINC in there, it'll melt if it gets too hot before you can scoop it out - destroying your alloy!

With the fire raging around your pot, it makes it awfully damn difficult to get a 'scooper' in there to scoop out the slag & crap, as well as fluxing your alloy... Prepare for a couple possible burns. I had to weld a 'custom scooper' to scrape out slag and scoop out the lead into ingot molds.

Also, if you do this, lead drips/droplets will get in your fire pit, at which point I no longer would recommend using that same fire pit/ring for roasting S'mores or Hotdogs unless you don't mind the possibility of particulate / lead contamination on the food you eat from that firepit.

I just got a Fish Fryer on sale @ Fleet Farm and will hopefully crank it up for my first smelting with it on Sunday. We'll see how she goes, but I'm quite confident that I'll have much better temperature control with the propane burner than with the woodfire.

[Dale53]

inuhbad;
What I said above is the truth. However, your concerns and suggestions are absolutely on point! When our club did the wood fire burn we were doing ENTIRELY indoor range scrap. There was some sand mixed in from the bottom of the trap, but it was mostly in the form of large chunks of lead. There were NO zinc weights to contend with. In short, it was quite different from a "daily user" set up.

My set up has been pictured here, ad nauseum, but it is the Fish/Turkey fryer with a cast iron or welded steel pot. I can control the temperature quite well and keep it below the melting point of zinc (I use an arbitrary figure of 650 degrees which gives me a 100 degree leeway). I can not, for the life of me, understand why anyone would want to use anything else. Most of you already have a propane cylinder for various uses (generally to grille with), so if you discount the propane cylinder, the fryer cost me $30.00 and the cast iron Dutch oven cost me $30.00. I have melted a couple of tons of bullet metal. The running costs, of course, depend on the cost of propane, but on my present cylinder I have over a 1000 lbs melted and it is not empty (probably close). That is pretty cheap "smelting" in my view. The set up is also VERY convenient and can be easily done in an urban environment.

Anyone can use any method they prefer, of course, but the cost/convenience/efficiency ratio rules heavily in favor of the fish/turkey fryer set up for smelting. I keep mine in the garage out of the weather and I expect my heirs to use this for the next several generations, also.

Dale53

[TAWILDCATT]

I could cry Dale :they spend more time /money trying to save when a good solution is right in front of them.I use a plumbers furnace[propane]I bought a turkey cooker to melt but it got confuscated by my wife. so back to the funace.
and I use cast iron muffin pans and corn stick pans.melt on cement of garage apron and the cast iron cools in min.If it would stop raining I would be back at it again.old mountain sells cast iron pans for under $10.:coffee:[smilie=1:

[inuhbad]

Well, yesterday I did my first smelting of lead with Propane and a fish fryer that I bought for about $30 bucks!

I must say that it works INFINITELY better than the bonfire method! Far easier, and I was able to keep the temperature between 600 to 700 degrees! It never topped 700! Averaging around 650 with the burner set about 85% to 90% open.

This is my NEW setup - laying right beside the OLD setup (firepit)...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v401/bannie/ForumPics/Smelting1.jpg

My ingot moulds are:
1. Lyman 1 pound Ingot Mold. Smelts 1# ingots.
2. Cheap sheetmetal 'Muffin'/cupcake tray.
3. Custom ingot mould I welded from 2" Angle Iron following the idea/advice of a member here... I let it sit out in the rain a few weeks to rust it up this spring...

I was smelting about 180 pounds total. About 155 pounds of pure lead pipe, and about 25 to 30 pounds of wheel weights?

This photo is after I cast ingots from the first pot-full of lead pipe. You can see the dross/slag I skimmed off & piled on the board next to the burner. A small pile of ingots beginning to develop...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v401/bannie/ForumPics/Smelting2.jpg

The lead pipe had clay-like soil in it, and also a pretty good amount of powdered SULFUR so I presume this might have been from some kind of industrial facility... I scooped it all out just fine. Fluxed with a few paint sticks which worked pretty good.

This is the first batch of ingots with the propane burner. The 'Scooper' you see on the side is a large 'ladle' that I welded myself out of 2" angle iron and 1/2" steel rod. You need a Looooooong handle and a BIG scooper if you're going to be smelting in a FIRE PIT. Lest you enjoy cooking your arms & legs while getting close to such a hot fire!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v401/bannie/ForumPics/Smelting3.jpg

The big scooper I made worked well at filling out the angle-iron ingot mould. One scoop filled 1 to 1.2 of the ingot mold spots... The custom ingot mould worked GREAT! Whoever first thought up this idea was a genius! I made it for a grand total cost of not more than $5 bucks! Just some scrap 2" angle iron and a few welding rods!

Not sure why, but I had this same problem with the bonfire method... I sometimes get air bubbles in my first few ingots... Is this just moisture on the ingot mould, or what's causing the air bubbles? Is it insufficient fluxing??? Any ideas?

Here's the stack of ingots at the end of the day...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v401/bannie/ForumPics/Smelting4.jpg

Total came to about 150# of PURE lead (from the pipes) on the right - and about 20 to 22 pounds of wheel weight alloy on the left! The wheel weight alloy worked out BEAUTIFULLY! Nice fill-out, no bubbles, etc.

Propane is DEFINITELY the way to go on this in my opinion! Cleaned up easily too! I smelted four pots-worth (averaged about 40 to 50 pounds in a pot) all within about 4 hours. I was going slow and doing it all by myself.

In four hours I burned less than 1/4 of my 17.5lb tank of propane! :)

I can't wait to get my heinie back down to the non-ferrous metals recycling facility and pick up a CR@PTON of more wheel weights & lead!!! Using the propane burner turned this 'hobby' from somewhat of a 'Chore' to something that's actually ENJOYABLE!!!

Thanks for all the advice on this great website! It's really helped me get off & running great!

[KYCaster]

A wood fire can work very well. Here's my latest version.

14427


It doesn't take a big fire, but the smaller the fire the more often you have to add fuel. This method is slightly slower than the same pot on a turkey fryer. It will melt 100lbs. of WW in a little over an hour. Temp can be controlled by ammount and type of fuel added. The flame is completely contained so it's no worse than working with a propane flame. It's quite a bit cheaper than propane too.

Jerry

[Dale53]

inuhbad;
Congratulations!! There is NO DOUBT that is THE set up. Uh-h-h, you WILL have to pay me royalties on choice of burner and fabricated mould as I had the same set up FIRST! [smilie=1:LOL

However, even if you have a wood burning outfit like KYCaster does, the important thing is you are "doing it"!! (I have to be nice to KYCaster, as he lives close enough to me to come and GET me:mrgreen::mrgreen:).

The convenience of propane is undeniable (compact, easy to set up, easy temperature control, and clean) and when you factor the cost (I passed Walmart today and noticed that an exchange propane tank was less than $18.00 - I have already done 1000 lbs of smelting with one tank and there is still some in the tank) it becomes the "way to go". On the other hand, if you have free wood and a place to do it, it's hard to criticize that method.

I live in the city and a bonfire would probably get the "greenies" out in force complete with the gendarmes. So, for me, it is a fish/turkey fryer all the way.

Dale53

[inuhbad]

I live in the city too, but we have a 'Recreational Fire' ordinance that allows fires that can be held within a 3' diameter fire ring... As you can see, my fire ring isn't exactly 'Insulating' like the concrete/ceramic blocks that others here are often using! The heat escapes out the side, and cooks your LEGS while you're trying to smelt the lead... Extremely inefficient for my fire pit type.

I'm a little worried about using regular concrete cinder blocks since here in Minnesota the temperature fluctuations and possible moisture in the blocks can cause them to crack & split rather easily whenever they're used near a hot bonfire. I'd be too worried about a block splitting and spilling my pot full of molten lead all over the place...

That said, some people worry about cast iron dutch ovens cracking & splitting and spilling lead all over the place too. I'm in the process of getting some good strong steel plate to weld up my own 'crucible' for melting lead.

I have some die-hard leftist enviro-weenies living right next door... You should've seen them screaming when I started refinishing / parkerizing my own steel gun parts using the side-burner on my propane grill! :) They probably thought I was cooking meth or something! LOL!

The fire method DOES work, and has worked for centuries - but I'm just not that skilled at maintaining a consistent heat, and although I have a nice pile of firewood in my backyard for now - that may not always be the case in the future.

For now I'll stick with Propane for the sheer speed & simplicity of it... Part of the 4 to 4.5 hours of 'smelting' actually includes removing from the box, reading some instructions, and assembling the fish fryer for the first time, and hooking it up to the propane tank. I just threw the whole thing (assembled) back into my shed so it's easy to pull it out & start smelting up some more lead whenever I need it.

I'm quite happy with all I've learned from this website!!! :)