Bullet soup

[motorcycle_dan]

Had a good match on Saturday, Shot well but so did everyone else. Big match this coming weekend. Need to put in some serious practice time if I'm wanting to do well.

Sunday decided it was time to brew up some wheel weights and make a fine batch of bullet soup. Local tire shop is very handy with letting me clean out their buckets. Mostly cause they are busy eating pizza that I brought. That is my plan distract them the swipe the lead. Works so far, manager asked for something other than peperoni next time....

For those of you who wonder where I found all the ingot making material. Most of the hard parts can be had new from harbor freight. And Cheap. The two burner gas stove, the modified dutch oven and the skillet are all harbor freight items.

So with a late start after a great breakfast, I stacked up just slightly more than 220 pounds of clean ingots.

One spill from me trying to improve the process. I learn, slow but I learn. Thought it would be better to pick up the pot with both hands rather than one used to steady it on the vise grips. Weight of the grips allowed the pot to tip to that side, molten lead shifted to that side, and over it goes. Rather than graping for the vise grips which were being covered in lead, I just sit the rig down as quick as I could. Spill about 10# what a mess. I wrote it off as important lesson learned then gathered it all up and remelted it.

Pictures here in folder "2006-06-05 Bullet Soup"
http://photos.yahoo.com/motorcycle_dan

[Dale53]

Dan;
Looks like you have a decent set up. However, I would make one suggestion. Get a dipper. Use the dipper to transfer lead from the pot to the ingot moulds until the lead gets too low in the pot. Then, you will have a much lighter and easier managed pot. Helps to minimize accidents. Spilled lead can be BAD (as you have found out).

Thanks for sharing with us. There IS more than one way to skin a cat...:-D

Dale53

[bruce drake]

Dan,

Nice Hot Foot!

Bruce

[redneckdan]

as a sie note, when something goes wrong with a melt. Just get the hell away. Burners can be fixed, you can get more lead.... skin and eyes are hard to come by.

[redneckdan]

too bad the spillage was not the right shoe. Otherwise when you get puled over, you can show the officer yer "lead foot".[smilie=1:

[motorcycle_dan]

Yeah when it was all said and done. The lead foot thing was pretty funny.

As pointed out by several people, get the hell away, was my main goal when thing's started going bad. My main concern was to remove gravity from the equation. Get the bucket on the floor. Yes the burners had to be cleaned and the lead had to be cleaned up but all was well. Also learned to keep the gas hose in a position to keep it off the ground. That was a real concern when the puddle of lead also included the feed hose.

[Calamity Jake]

You might want to set them ingot molds on some wood instead of on the concrete floor, the heat will cause the concrete to crack and break out, Beleave me I know!!!!!