Old Fashioned Casting

[44Magnum]

I'm a USPSA Single Stack shooter and a college student. Always short on cash I have resorted to making my 230 grain LRN bullets using a fire and a pot. Does anybody else do this? [smilie=l:

If so, do you have any good tips to make things easier?

[qajaq59]

If your "fire" is a coleman or kitchen stove? Then yes, many years ago I did it that way. I did fishing weights too. I had a pot, molds and a ladle. Lubed them by hand. If you are talking about a campfire in the woods? I would imagine it'd work. But likely it might be a bit harder to control the heat. I can tell you that hot coals are going to work better then flaming wood. Usually if you want to do something bad enough you can manage with just a few essentials.

[44Magnum]

I am using coals in a chimney starter with a grate and cast iron pot on top.

[qajaq59]

You may want to make a hand blower for the coals, but it'll work. Our forefathers didn't have electric pots and they managed to win a war.
Besides, when you get to my age, it'll be a great story to tell. LOL

[Heckler]

It seems to me that keeping the lead at a consistent temerature would be the main challenge. And in my experience with casting, I have always found my hands sufficiently busy that I wouldn't think it would be very convenient to occassionally pump air on the fire. There are better ways, like a stovetop, or a propane burner. Even an electric hotplate can be purchased pretty cheap.

[Hang Fire]

No big deal, been casting round balls over open wood fires for many years when at primitive rondies, treks etc. Sometime we just over complicate things, KISS method works fine.

[stephen perry]

If you enjoy shooting while in College and expenses are choking you off your way is more than acceptable. Consistent lead temp is what the technocrats worry about. Once lead is melted it retains it's own temp as long as your heating source keeps going.

If you want sone consistency in temps go with a LEE 4 pot and have at it using a ladle of coarse which you probably already have.. Your experiences of Casting now you will never forget and maybe later in life you could set up another student like yourself with the essentials to Cast.

Stephen Perry
Angeles BR

[StrawHat]

I am using coals in a chimney starter with a grate and cast iron pot on top.

I hope the chimney starter is strong enough to hold the pot of lead. Stability is also a concern. Once those things are ironed out, the casting will be a snap.

Early on, I used bricks to hold my pot and a chimney starter to hold the coals. The bricks acted as both a wind screen and a heat concentrater, also as supprt for the pot. Looked a bit goofy, but it sure melted the lead. At that time I was using briquets but don't see why small chunks of wood would not work.

Being in college is enough of a challenge in itself, th eidea of getting a chnace to relax is a good one. At my stage in life, I prefer to have things at a comfortable height to work but hunching down over a fire will bring you some good stories and future memories.

Good luck and keep after the grades.

[cptinjeff]

Early on, I used bricks to hold my pot and a chimney starter to hold the coals. The bricks acted as both a wind screen and a heat concentrater, also as supprt for the pot. Looked a bit goofy, but it sure melted the lead. At that time I was using briquets but don't see why small chunks of wood would not work.

.

Good luck and keep after the grades.


I've thought about doing this as a "Portable" smelting set up. It seems it would get pretty hot for straight casting? Did you fill the chimney starter or try controlling heat by using a half or quarter load? How often did you replace the coals? Was just thinking about it and would love the benefit of your experience.

[geargnasher]

Mould temperature is much more critical to consistent boolit casting than alloy temp, and for what you're doing. I've smelted in the past with a temporary "oven" built in a "u" shape with stacked firebricks and an old piece of very heavy-gauge expanded metal. I used a stainless steel two-quart saucepan and Kingsford charcoal, but found I needed to add a blow dryer to really get it going well. Once going, you have about an hour of good smelting time before the briquets burn out.

Anyway, I admire your resourcefullness, reminds me of my college days where my roomate and I made gallons and gallons of apple cider and meade in the crawlspace above the ceiling tiles in the dorms.

Gear

[CiDirkona]

I got an electric grill from walgreens for $8 that does the trick just fine. I've since added a lee bottom pour pot, but even that was only around $40 used. I now smelt and cast at the same time. :)

[HeavyMetal]

I did a lot of casting when I was IPSC shooting right off the kitchen stove

I readjusted burner to run tad hotter, the stove had an air adjustment "valve" under the grill I simply slid it shut a little bit and got a much hotter flame I then adjuted heat as you would cooking any type of food by turning the fuel supply handle up or down as needed.

Surprisingly the stove maintained a very consistant heat and I was able to cast thousands of boolits a year on it.

[nicholst55]

I would think that a small fan, like the nail drying fan mentioned here (http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=91640), in the $8-10 range, would provide the extra air flow to the coals to get them good and hot.

I'd also bet that if you spent some time scrounging, you could come up with a burner and regulator from an old gas grill, and maybe a propane tank, too.

I started out casting with a Lee pot on a (electric) kitchen stove many moons ago. It wasn't great, but it worked, and kept me in boolits! I scrounged lead from a Prop and Rotor shop and the local tire dealers, and grabbed every other piece of lead I could get my grubby little hands on!

[blackthorn]

If you want to melt WW, or any other dirty scrap, over a wood fire, get an old 20lb propane tank (usually free), screw out the valve, fill the tank with water and use a hand held “angle” grinder to cut a piece (3 or 4 inches square) out of the top around the valve. Now that you have the danger of an explosion taken care of, drain the water, lay the tank on its side and cut it off as close to the top "shoulder" as possible. Set the "pot" up solidly and build your fire around it. This set up not only works with the wood fire; it gives you a free pot that can be used on your turkey fryer when you can afford one! This pot will hold WAY more lead than you can lift so be prepared to "dip" it out.

Another option is if you have a "tiger torch" or even a good "weed burner": take four building blocks and set them on the ground leaving an opening where the ends of the blocks meet. Place a cast (or steel) 45 degree pipe "elbow" in the opening. Place your pot full of scrap lead on the blocks over the top opening of the elbow, fire up your torch and lay it in the lower end of the elbow.

Hope this helps! Have a great day.
RDM.

[geargnasher]

Watch the heat and cinder blocks, things can go pop an the pot can fall. Don't ask.

Gear

[mroliver77]

I dont know what resources you have but I would make a sort of wood stove with a cutout for your pot. a chimney with a damper and an air control under the fire grate and the rest somewhat air tight will give you much control over the fire and make fuel last much longer. This sounds involved and expensive but we have built stoves out of steel five gallon buckets and 25 gal oil drums etc. A couple holes with pivoting flaps for air control and jury rig a damper out of sheet metal. If you want fancy you could make your own charcoal and get a hotter fire. With the controlled draft/air you can make a very hot fire!
Back in the day they made a stove that the big ole cast iron pots fit precisely in. It had a chimney and draft control and was used to cook large batches of food or lard. Very neat!
Jay

[Rockydog]

Although I admire your resourcefulness I'd really worry about the Chimney starter. Most of these that I've seen are basically light sheet metal rolled into a tube and spot welded or riveted. They are designed for filling with charcoal and emptying as soon as the coals are up to temp. The metal in these is thin enough to get red hot fairly quickly. I'd be very concerned that the metal would bend at that point and collapse. A 700* pot of lead landing on it's side is a disaster waiting to happen. Perhaps another larger ring of the same height outside of the chimney, with some airspace in between the two, would stay cool enough that you wouldn't have to worry about collapse. Rockydog

[StrawHat]

I've thought about doing this as a "Portable" smelting set up. It seems it would get pretty hot for straight casting? Did you fill the chimney starter or try controlling heat by using a half or quarter load? How often did you replace the coals? Was just thinking about it and would love the benefit of your experience.

This happened over 35 years ago. I replenished the coals as needed but I can not give you a time frame for it. Sorry. I would think the coals would last about as geargnasher mentioned in his post.

[Wayne Smith]

College student - I assume you are in a dorm? That puts a lot of restrictions on what you can do. As mentioned, a few bricks and some fire bricks as liners would help tremendously and probably not be more difficult to establish than what you have now. If you have a place to run a fire in a charcoal starter you can put some bricks around it at the least.

I too am concerned about the stability of the charcoal starter. You don't mention how much lead you have in your pot at one time, but lead gets heavy fast! Even enough volumn to ladle is likely to destabilize your set-up.

[zxcvbob]

My setup for recovering lead from range scrap and wheel weights is a $5 hotplate, an old 1.5 quart Revereware pan, and a Chinese ladle. I use this to make ingots to use later in my bottom-pour pot. The same thing could be used with the right kind of ladle for boolit casting, and would be much easier and probably safer than using charcoal.

[Doby45]

Get a dang $10 hotplate from Walgreens and be done with it. There is nothing fast or convenient about building a charcoal casting area. Unless you are just down with the "mountain man" aspect of things and that is fine too. But, you are just a college aged individual that wants to cast some boolits, make it easy on yourself now.

[DIRT Farmer]

In the river bottoms near a park just west of West Laffin yett, IN (they took my money, said they could educate me) there is most likely a small brick forge that I built to cast. I used mud to fill and seal the brick, left a vent hole in the bottom and a vent hole near the top. I used a brick at the bottom to regulate the air, and had small chunks of wood that would go in the vent hole if the first charge burned down. my10 lb castiron pot hung on a small tripod. I cast a lot of 311- 291 s there. In the late sixtys casting bullits on campus wouldhave caused excitement. The problem is not getting enough heat, but controlling the fire so it doesn't over heat. rember you can work iron this way.

[Recluse]

I'm disappointed in all of you. Haven't qualified the REAL question yet.

And that is (since the college football season is about to start), WHERE do you go to college? :)

How are you sizing and lubing your boolits?

:coffee:

P.S. I remember my limited budget during my college days all too well.