Tinsel Fairy Quick Howdy, almost en passant

[Echo]

Well, it could have been worse. I smelted down some lead plates this AM, and wanted to put some up into regular ingot molds. I tried once using the common 4-cavity ingot mold, flooding the mold to get a big 5-lb ingot. They stack well. Worked, too - but didn't work as well as I had hoped. I have done this with hard alloys, and it is a simple job to break the ingots apart for loading the pot. Not so with pure Pb! It just bends! Crikey. But I digress.

So I had decided to pour the Pb up into regular 1-lb ingots, and thought it would be more productive if I water-cooled the molds (!). I do it with my muffin pan, and it works nicely, by placing the muffin pan, or ingot molds, into a cookie sheet that I have placed some H2O. Cools things down quickly, and nicely - with the muffin pan. There is a problem doing it with 4-banger ingot molds. I guess a sailor would say I needed more freeboard. Pouring the melt into the ingot mold caused the water the mold was sitting in to boil, and pop, and put a few drops into the adjacent mold. When I started to pour into that mold, the Tinsel Fairy dropped by, and spoke in a fairly quiet voice saying 'Not A Good Idea!'.

Happily, it was just a little pop, but it did nicely decorate my cap. No damage, and I can definitely say that it was a learning experience. I put the rest of the melts into topless Coke cans...

[44fanatic]

Try using a towel that is damp for cooling your ingots while pouring. Will just steam instead of boiling off. I didt it once with my muffin pans and had some of the purtiest ingots I ever made.

[1Shirt]

I use multi ingot molds, muffin tins, etc, when I am smelting, set them on a concrete floor, and dump them when they are cool enough. Been visited by the tinsel fairy enough over many years in various casting sessions to know that hopefully the last one I had was the last one. Probably not so however. Kind of fond of the saying that speed kills, and when it comes to smelting lead, and casting it sort of applies.
1Shirt!:coffeecom

[Echo]

Try using a towel that is damp for cooling your ingots while pouring. Will just steam instead of boiling off. I didt it once with my muffin pans and had some of the purtiest ingots I ever made.

I like this - I will put a folded-up old towel in the cookie sheet and soak it nicely. Thanks!

[ph4570]

I use two of the 4 cav ingot molds. While pouring one the other is cooling on a damp towel.

[Matt_G]

The towel trick works well on my older iron Lyman ingot moulds, but on the newer ones that look like pot metal, be careful.
I cracked one of them doing the towel trick.