You can't buck modern trends and modern wisdom Bill, with all the high tech ways of thinking nowadays.
That's what ya call progress. A progressive kind of thing. Keeps us moving forward... :roll:
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You can't buck modern trends and modern wisdom Bill, with all the high tech ways of thinking nowadays.
That's what ya call progress. A progressive kind of thing. Keeps us moving forward... :roll:
I like all the posts thanks for your time it helps.
With the price of fuel these days, one needs to watch his bottom line when venturing far and wide foe W/W....[smilie=1:
If you ruined mix with zinc it might be possible that your local scrap yard will take your ruined mix as clean lead. Depending on the scrap yard you might be able to trade for other lead or wheel weights they have. Large blocks of clean material are worth much more to them then wheel weights with steel clips in them. Just a thought
Great idea. Gives me something to play with during the upcoming winter days.
Just finished my Kenjudo's bottom pour smelter, gotta try 'er out soon got 100lbs+ waiting.
no leaks testing with water.Attachment 91341Attachment 91342
I'm in the process of redoing my smelting set up, I was using a coleman stove which took forever to melt. I have a new burner that I am building the pot around, I'll post pictures when I get done.
A couple decades ago I built a burner stand out of a truck clutch spacer plate (a flywheel or brake disc/drum would've worked), some angle iron legs and a repurposed water heater burner, and used a cut-off Freon tank as a pot, with a pour spout heated/bent into the rim and a pair of rebar handles welded on. It worked fairly well. In the mayhem of four moves and a divorce/remarriage, it became lost, along with my six Lyman ingot molds, and now I'm using a scavenged steel pipe cap for a pot, heated on a storebought turkey fryer (AKA garage-fire-starter) and using a small wood-handled cast iron saucepan for a ladle, and two Lee ingot molds. With the Lyman or Lee ingot molds, I usually fill them up above the dividers to gang the ingots together. I find this takes about an extra pound of alloy. This makes them easier to count and stack. I use number/letter stamps to differentiate alloys/metals. When I need them for the production pot, I break them up with two big crescent wrenches. At present I have to bum cutting/welding capability, but I plan to make some angle or channel iron ingot molds so I can just use different shapes for different metals and no longer have to bother stamping them. I must say this thread makes me want to build a bottom pour smelter, but one thing at a time...
I've been reloading for 3-4 months now and get tired of paying 50$ or more for 500 boolits .I want to make my own lead boolits what's a fair price to offer the tire shops here in California for there wheel weight take offs? Is there a cheaper way to get lead ?Any info will be greatly appreciated.
Are the lyman smelting kits worth the 80$ ? No propane just plug into the wall and comes with ladle . I would appreciate your advice.. Thank you :)
Call your local recycling place and find out how much they are offering to pay people for wheelweights. Probably around $0.50 per pound, but you need to remember that there will be a lot of non-lead scrap, clips, and such in there. I would not be surprised if there was a higher percentage of zinc and steel wheelweights in CA than in other areas. You can often get lead off of ebay that has already been smelted or in the for sale area of this site for around $1 per pound in 50 lb quantities.
And I don't particularly think that is a good price for a smelting setup. I prefer a gas burner anyway. I use natural gas, so I don't have to worry about my tank running out.
The cost of assembling your own kit is going to depend upon your resourcefulness and what you might already have that you can re-purpose. If you already have a gas burner from a fish fryer or whatever, you've just decreased the cost of your kit quite a bit. An old out of date propane tank can be acquired either for no or very little cost and it's easy to cut the top off of it and you'll have a nice size smelting pot. But then, it's going to depend upon whether you have access to a welder and a circular saw with an abrasive blade or maybe an angle grinder. An 8 qt cast iron dutch oven can be had for $40.
http://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/outd...h+oven&Ntk=All
Or maybe $29 over at Harbor Freight. Plus you can often get a Harbor Freight coupon good for 20-25% off the listed price.
http://www.harborfreight.com/12-inch...ven-44705.html
MRBACKHAND, check and see if you can repurpose items to make it cheaper. A few threads down I repurposed a Weber grill I found on the side if the road. I cut my own propane tank which I got from local hardware store who charged folks $5 to leave their old tanks - gave a few to me for free. Used a welding blanket as a wind screen. Works great and I can just leave it out with the grill cover.
Well, felix does have a pretty good excuse for not keeping the links up to date...
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...40#post2726140
:smile: Just a thought here.For some cheap(read free)angle iron for molds.Check out the local bed sales stores.You can most likely get all the old angle iron bed frames just to haul it off.IIRC,its just 1" angle,but for free,who cares.Good for all kinds of projects too.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo
Jim
How about floating a thin piece of black steel on the melt to take your reading from ?
On second thought measuring, why bother ? After all, lead doesn't vaporize until you heat it to 1750* CENTIGRADE, which is over 3000* F.
I simply heat it until it pours intoignots and not worry about the tin or antimony content. It's all going to shoot better than I can.
We use 3 cut down lp tanks and small muffin pans
Buckshot I'm impressed. Cool set up. You do good quality work. Thanks for my sizer die too.
I have the basic dutch oven on a turkey cooker. The only thing I can add is that I built a brick chimney around the turkey cooker and pot to keep out out the wind. Saves quite a bit of fuel and the dogs and kids can be in the yard without them getting into any accidental trouble. The bricks are old landscape bricks that would have been thrown out, so the cost was free.