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Which pan would ya'll recommend? I have tried just the plain pan and the lead got stuck,ruin the pan getting them out.Now,the one with the coating on it ,does it come loose ? Become burned, or does it maintain itself. I saw a small loaf pan at Kroger's and thought it might make a good ingot mould.Could make storage of WW a little more viable. Thanks a bunch guy's.
Some have spoken well of the various steel and aluminum pans, but I like cast iron. Whatever shape you find that will cast an ingot that fits in your pot will work fine. I have muffin, half cylinder and a Lyman ingot mold. The Lyman I use to catch drips from the bottom pour. Get out to some yard sales and flea markets this weekend. Anything you find will be a tenth the price of store bought. Good luck.
Ken
I use ingots but got tired of moulding them after awhile. I started using the 1 qt cast iron pot that I pour from. They stack easy and take up little space and fit back in the pot for remelting. Soda or beer cans work great too. They are free and keep the lead clean untill needed. Come out to a hair under 9# and you just strip the lead off when needed. You just have to make sure they are absolutely dry before using!
I use cast iron muffin pans like these.
https://secure.lodgemfg.com/storefro...idProduct=3951
They are a little pricey if you buy retail. I got 5 of them on closeout at a Cabela's store in Nebraska while on our way to Yellowstone a few years ago. Look at garage sales. No telling what you might find. Lodge also has an outlet store near Chattanooga. Good prices but they don't ship.
Lyman, RCBS, and Saeco make muffin pans out of cast iron that make stackable bread loaf shaped ingots. The ingots never stick and the moulds seem to be indestructable. The moulds even take dropping on a steel plate to dislodge the ingots in stride. I use two of the one lb. loaf moulds, one Lyman, one RCBS, which are enough for my twelve lb. Potter smelting pot. The Lyman mould is about forty years old and the RCBS is only a year or two old. I also have a 9 oz. mould that came with the Potter pot which I use for tape-on pure lead ingots. Total investment in these three moulds is about $ 17, and I have never had to drive around and search yard sales. Lyman, Potter, RCBS, Saeco, and retail baking equipment distributors, such as Graf and Midway ship right to my door!
I gave up on the muffin pans after a couple of bad experiences, most modern muffin pans have the cups pressed into a sheet steel frame. If the lead sticks to the cups you have to beat the cr%# out of it to release the cups and then peel the cup from the ingot so the only last for one pour. Heres what I use, 1st pic- cast iron cornbread pan, 2lb ingot. 2nd pic- sheet steel loaf pan, 6lb ingot. 3rd pic- Lee aluminum mold, 1lb & .5 lb ingots. The first two ingot molds were bought at Wally World. All of these are easy to stack and make alloying easy because the weight of the ingots are known.
I started out with my wife's aluminum muffins pans and quickly abandonned that - the lead stuck like crazy, they became very soft with the heat and bent out of shape, plus the muffins tasted funny.
I now use dollar store coated steel muffin pans and am very happy. I fill a large one (a dozen 2.2 lb ingots) and a small one (a dozen 1.1 lb ingots) at a time, and add and skim a bunch more WW to my melt pot while they're cooling. That's 40 lbs at a time, and by the time I'm ready to add more melt, they're cooled enough to flip over to remove the ingots. The two sizes are about perfect for storage, handling and use, and it's nice to have more than one size available.
If you do use teflon coated muffin tins, make sure you use them outside with lots of ventilation. Apparently burning teflon fumes are toxic and are especially deadly to pet birds.
you can find cast iron muffin pans on ebay. i got 5 from there
Taylor what part of TN are you located.
Thank's to all for the input.I am using a cast iron mold,but they still stick some.Just thought the loaf pan might work well.Wanted to see if anyone else had tried them,and what luck they had. (Clarksville)
Following a link on here, to another link, to some pics on another website, I saw something that struck me. The guy had taken angle-iron, cut it off at about 10-12" and welded on triangular-shaped end-caps. When he stacked these, they over-lapped to fill up all of the void area in-between ingots to maximize the compactness of his storage. Very neat idea, and they are very stable/won't fall over, like the trapezoid-shaped ingots from Lyman/RCBS moulds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jawjaboy
I'll trade you a custom CRB hat for one of those nice ingot molds. :-D
It's a done deal....meybee! What else ye got? :mrgreen:Quote:
Originally Posted by cohutt
jawjaboy, I haven't seen any mention of "I go Pogo" since the 1952 Presidential campaign, back when I was a tenth grader. I'm sure you heard about it from your parents.
These aren't the ones I was referring too, but that's OK, cause these are MUCH nicer made (like someone actually cared about craftsmanship :mrgreen: ).Quote:
Originally Posted by jawjaboy
I remember Pogo very well, even in the 50's. He lived in the Okefenokee Swamp y'know....I'm just down the road from the swamp!Quote:
Originally Posted by NVcurmudgeon
I've still got my "I Go Pogo" pin and most of the books. Walt Kelly was a Wis. boy and I would laugh 'til the tears ran down my cheeks every Sunday.
I remember my father quoting often "We have met the enemy, and he is us". from the old Pogo strip. Gianni
Doggone, you guys got me in trouble with the Boss, I told her I need yard sell muffin pans. "She who must be obeyed", came home with a stack of them. This is before I read they don't work and I went on a buying spree on e-bay for the cast iron. Heck they cost more to ship than to buy.
Stick those yard sale muffin pans outside to rust a little, and they will work fine!
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y22...ingotmold1.jpg
hope this works, this one is a little crude, but it does the job!!!.........Lee;-)
Crappy picture! But Oh well................
jb12k has it right,A coating of rust will let them just fall out.To speed up the process just drink a few brews and pee in them! This will also keep you from ever using them again for non lead :-P
Sooooo helpful, thank you (I think)!
Stay away from the aluminum ones. When they're filled with lead and you try to pick them up, they'll bend between the muffin cavities. I've made a bunch of ingots with them, but they're more trouble than they're worth. In addition, the muffin-sized ingots don't fit well in a Lee 10 pound pot.
Regards,
Stew
While at a Dollar Tree store a while ago, I found a 4 or 6 pack of small stainless Custard cups ? About 2 inches tall, tapered from the bottom to wider mouth. Maybe 1 1/2 inches wide at bottom and 2 inch at top. These work great if you ladle pour into them carefully, and are ideal size for 10 lb pot. Only problem is stability. On level table they seem OK, But I am going to make a tray or framework for them. Ingots are small enough that they shouldn't cool the pot much at all if added singly. At 4 or 6 for $1.00, for stainless, these work for me!!
ONE OF THE sIMPSONS HARDWARE STORES HAD CAST PANS was looking at 2 days ago price was under $10.muffin/corn bread sticks and also kettles.
Lee,
Is that 1 1/2" or 2" angle your ingot mold is made of? I'm really impressed with the handle. Time to fire up the chop saw, the welder, and get busy.
It's 1 1/2" angle iron. 3 cavities with the ends and steel handle extension is pretty heavy. I don't think a 4 banger would be much fun to handle. Each cavity is 4" long, the end pieces just over 6" long. And a 4" piece of 1" square tubing cut at slight angles to weld to the end piece. Old welding rod doesn't work very well, but it does make things stick for my purposes. (If I wasn't too lazy to remove all the paint before I welded, that would help also[smilie=1: ) Wood handle cut down to fit very snugly inside tubing, tapped in place with a mallet.
Well, its ugly, but its all mine.........................Lee;-)
Regarding the virtues of rusty ingot molds/muffin pans.
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Why not put them out in the rain? Well when you have several lead lined doors setting out for several years waiting to fall apart, why not? She says the "yard couldn't look any worse anyway", (little does she know).
I use the regular cheap steel muffin pans, not the aluminum. And I use the Frankford Arsenal Drop Out mold release spray in the muffin pans. You only have to use it once, and I've never had a stuck lead muffin. But the key is to only leave the lead in the pans just long enough to solidify and then dump them out. If you leave it too long the lead gets stuck. If I remember, I pour the lead and leave it in the pans for about 10 or 15 minutes.
I use a simple mold I made from angle iron. No handles. I just use welders gloves to flip it over. If I were to go with a baking mold, I’d go for cast iron.