Coleman stove?

Gentlemen,
I can already see the need for a larger smelting pot than the lee magnum melter I have. I bought a whole pig of lead and it is going to take me a while to rend it down into smaller ingots for alloy work.
I plan on going to a few rummage stores and trying to find a small Dutch over for larger batches. Can I use a white gas coleman stove to melt on? Does it get hot enough? I have an old turkey fryer (somewhere) that I could use, but think i would prefer the coleman because I can set it on a table or bench outside with ease.
Also, I think the Turkey fryer is messed up as i recall. It's got some kind of dummy switch that shuts the gas off every 10 minutes if you dont keep pressing the button. As i recall it is kaput.

I sometimes pull out the Coleman two burner camping stove got an adapter and hose to hook it up to 20lb propane tank supports cast iron pot of lead no problem
ive use single burner pump up Coleman too but rather have the stability of larger stove

Lots of folks use them.

Some have found that for the extra weight of a big pot-
they surround it with bricks, put a steel frame or rebar rods over the bricks for the pot to sit on.
That's to keep all that weight off the stove itself.

A welded up heavy steel frame & grid to set over the stove is great, but bricks & heavy rods will work.

A quickie version might be to take the burner off the turkey fryer,
and shim up the stove to set real close up under it.

I've got a big old Miller and lots of angle, so making a support rack won't be to hard. Thanks gents

Using a Coleman stove to melt lead in any kind of large pot give me the willys,It was pricey but I bought a 2 burner camp stove by Fire Chef. Each burner produces 30k btu. It can sit on a picnic bench or has some very sturdy legs that can be added or detached as needed. Last time I check said stove was around $100 and is powered by a 20 lb propane tank.

For smelting lead, I use a Coleman white gas stove and burn regular auto gas in it...just need to clean the generator once in a while.
I didn't re-enforce anything, yes it will bend a little when the grate gets glowing red...I just bend it back when the session is done.
I have found the stoves only last so long anyway, with this hard use, So I choose not to spend any effort into re-enforcing it. Luckily in my area I can find used stoves for $5 or $10 at garages sales or thrift stoves.

I used the Coleman 2 burner stove for years. When I retired the first one it looked like it had been in WW2. I used the Coleman fuel & the generic brand from W/Mart. I finally retired the second one about a year ago (it was not pretty). Like JohnB I used the OEM grate & would bang in back in shape when needed.

Last year I bought a fish cooker from W/Mart (cheap) & fabbed a sheet metal screen to hold the heat & shield from the wind (nothing fancy).

With the Coleman you need a pot that sits on several of the bars of the grate. I had a pot almost spill with molten lead. The bars bent when hot and the grate fell down on the burner. I would limit my smelts to around 30 pounds.

A cheap propane-fired Fish Fryer from WalMart has served me well for 10 years now. I use a cast iron dutch oven to smelt in and, as mentioned above, a shield to deflect the wind helps. All I use for that is aluminum foil, 4 layers thick.

The Coleman stove will work, did that for a few years, but it's slow. The money spent for the fish fryer was well worth the time it saves me!

A second for the cheap propane fish cooker , I’ve used one for years and it works great .

If you have a good fryer, the burner can be replaced easy enough. I had an old wally world fish fryer that worked for lead but not real well. I replaced the low BTU burner with a 100k+ BTU burner.
Ebay has them, Amazon has them. Mine is a 6 " banjo burner. Comes with the burner, hose and regulator. About $25 to $30. They make smaller burners of 50k BTU for a bit less.
Leo

I use a Coleman Handy Gas Plant. It's big and sturdy and will eat just about any fuel.

Using a Coleman stove to cast works, if fact that is what I started with almost 60 years ago, but I would not use it to smelt any quanity of lead. The grid holding the pot will sag with a small iron casting pot, so I sure wouldn't put any kind of weight on it. The burner itself will definitely get hot enough, but the stoves framework would make for a dangerous setup.

If you are going to do smelting a good turkey fryer burner works fine. Just about any pot will work, but don't trust the handles unless they are really secure.

I’ve found that the stoves that use a liquid fuel like gas or kerosene, seem to create more heat than propane.

I started ~55 years ago with an old Coleman stove with a 20# bottom pour (Saeco, I think) pot in past, the grill sagged but never collapsed. It was only used for lead 'smelting' once I got the RCBS electric pot, before that it was my only pot.You could always add a couple flat steel bars cross the grill and wired in place (iron stove wire maybe?) if really concerned, maybe newer Coleman stoves aren't as strongly built as ancient ones but I doubt it. Wish I still had that lead pot...

old cast iron grates from a bar b que grill come in hand to put on top of Coleman 2 burner stove grate and also ive found good for dropping ingots onto to cool.

Instead of hooking a Coleman up to the propane tank, hook this up to it ... https://www.harborfreight.com/propane-torch-91033.html
3000 F and melts the lead like a hot knife through butter

DO NOT USE THE COLEMAN. Those stoves are great for small pots and hand ladling, but a Dutch oven full of alloy is very heavy. I'm guessing well over 50 lbs. That is WAY more weight than a stove like that is made to hold. Break out the turkey fryer. Not only safer, cheaper to run and heats up much faster.

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Originally Posted by Hanzy4200

DO NOT USE THE COLEMAN. Those stoves are great for small pots and hand ladling, but a Dutch oven full of alloy is very heavy. I'm guessing well over 50 lbs. That is WAY more weight than a stove like that is made to hold. Break out the turkey fryer. Not only safer, cheaper to run and heats up much faster.

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I agree completely. Just think about how fast you can get out of the way of hundreds of pounds of molten metal if it quickly spills. You don't get over a burn like that. My smelting pot holds over 200 pounds!

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Got an old propane tank?....make yourself a pot by cutting it in half with a diamond wheel on a grinder. Then spend the $45 to get a turkey fry burner that will put out 300K BTU. I melt as much as 150 lbs in mine. (usually just 60-70 lb batches for safety)

redhawk

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I have a old propane two burner camp chef stove with inch and half angle iron legs. It is structurally strong enough. It does sit low, 16 inches high, but again it is for camping and for sitting on picnic tables I guess. That’s how we always used it. The newer ones have longer tubed legs. It doesn’t look quite sturdy enough for me. But my old one being propane or not it makes plenty heat. I used the Coleman for sinkers back in the day but I got a 10lbs Lyman pot and I was afraid I’d mess it up and I don’t want to do that. My Coleman is one of the original duel fuel stoves, when they first came out. Besides the wifey has forgot all about the camp chef anyway.

I still cast on my coleman 2 burner gas stove, use the second burner for a mold heater.
I have smelted hundreds of pounds of range scrap on it.
But this spring I finally bought a used turkey fryer.
Much faster to smelt on.
But I still wish for a better burner, turkey fryer type burners are not created equal.

To reinforce the grates on the coleman I just cut pieces from a metal T-post I had laying around.

Matt


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Drive up to New Castle and go to the Harbor Freight store. They sell a cast iron dutch oven that will work well. I bought a nice dutch oven at the Rogers, Ohio sale and felt bad to use it for lead. The Harbor Freight on has worked well.

I started with the same HF cast iron Dutch oven. It worked fine; I only moved on because I wanted even more capacity (ended up with a half 20# propane tank pot with a spout welded on).

I have a bit of history with pressurized liquid fuel stoves. The ubiquitous Coleman "suitcase" stoves are cheap and easy to find. They will make a lot of heat with a little fuel.
A lot of folks prefer propane for its simplicity and trust me, I get it. However, once you understand how liquid fuel stoves work, they are easy to operate. On paper, gasoline makes more BTU's per unit than propane and in actual use I believe that holds true. In the real world the difference in cost probably isn't large enough to worry about.

As stated on this thread, the grate on a Coleman should probably be reinforced or the weight should be held low.

For lead melting work, I use plain old unleaded gasoline. For the price of Coleman fuel I could buy two or three new gas generators and I haven't purchased one yet.

The attraction to the old Coleman stoves is the fact that used ones can be found for $10-$15 (sometimes less).

If money is your issue, then use what is cheapest.
If space is an issue, then use what is smallest.
If speed is an issue, then use what is fastest.

We have people on this website reloading more than a 1,000 rounds a week, and we have people reloading 50 rounds a year. Not everyone needs the same capacity.

Just like John B. I use what is cheap and available at the thrift stores in my area. That is a two burner, liquid fuel, Coleman stove. I have three actually. My “New” stove was a wedding gift twenty years ago and is for food only. The other two where manufactured in the early sixties, they are heavier and have grates that hold up well. I smelt in a 8” cast iron Dutch oven. Thirty or forty pounds at a time.

Don’t get me wrong, if a turkey fryer were to show up on my door step I would put it into use. I’m not against them.

This discussion comes up here often. It’s kinda like the what is your vehicle preference. Do you need a $55,000 Luxury Edition, Diesel, Crew Cab to bring home four sacks of concrete. Or can you get them home in the back of the little rusty compact station wagon you paid $700 for.

JM

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Originally Posted by JM7.7x58

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This discussion comes up here often. It’s kinda like the what is your vehicle preference. Do you need a $55,000 Luxury Edition, Diesel, Crew Cab to bring home four sacks of concrete. Or can you get them home in the back of the little rusty compact station wagon you paid $700 for.

JM

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You use the little rusty compact station wagon and don't tell anyone you have $100K in the bank ! :grin: