Did my onerous duty this weekend

[jonk]

Well, my pop came through and scored me a 5 gal. bucket of wheel weights from the manager of a tire store a week or so ago (who also indicated that he has about 5 more I can have if I go and pick them up- my old car's springs ought to love that). Anyhow, I spent about 2 hours smelting 1/2 of them down into ingots this weekend.

Unlike some of you, I don't have a Coleman stove or similar and I only smelt these things down outside given the smoke from the road grease, etc. I have done it over a fire before, but didn't feel like going that route, so I went with what I usually do; the electric smelter. So I set her up just outside the garage on the driveway.

I have 2 smelters, a Lee bottom pour and a plain Lee dipping model. I never use the plain one anymore, but dusted her off for this job. Stuff as many weights in as I can. Crank the thermostat to 10. Take off the rubber glove, go in the house, reload some ammo. Come back 10 minutes later, by which time the lead was melted and all the smoke had cooked off, remove the clips. Add more weights. Come back 5 minutes later, remove weights, pour out into ingot molds. 1 full pot yields about 4 1 pound ingots and 4 1/2 pounders; so about 6 pounds per pot. Repeat.

I rendered about half the bucket down this way and had a nice stack of ingots by the end of the day. Slow, but effective. About the only drawback is that I have no control over alloy mix this way; one pot full will be slightly different from the next. Now, I never shoot over 100 yards so it won't matter in practice, but in theory it is something I like to do a nice job on.

I found 2 of the dreaded zinc weights; I spotted one and when I found one solid ingot on top of the molten metal, I hurredly removed it before it could melt.

I found a few tape on weights. They got added to my pure lead supply for black powder.

I found a lot of those silvery painted weights. I'm a bit suspicious of them but haven't had any problems thus far, so they got melted down with the rest.

Next weekend I plan on casting a few hundred .38 bullets, and about a hundred each .30 and 8mm. Woohoo!

[Ohio Rusty]

Don't worry about your process being slow. Mine is slow also since I'm set up to run a maybe 10 to 20 pounds at a time. Even though my set up is small, I can still get 100 boolets and 4 or 5 ingots made at the end of a smelting casting session. I have some of those silvery painted ones also. I'm assuming they are painting them that metallic silver to blend in with the aluminum rims so they blend in when installed. I kept my zinc ones I found to use as a 'test' when comparing or testing unknown weights with a pair of wire cutters. With all the buckets you are getting,I bet you'll do something extra nice for Fathers Day next month .....
Ohio Rusty

[USARO4]

Onerous duty? Its a labor of love!

[leftiye]

USAR04, See! Not everyone's crazy (like you and me!)!

[Blammer]

cool, I just have one pot, a Lyman electric dipper.

btw, what bullet style and wt does your 8mm like?

[R.M.]

That sure is one duty that I wish I could get to do again.

[BAGTIC]

"I found a few tape on weights. They got added to my pure lead supply for black powder".


I don't shoot black powder so I save mine for casting split shot for fishing. With split shot even a little lead goes a long way.