Burner Advice Requested

[GregLaROCHE]

As for a ladle, I use a normal stainless soup ladle. My ingots are not that big and it works fine for me. They do come in different sizes too I’ve noticed.

[Brassmonkey]

I enjoy seeing the pics of the guys who do it with a wood fire. I have a gas burner similar to the one above. My propane seems to go a long way and the cost is negligible.

I plan on using wood to heat mine. It's Just a 30lb propane tank and some scrap metal at the moment. Plan to have a blower to stoke the fire and wanting to suck the fumes off the pot sending them into the fire. Might not do anything but direct them to the stove pipe chimney that will rise up a few feet.

[kevin c]

As for a ladle, I use a normal stainless soup ladle. My ingots are not that big and it works fine for me. They do come in different sizes too I’ve noticed.

My bottom pour Rowell ladle has a straight handle that doesn't dip into the pot well, filling less and less as the alloy level drops, so I actually fill the Rowell with a soup ladle. Two easy ladlefuls into the Rowell, bottom poured into uniform molds, gives me very close to the same ingot weight across the board.

If the soup ladle has the bowl riveted to the handle, check it periodically: what with 3-4X the heat and over 10X the weight, plus general banging around, mine came apart. Fortunately the bowl came off in the melt before I lifted out a full ladle of hot molten lead.

[BJK]

Be careful of ladles that aren't one piece. I started using a 2 piece riveted ladle but I always thought it was going to break at the connection and ruin my day.

I bought this and haven't even thought of using the other one since. It works pretty good. There are other sources for it.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[lightman]

It looks like you ordered a nice burner. For ladles I'll second the suggestion of looking at Rowell. They make several sizes and they also have a nice skimmer. A smaller spoon and skimmer are also nice to have. I use a stainless one piece solid spoon and slotted spoon from Walmart, along with a Rowell ladle. I wish I had bought the larger skimmer a lot sooner!

[kevin c]

Should have added that I have the same double jet burner the OP ordered. Extremely sturdy, and lots of BTUs.

But I've found what really helps speed melting, despite the high heat output of the burners, are three things:

First, some sort of thermal jacket and lid that allow heat retention around the sides and top of the pot.

Second, wind screens that keep the burners' output from blowing away from the pot.

Third, use of a weed burner played over the top of the melt. Be careful with this technique; you can't cover the pot while doing this and rapidly heated gas pockets in lead items can spit lead out of the pot in any direction and for suprising distances.

Doing all three things not only is faster, despite using a second tank for the weed burner I used less propane per melt.

[Mal Paso]

A windscreen not only saves propane it keeps the sides of the pot hot. Before I made one globs of hardened lead would stick to the sides of the pot as the liquid level went down.