I want to put together a smelter, turkey fryer & Dutch oven. You know, the usual.

[Winger Ed.]

Wait a minute...."left in the rain to rust for better release". That sounds worse than some of that spray-on mold release, waaay worse.

Nah. It works fine. Whatever little bit of rust comes off onto the Lead--- you won't even notice when you melt & flux it.

[metricmonkeywrench]

On board with the Bayou Classic, though I have the older (better) model. Apparently the new ones come with some lawyer/insurance company timer control that cuts the burner off if not reset every so often.

For miscellaneous doodads cruise by your local goodwill/salvation army for big spoons, ladles, odd pots and pans to catch dross and ww clips to cool, stainless dog bowls as oversized spoon rests.

My recent upgrade from a Dutch oven was to a cut propane tank. I’m still smelting down my range scrap and the larger tank makes the process much faster but uses a lot of gas.

Moderate size melts are done on a dedicated beat up coleman 2 burner stove bought locally with smaller cast iron pots or a Lyman 10lb casting pot. Most of my fuel so far has been fuel I got with stoves or yard sale finds helping keep the cost down though a “new” gallon of fuel is not too bad considering

[AbitNutz]

Looking at the specs of the Bayou Classic I just ordered...it says it puts out 367,000 BTU. Uhm...is that good?

[Winger Ed.]

Looking at the specs of the Bayou Classic I just ordered...it says it puts out 367,000 BTU. Uhm...is that good?

It'll do just fine.

It's also common to see wind screens to direct the heat straight up into the pot and not let too much heat go up & around it.
That'll make it work faster and not waste much fuel.

As far as getting hot enough-
that's the set up the guy on youtube uses to melt Alum. cans to pour down into fire ant mounds.
The 'art work' he digs up the next day is pretty cool.

[AbitNutz]

Well, melting aluminum is way past my requirements.

[WRideout]

Wait a minute...."left in the rain to rust for better release". That sounds worse than some of that spray-on mold release, waaay worse.

Not at all. When I first started using steel muffin tins for ingot mold, they soldered to the tins and I had to pound them out. Read later about letting the muffin tins rust, so I did and have never had a problem. Rust does not stick to lead and the ingots just fall out; clean.

Wayne