Sawzall with a 8tpi bi-metal blade over a tarp, or find a friend with a portable bandsaw. My Milwaukee will handle 4x4 fine. I use it to cut wood, aluminum, mild steel, cold-rolled, plastic pipe, you name it.
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Willy Snyder
PO Box 2732
Pocatello, ID 83206
Sawzall with a 8tpi bi-metal blade over a tarp, or find a friend with a portable bandsaw. My Milwaukee will handle 4x4 fine. I use it to cut wood, aluminum, mild steel, cold-rolled, plastic pipe, you name it.
I’m on the axe / cold chisel /hammer brigade.
Easiest way for me after trying to cut up some large lead ingots with a toothed blade.
How about stopping by a metal shop and asking if you can use their shop saw.
If you don't already have an ingot mold, get something like a mini loaf pan for ingots. They are small enough to fit a Lee 10 lb. furnace and stack well.
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I asked the same question here. I tried a sawz-all, band saw, hammer & chisel, a 20 ton press, hatchet, axe, and finally resorted to a log splitter. I don't believe it cut it. It just sort of ripped it into pieces.
I learned real fast not to use the teflon coated pans!!! The teflon goes up in smoke and the smoke is very hazardous. Be sure to get bare steel pans.Originally Posted by Sasquatch-1
If you don't already have an ingot mold, get something like a mini loaf pan for ingots. They are small enough to fit a Lee 10 lb. furnace and stack well.
It seems that whatever you have will work. Like a couple of others, I used a hammer and chisel.
The sooner I fall behind...the more time I have to catch up with
You can find actual used ingot molds on ebay for half or less the price of new ones and it's the right tool for the job. Got 3 more myself coming in today actually. 2 Lymans and a Saeco.
I agree. It sure is nice to have stackable ingots...I've bought plenty of alloy here on S&S, and so many times they are cast in round muffin tins...they sure don't stack well.
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“If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”
― The Dalai Lama, Seattle Times, May 2001
Most of what I buy is anything but a nice uniform ingot, but even ingots that I do get I re-smelt into batch lots that my smelting pan can handle (30ish lbs of lead/alloy) to make certain its clean, certain that it melts at an expected temp, certain it's a homogeneous mix. Having a pile of ingot molds sure does make it go a lot faster, and the normal trapezoidal ingots we all know sure do fit in my electric pots a lot better than crazy odd shaped stuff does. Right tool for me to do the job.
It can be deliberately burned out with a propane torch, but as pointed out, don’t breathe any of the fumes. Nasty stuff.
I bought some "Super Hard" from Rotometals a few years ago, I tried using a casting pot to melt into 1# ingots. Didn't melt completely, and I had problems with the pour spout plugging up. I finally added wheel weights and got the pot working again, but decided that using my hydraulic press, and a splitting maul was the best way to separate into smaller pieces. I'm not one for exact measure, and I don't use "Super Hard" very often, but a little added to 357, and 44 mag bullets, it's great!
Big Hammer and chisel. Linotype pig ingots and hard ingots will break off after about 1/3 through. Soft lead will take more effort
Muffler gun 'aka" air chisel works very well.
Stand / lean them up in the pot ... the bars only melt at the bottom of the pot ,
use gloves to keep the ends of the bars "standing up " as the long bar melts it gets shorter... then after a while it's all melted and in the pot .
Cast little Mini-Muffin ingots with a Wilton aluminum mini-muffin pan .
Can do the same thing with sections of lead pipe ...
While melting long bars / lead pipe ... you need to be there and guide the process
It will require some hands on guidance to keep bars / pipe standing up and in the melting pot .
Gary
Certified Cajun
Proud Member of The Basket of Deplorables
" Let's Go Brandon !"
I just cut up lead water pipe in 6" pieces with a set of cable cutters. Easy to put in the pot and melt 125lbs down at a time.
suspend the ingots over your melting pot and use a propane weed burner. you can drill a 7/16th hole in the end, screw a wood thread eyelet bolt into it and hang it from chain.
Get a bigger cast iron pot & melt everything down to manageable size ingots. Saws work but be willing to sacrifice the blade for just that..
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I put a tarp down and use a ryobi 10" miter saw with a 60 tooth carbide blade. It goes pretty fast even on the thick blocks. I've been getting some blocks lately that are 3 x 4 x 12 and cutting them up for a lyman 20 lb pot.
When I fist got into it I purchased a pallet of Lynotype and they came in 25 lb bars. I tried cutting and that made a mess and was slow. What I finally found was to use a torch, I got the one at Home Depot that uses the yellow tank. That melted through it in short order. Just put the place you want it cut over your pan and let the lead run into the pan. I melted them into 4 pieces and placed them into a RCBS casting furnace and melted them down into 1 lb ingots. Worked great for me and thank God I got the pallet before the price went up.
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