Lee pot Drip,drip,drip

[PDshooter]

OK, I've got this lee elec, bottom pour 10lb pot that just drips like "crazy". I clean it out often. I never put old dirty W/W in it. I always melt down my scrap W/W into ingot bars first.
It's dripping about 2 drips per second. Is there any trick I can try before I buy a new pot

Thanks........

[Ricochet]

I haven't found a cure yet. Keeping a screwdriver handy to give the valve rod a twist will slow it temporarily sometimes. But my loading & casting area is a horrible mess from lead splatters, as are my clothes and shoes. Casting cooler might help. Seems like it slows down pretty quickly when I turn my pot off at the end of casting.

[robertbank]

Hi, here is what I did and it works pretty good. First run the melter dry and when it is hot, with the spigot out run a tooth pick up the spout and get rid of all the crud build up. Clean the spigot with light sand paper. Re-install the spigot and using very light wire, and I mean light, wire the spigot to the lever arm as tight as you can. This is to stop the spigot from clocking as you use the pot. I now have mine set up, reversed over a Pro-Melter. Interestingly, but for capacity had I done the above earlier I might have not bugged wife for the Christmas present being a Pro Melter.

You should about eliminate the dripping. Still will drip but not near as much.

WARNING: Those screws that hold down the arm don't take to much to strip them so be careful when you install them.

Take Care

Bob

[imashooter2]

Add some weight on the top of the valve rod. Press the activator lever down when you stop the pour. Twist the rod back and forth with a screwdriver on occasion to reseat.

[Duckiller]

Try turning the screw head in the top of the shaft that plugs the hole in the bottom of the pot. It has a name but I am suffering brain fade. Any way twisting the screw back and forth several times stops/slows the drip for a while. At least till it needs it again. Twist evidently helps the end of the plug seat better and slowed dripping of my pot.

[Hunter]

I cleaned my Lee pot as Bob suggested and that all but elimated the dripping. Ever now and then it would drip a little but an adjustment to the spigot and it would stop.

[SharpsShooter]

I took mine apart and polished the seat and rod to a smooth finish. Lap the seat on the rod with grinding compound and it drips no more. Use ONLY clean alloy from that point and you will be OK. I did the same trick to my 20 pounder and it will only drip rarely. A quick twist of the rod with a screwdriver fixes it


SS

[JeffinNZ]

I took the plunger out of mine and merrily screwed a self tapper into the outlet from the inside. Now I use a dipper.

Of course since I bought my Lyman 20 pounder I only use the Lee 10 pounder as a sprue pot for topping off the 20.

[USARO4]

I have the Lee 20lb pot. The adjusting screw head sits in a groove in the valve rod. Unfortunately this works loose with use and seems to cause the drip Lee is infamous for. I wired my adjusting screw to the valve rod with a loop of wire, no problems since. I do rarely get a slight drip, once every 2-3 minutes, but a quick turn of the valve rod with a screwdriver stops it. Like all Lee products I've used, a little tinkering is sometimes needed.

[Dale53]

Just to even the playing field here, I have two RCBS pots. One I have had for many, many years (it cost $100.00 new) and the other I bought a year or so ago from an estate. Both of them drip from time to time. A light rap on top of the release rod with "sprue knocker" solves it until it starts again - rap it again (seats the rod) and it stops for a good length of time. It hardly slows me down.

Someone on here suggested to clamp a small pair of vise grips on the Lee rod and the extra weight seems to mostly cure it. I may try that with my RCBS pots. You can probably pick up a Chinese knock off vise grip from a tool supplier - Harbour Freight, maybe?

Dale53

[corvette8n]

I took the rod off and cleand up the pot and rod with a drill powered wire brush.
Spun the cleaned rod in the hole a few times by hand, so far so good.

[Texasflyboy]

When I built my own pot, I ordered a LEE 20lb spout and rod to use with my pot. When I saw the rod that came with the spout I was immediately suspicious, thinking, "That's gonna leak for sure".

So I did a wax cast of the Lee 20 lb spout cavity. Here is what I found:




And here is what I made out of an old piece of round stock, sandpaper, and a flat needle file:



The rod I made isn't perfect, but it seals in two areas and does seem to cause a lot less leaks than I had with my older pots, one of which was a LEE 20lb.

Your mileage may vary, but I would take a whack at making a better spout rod if I still used a LEE 20lb'er.

[Maven]

All, I too have 2 Lee drippers and have tried many of the methods mentioned above. Some worked very effectively, e.g., plugging the spout so as to negate the bottom pour/drip feature that Lee adds (at no extra cost!). What works even better, and still allows you to bottom-pour, is lapping the rod and valve seat. You can also use the Vise Grips for extra weight if you desire, but I now find them unnecessary. I lapped my Lee 20 lb. furnace several months ago (chucked the rod in a variable speed elec. drill) and have eliminated ~98% of the dripping. Btw, it also helps if you empty the pot every so often, let it cool and then clean it with boiling water; i.e., already boiling or brought to a boil by the furnace. Drill out or clean out the spout and you'll soon be back in business, without the dripping. How bad is that?

[KCSO]

The 10 pound pots have a spout that is crimped in position and sometimes they leak around the crimp. I have had to braze the spouts on several of these to cure the drip. If you can wiggle the spout it WILL drip.

[lar45]

I keep my Lee ingot mold under the spout while casting. Then I just dump it back in the top periodically. It keeps the mess under control.
I really like the look of the custom rod. We should do a group buy and have a machine shop turn out 100 or so?
How many guys have a Dribble Master that want a better mouse trap?
Texasflyboy would you mind of we mass produced your No-drippin-rod?

[Ricochet]

I keep the Lee ingot mould under it all the time. The splash from that keeps my whole casting & loading area, as well as my clothes and shoes, looking like The Tinsel Fairy has visited.

Turning down the heat does help a lot.

[Texasflyboy]

Texasflyboy would you mind of we mass produced your No-drippin-rod?

I wouldn't mind at all.

I would love to see a mass produced rod that more closely matched the profile of the wax casting I made. If it was made a few thou oversize, I would lap each one to a spout and get a much better fit.

On my pot (which is a custom home built model and NOT the LEE 20lb pot) the length of my spout rod is much longer than the factory lee rod. If the rod fits too closely in profile, you may not be able to lift it out of the spout. On my pot, I made a guide about halfway up to force the rod to lift perfectly vertical each time, so I could have close tolerances.

I would bet that a could of shallow lube style grooves in the rod would also be beneficial to act somewhat like a scraper groove to clean the spout and push dirt and debris down towards the exit hole.

Sorta like this hasty sketch:



Count me in for at least five if they are mass produced.

[cropcirclewalker]

Lee pot that drips? Wow, whoda thunk it?

I don't have an ingot mould. I went to wally world and bought a little teflon covered mini muffin tin. 12 muffins. When I melt down the wheel weights I pour into this tin and get 12 little muffins that weigh about 11 oz. each.

So, anyway, I leave this tin under the spout. Since I started using the hardwood dowel as a fluxing device my spout drips a lot less. Maybe once every 20 seconds. I never get a mess and the little puddle slides right out of the tin easily.

When it is in half drip mode, I wait patiently for it to drop, then pour. Sometimes I get tired of waiting so I flip the lever up and it discharges a short stream into the muffin tin. Then I pour.

We are all wearing gloves? Right?

So, every once in a while, I grab the little puddle of solidified lead in the bottom of the tin and plop it back into the pot. I also put the sprue from the previous boolit into the pot while the mould is solidifying.

Somebody tell me I am doing wrong. I don't care, been doing it for years.

[Forester]

Qualifying statement: I dont know S#!* I have only been casting a few weeks now.

I have a Lee Pro 20 pot and it does want to drip from time to time. I bought a pair of screw drivers --straight and phillips from Wal-Mart for $1. I use the straight to spin the rod on the pot several times each time I refill it or when it starts to drip. The phillips is for tightening hndles to Lee 6 cavity mould blocks.

By the time I have casted my way through a 20lb pot of alloy I am in the mood for a short break so waiting for it to remelt a few pounds of ingots is fine with me and the dog. (I throw a ball for her while I wait) Do most folks find it faster to cast using 2 moulds or 1 mould and the "speed casting" method with a wet towell to cool the sprue on?

Things have gone well for me so far, but at some point I would love to buy a Lyman or RCBS pot and use my Lee to melt ingots and flux in and ony have clean alloy in my good casting pot.

[Ricochet]

I do my scrap metal smelting and cleaning outdoors in a cast iron pot on a gas-fired turkey fryer. The Lee pot inside gets only clean ingots.