Ok, I've been slowly accumulating wheel weights and doing as much reading as possible. This weekend the wife has banished me from the house because she's hosting a basket weaving party so I'm contemplating making an attempt at creating ingots for a yet to be purchased casting pot. (Lee Production Pot 20). I still have to weld up my ingot molds but that shouldn't take me too long with the info I've found here. Ok, so back to my original question:
I had an old dutch oven laying around and a turkery fryer so I'm set there. I need to make a trip to the thrift shop to try and find the appropriate spoons and such and I feel confident in that part. The thing I'm not completely sure of is whether I should be fluxing when I make my ingots? All the reading I've done seems to indicate that you do it when you cast but I haven't seen much related to doing it when you're smelting your WW.
My plan so far was to fill the dutch oven with bone dry wheel weights and fire up the turkey cooker keeping and eye on it until I hit 625-650 degrees and then try to tweak the burner to hold it there. From what I can see you then skim off anything that floats to the surface (clips, etc.) without stirring it too much.
That's where I get a bit confused . . . .some of what I've read indicates that you flux the smelter with some sawdust, skim off the dross and then start ladling the lead into your ingot molds . . .
Is that what most people are doing?
I've already sorted out the pure lead stick-on weights from the clip weights and I didn't see any wheel weights with "ZN" on them so I think I've got them segregated pretty well. The plan right now is to open up the doors on the pole barn and fire up the turkey fryer in there. The only thing I'm a bit nervous about is whether molten lead spilled on concrete will come up easily or if I need to put down some sort of barrier. (I've got 1/4 inch steel plate to rest my hot tools on)
Thanks in advance, and sorry if I'm asking something that I should be able to easily find.
Have a good one,
Dave