Newbie first time smelt

[Scorpius]

I'm finally venturing into casting my own after reloading for several years. My first venture into this is obviously the smelt.

I picked up a 58,000 BTU camp burner, 5 quart cast iron pot, spoons and ladle with wood handles, 2 lyman ingot molds, rcbs thermometer. Still need to hit the store and grab my welders gloves, face shield, sawdust and p100 respirator.

Have about 8 lbs of range lead that's going first just to get the hang of it. Then FREE wheel weights I grabbed and sorted. Guess i'll see how well I identified the zinc ones when I see any floaters.

15 lbs of stick on wheel weights, i'll probably take this off for trade for hardening agents or something since I don't currently load round ball.

126 lbs of wheel weights. figure I should easily come out with 75 lbs of usable lead minus clips unless I did a poor job on the zinc ones. But being new, obviously this is a WAG. hopefully all the junk doesn't weigh much as i'd like more lead!

Man sorting is some crappy work! but I definitely didn't want cigs, rubber stems and plastic burning off, figured its going to be pretty smelly as it is!

I'll also be getting a hardness tester (probably lee) so I can determine each bars hardness and if I need to add anything to it when I drop them into the pot. But that's another time and will take more research on my part to determine what to add and where to get it from.

[BNE]

Welcome to the addiction.

[MrWolf]

Aye, welcome to the madness. I also side snip each ww to double check. In over 1,000 lbs of smelted lead I missed two zincs that I caught in melt. Yea I know a bit anal, but...

[Scorpius]

o my first time melting lead today. Here are my results.

8lbs of range lead turned into 6 lb 15.2 oz of ingots

126 lbs of WW turned into 99lb 1.9 oz of ingots.

Ran out of daylight will do the 15 lbs of SOWW another day.




lessons learned, or at the very least observations.

1. make sure everything is all level if you want level ingots vs alternating sides to stack lopsided ones

2. ingots are dull in color if mold is still warm, and if you dump too early they will be dull and have cracks, wrinkles.

3. placing the bottom of your ingot mold into water helps cool really quick and gives you nice shiny ingots.

4. ladle for some reason kept allowing lead to stick to it. figured it was heat so left it in pot while everything melted, that helped some but still not completely. Even kept tools sticking into flame under pot. only item it didn't stick to was my spoon.

5. pouring must be fairly quick, else you get tinsel strings from ladle.

6. watch pot and keep it adjusted, lower temp the more lead you remove to keep it stable.

was pretty glad that of 3 pot fulls I only pulled out about 15 zinc WW. figured that's pretty good. on my last batch I did momentarily hit up above 725 for a

minute as I finally cleared off a mess of clips. I didn't catch the heat rising and found a semi melted (maybe 1/3) of a 3 inch weight which I assume musta

been zinc since everything else melted almost instantly at 650. I managed to catch it soon and get it out so don't think much got into that batch.


Guess next is to get a hardness tester, bullet die and try my hand at casting them and whatever I may need to mix. I'm more concerned with good pours

vs hardness since i'll very likely do PC. but I do want to understand the process in case I ever need to do it without PC.

[MrWolf]

I also wet towels and will place the filled moulds on it to increase cooling time. Don't get water in the moulds.

[4719dave]

WATCH OUT FOR THE RAZOR BLADES IN THE WW ...welcome take your time and be safe don't heat up the lead too high ...

[BNE]

Smelting is still FUN for me.

In my opinion, I don't think you have to have a hardness tester to make good bullets. At least not yet. Sonce you sorted like you did, you know what you have, and can mix the COWW, SOWW, and Range to get most of what you would want for pistols anyway. Lots of posts here about what mixxes for different calibers. Search through those and you wil find all the data you could want.

[BNE]

By the way, those ingots look great.

[trochilids]

By the way, those ingots look great.

I'll second that. Great start to your addiction! Thanks for sharing.

[Scorpius]

Thanks. I'm going to cast my SOWW tomorrow. I've noticed stuff seems to just stick to my ladle and also to my old grill spatula but NOT to my spoon. I've left all three sitting in the lead and same result. What's causing this and how to stop it on the ladle and scrapper?

[Vinne]

Well, it looks like you are off to a great start!!

[brassrat]

Don't get water on ladle, I know.

[Scorpius]

SOWW done boy are they stinky compared to the coww not that I could smell through mask but not the black smoke

[tja6435]

You should look at the LBT hardness tester, it's not a whole lot more cost than the Lee but is way, way quicker to use.

[drfroglegs]

One thing I learned early is to smelt large batches and mark the ingots from each batch. That way you can take a block from each batch down to the scrap yard and get them to scan it with the XRF gun and tell you the exact composition.

Also, 30cal ammo cans are excellent for storing ingots and it keeps the lead from oxidizing and turning dull over time. I can fit about 55lbs in an ammo can. I prefer 30cal because you can fill it up and it's still manageable to move. I have a can for each alloy (Lyman 2, hardball, 10:1, etc) and also for my bulk lead, pewter, Linotype, etc.

Your ingots look great!

[lightman]

It looks like you have the hang of it! I sort all of my wheelweights. Yeah, its a pain. I have a heavy duty cart like you see in Home Depot or Lowes and I built a 2x10 box on top of it. I'll dump several buckets of weights into it and go to sorting. Having a buddy over to help and having a few beers makes the job easier. I'll start out by cheery picking the whole pile. I'll grab what trash that I see and then the stick-on weight, then I'll start on the clip-ons.

[John Boy]

Lightman - Your picture remembers me of the days when I used to do that with WW's. When the source for buckets dried up - got out of that way making ingots. Now, it's stickily sheet lead at the recylers - Linotype and pure tin or pewter to make my ingots of various alloys

[MrWolf]

SOWW done boy are they stinky compared to the coww not that I could smell through mask but not the black smoke

For my SOWW, I leave them in a sealed bucket of leftover acetone, thinners, etc. that I have accumulated over the years. Let them sit for a few days and they come out nice and clean. Adhesives are gone and the paper almost floats off. No smoke, smell, etc when smelting.

[Scooby]

When I melt soww, pipe lead, or flashing I put wax in from the start. once the adhesive catches fire it smokes way less and the fire in the pot helps melt them faster.

[carbine]

Ifound that sawdust (pine) really helped clean up the smelt. Put in a handful and stir and scoop. Since I started using it I have no dross in my casting pot.