So this is were I am at with this. I acquired a bucket of WW's and sorted those the other day and ended up with one small pan of small size COWW that I separated from the rest as some I couldn't quite tell if they were zinc or not. This small batch was about enough to fill the 9" cast iron skillet I picked up at the flea market. On my way!
I set up a small table outside to work on and proceeded with trying to melt my very first batch. What a learning experience in a number of ways. Either this hot plate of this 9" pan needs a better solution. It took forever to heat up enough to even start melting the lead, Then once a nice small puddle was in the pan I noticed that it would not stay hot enough to keep it liquid all the way out to the sides of the pan.
In all honesty it actually took me 4 hours to melt this one 9" skillet of small COWW. I did find that placing a cover over the pan helped tremendously. So I believe I either need a better heat source or a smaller diameter vessel. During this session I did turn up 5 pcs I believe were zinc as they did not melt. So that at least made me feel better!
All-in-all I did enjoy myself though I probably would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't taken so long.