Smelting Lead

[Ranch Dog]

Another post got me to talking about smelting lead and with my smelting month of January approaching, it was causing some coins in my pocket to start rattling as even after a decade and a half, I'm not satisfied with any of the equipment I've purchased for the job.

I've been the turkey burner route, and I think it is a terrible waste of heat/propane. It is just made for something different. Got one, anybody wants to come it get it is welcome to it. No, I will not ship it. You got to come and get it.

Even had an old school plumber's smelter. It served me well for a couple of years, but one of the leathers in it sprung a leak and caught it on fire. With the liquid fuel, it was a hell of a fire and made quite a mess.



I bought this little smelter and am happy with it. It is a homemade unit, old, and of small capacity. The latter causes me to be unsatisfied with it but a pound of propane for a pound of lead, it is miles ahead of a turkey fryer. Hmmm, I thought I had an image of it and will correct that soon.

I've thought about a HotPot for years for small batch smelting. It is probably not a good idea as it would not be very stable but it seems like it would be a great method of preheating alloys during a casting session. You can find them for around $50 to $55.



I've also been looking at commercial, large capacity melters for several years as I have the quantity of lead that could supply it. They are very expensive. Stepping down to furnaces that heat pots like the Goss units do a significantly better job of containing and directing the heat to were its needed than a frier, they become more reasonable. A seller on eBay, kan_pat, has occupied my attention. This is probably a Chinese clone of the Goss 540 as far as I can tell but you get it and all the added components for less. This morning and with my casting month upon me, I decided to do something about it.



In the spirit of product testing, I bought a HotPot too.

[daboone]

Will it accommodate a lot larger than 6 inches? I only smelt rarely so l like to do large volume. That where my 8gt lodge pot is handy. Once i have a large stock of ingot prepared that old turkey fryer and has tank just gather dust.

I used to smelt for a batch of hard, medium and soft BHN so a smaller pot would have been nice. But now I just smelt for something around 15BHN after the initial skimming of the crap and clips and crud.

While on the subject I like like sawdust the best for fluxing. What say you? I've tried wax, bees wax, marvelux and Letz(?) But sawdust does a good job and isn't as messy as the others.

[Ranch Dog]

Will it accommodate a lot larger than 6 inches?

You can see the steps out to to the full diameter of the smelter. 6" is just what comes with it. I have a bunch of pots but will probably use the pot that came with the little smelter that I bought a year or so ago. Funny thing is I went out to take a picture of it, and the burner is gone. Just the pot sitting there. I leave this stuff back on top of my lead boxes, and it was all lined up, but the burner was gone. I did a quick search of all the spots that it could be and it was not to be found. In a year, a lot of people come and go, but I've had any problems other than one hunting knife missing that was sitting on the edge of a sink in my garage. My dog tired to tell me who took it as she bit a worker that was part of a group and I could never understand why until a couple of days later.

Good thing I made the purchase. As soon as the furnace is delivered the missing pot will be found, at least that is how I think it works.

While on the subject I like sawdust the best for fluxing. What say you? I've tried wax, bees wax, marvelux, and Letz(?) But sawdust does a good job and isn't as messy as the others.

Yeap, I'm a sawdust guy. I use cedar, because it smells so good.

[daboone]

Good and interesting info. Thanks for these post and pictures.

I blame my dog for just about everything. He knows he can get away with it and still get scratches and treats.

[Ranch Dog]

Durn, I've turned my place upside down and cannot find the smelter!

[GasGuzzler]

I've always used votive candles you can get very cheaply by the bag at Walmart.

I usually start with 30-45 pounds of scrap wheel weights and burn about 10 lbs of propane. I get about 65-70% return by weight net. Not efficient but maybe better than others with similar methods.

Now that I think about it I might not have smelted any in two years. I have chipped wood for hen bedding I could try next time around.

All that means it's time to sort wheel weights again at work so I don't have to dispose of the garbage from home. I used to do it every third Saturday to keep the time investment down but it's been a year now.

[daboone]

Do you still have that old plumbers smelter? Are there no replacement parts for this antique? Seem like the gasket could be manufactured in a shop. What kind of fuel was used?

Gasguzzler let us know how the chopped wood works. I suspect chips might be to large and take to long to be worth it. On the other hand i use those HD wood paint stir paddles when fluxing and they do add to the or rather help with the process.

[JohnnyEnfield]

Thanks for the posts. I was thinking the turkey fryer would burn up a TON of propane. If I had big supply of wheel weights or something it may be worth it but I don't, so really inefficient for making ingots.

[RBHarter]

I won a 100,000 btu camp chief burner in a drawing yrs ago it'll boil 5 gallons of water in about 15 minutes from a cool tap . While I do agree it's over kill for casting duties I've run it 10-12 hr on 4.5 gallons (20#?) for both cooking and casting .

Mostly it only sees smelter duty these days unless I do a casting party . It's sure easy with it and a dutch oven to clean up 2-300 # of lead in a morning if the ingots will set up fast enough .

[Macd]

Wow, allowing for waste etc 300# lead will result in over 20,000 124 grain 9mm pills. My casting arm just aches thinking about it.