Newbie smelting ?

[jack19512]

I've been accumulating lead so I can start casting my own bullets.  So today I bought a hot plate from my Walmarts and a quart pan I thought would be suitable for melting the lead in.

I melted enough lead in the pot to less than half full and my question is, how long does it normally take to clean all of the crap out of the lead?

From the start of the melt process to pouring the ingots was a little over 2 hours.  Now at this rate it is only going to take me about 4 years to smelt the 3, 5 gallon buckets of lead I have saved up so far.   

I don't have a thermometer to measure the temp of the lead but I suspect the lead is really not getting hot enough.  I used sawdust and birthday candles and got no smoke like I have read from others threads when adding this to the lead.

I suspect I will have to re smelt the lead I did today because I was still scooping crap off the top when I called it quits for the night.  The hot plate was rated at 750 watts and I have read of others using a hot plate so I don't know if this is going to be a problem or not.  Any suggestions?

[Nobade]

A hot plate just doesn't have enough power to do what you're trying to do. My cheapo setup is one of those one burner Coleman cookers that are designed to sit on a disposable propane bottle, an adapter hose, and a bulk tank. I set the burner on a couple of concrete blocks, and melt lead in an old saucepan. It takes about 10 minutes to melt a batch of 25 pounds. Flux with something cheap like old candles, and skim off the crud. I use muffin pans to pour the ingots. By making a wind shield around the burner you hold the heat in and use a lot less fuel, make sure you do this in the open since there's a lot of smoke and bad smell. Dispose of the waste properly and don't let any kids mess around where you're doing it. You could also use a turkey fryer or plumber's furnace if you have one, for bigger batches just make sure the legs and your pan can handle the weight. Don't ever melt lead in aluminum pans, they can fail and cover you in hot lead.

[jack19512]

I almost bought a turkey fryer to do this but I won't be doing as much as a lot of people would so I wanted to just keep it simple.

The ingots I did last night look OK.  One bit of advice was from someone and I can't think who it was but they said to keep some of the lead in your pot and they were right.

It cut my melt time down quite a bit doing this.  I smelted some more today and it seemed to turn out OK as long as I don't try to put too much lead in my pot at one time.  Here is what I have so far.

I still think at some point I will have to re-melt and clean it better.

[jack19512]

I picked up two more 5 gallon buckets of wheel weights today.   

[jack19512]

I think there is some advantage to not having a lot of heat when melting your wheel weights.  So far I have had 3 wheel weights that did not melt with the rest in the pot so far.  Being a newbie at this I don't know how to recognize the zinc weights yet.  I have almost 100 lbs. of clean lead now.  Only 4 1/4 five gallon buckets of wheel weights to go.   

[Goatlips]

Hi Jack,

Now that you have those two buckets, it looks like you have a good WW source and will soon become a hoarder.  As Nobade said, electricity just won't do it, or at least won't do it cheaply or fast.  A camp stove and bigger pot is a good improvement, most of us started that way.  After Thanksgiving check the big stores for a propane burner without the turkey fryer pot, got mine on sale for 19.99 and it will hold my weight jumping up and down on it.  Here's my setup with pictures:

http://goatlipstips.cas-town.com/smelting.html

Hope you may find it useful!

Goatlips

.

[454PB]

I agree with goatlips, if you have a lot of smelting to do, you need a heat source like propane, natural gas, or even gasoline (I've used them all).

However, for the guy that has a five gallon bucket of wheelweights to do, electricity will do the job. A 750 watt hotplate is only good for small batches of 5 pounds or so. If you're willing to do some work, you can rig up a bigger heating element. I recently cobbled one together using a 3000 watt heating element from an electric range. This element cost me $1, and the support structure is a discarded coffee can. I wired it into a 20 amp, 240 volt circuit in my shop. It melted a couple of 35 pound lead counterweights in less than an hour. As far as the cost of the electricity, in my area it costs 10 cents per KWH. That means I used 30 cents worth of electricity to melt 70 pounds of lead.