Begining to like the Turkey Fryer

[grendel]

I bought one two weeks ago from Walmart for just under $50.  The first time I used it I used my old cast iron melting pot and it took 4 melts to convert a 5gal bucket of WW's to ingots.  This time I used the 10qt cast iron pot that came with it and and it not only went faster (more surface area on the bottom exposed to the flame?) for each melt, it also only took two melts to convert the second 5gal bucket of WW's to ingots.

Two changes I'll make next time.  1) I am going to get a couple of muffen pans and use those instead of the one RCBS mold that I currently use.  2)  I intend to get a differnt ladle, one that I can flatten one side of and that will also hold a bit more then the Rowell (sic) bottom pore ladle that Mr Ferguson sold me for casting bullets.  I love the ladle, it's just that it is not the best (nor to be true is it the worst) for casting ingots.  Those two changes, by themselfs,  should increase production quite a bit.

Now all I have to do is go buy a few more buckets of WW's.

FWIW I figure each bucket produced about 125lb of clean WW ingots.

Grendel

[Lloyd Smale]

just go to the grocery store and buy a big steel soup laddle they work great and there cheap. try to find one with wooden handles though as the plactic handles tend to melt.

[wills]

You can get rowell ladles up to 90 pounds capacity from the manufacturer

http://www.advancecarmover.thomasregister.com/olc/advancecarmover/ladles.htm

[Leftoverdj]

I'm using about a 12" Dutch oven and doing about 200 pounds a melt on a turkey fryer. One tip worth mentioning for doing things on this scale is to start with about 50 pounds in the pot, skim the clips when it is fluid, and repeat until the pot is full. Once the clips are out of the way, added metal melts much faster and it is much easier to deal with a smaller amount of clips at a time. What lino I add goes in last so the tin has less time to float out. Total time to melt and clean a 200 pound batch is just under an hour.

Last time I used an old pine bench as a work surface and I now have some prefluxed ingots. Hot ingots landing on the pine did not scorch it, but boiled resin right out of the wood which then baked onto some of the ingots. No harm done, but it sure did stink.