Smelted some lead today.

Brickman301 · Mar 8, 2020

My brother and I smelted 600 pounds of pure lead today into ingots. We made and tested out a new bottom pour pot we made, and tried out some new ingot molds. 1st try with this new pot, so it didn’t go a quickly as usual, but it was a lot less labor intensive. All in all I’m very happy with this new smelting pot!

lowoncash · Mar 8, 2020

I'll just get it out of the way.

3%

Brickman301 · Mar 8, 2020

lowoncash said:
I just get it out of the way.

3%

Melnic · Mar 8, 2020

Cool (uhh hot actually)
I recall the discussion about this last year.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

FrankOceanXray · Mar 9, 2020

Awesome.

All wheel weights?? That's a'lotta lead.

Scrounger · Mar 9, 2020

Some years ago, a friend of mine had a nice setup for smelting lead. This was before everyone had a camera on them, so I don’t have any pictures. His pot would hold 2000 lbs. of lead and he had a track that the ingot molds would ride on. He would move an ingot under the bottom pour spout for filling. Then move it over for the next one. After they cooled, he would flip the ingot molds over to remove the ingots. Then repeat the process till the run was done.

He stacked each run separately. When it came time to cast, he would take an equal amount from each run to cast into bullets. That way if the alloy was a little different from one batch to the other by pulling lead from each run it made it his cast bullets more consistent.

I have been trying to put something together like it for some time. I have a bit of lead waiting to be cast into ingots, just need a bigger pot. Looks like I may have to pickup one of those large Dutch ovens and a Rowell ladle.

LGood48 · Mar 9, 2020

Nice looking ingots!

That said, I hate to be the purest here, but I'm about 3% sure that if you started with bulk lead you were MELTING, not smelting. Smelting is the extraction of a pure metal from raw ore.

Brickman301 · Mar 9, 2020

LGoodwin said:
Nice looking ingots!

That said, I hate to be the purest here, but I'm about 3% sure that if you started with bulk lead you were MELTING, not smelting. Smelting is the extraction of a pure metal from raw ore.

I believe you may be correct. Anytime I put any type of lead into ingots I just call it smelting.
This lead I put into ingots yesterday definitely didn’t need to be smelted, as there are no impurities in this lead, it’s 99.9 percent pure.
I sell this lead all the time, end it has been consistent for years. Here is a picture of the analyzer results showing its purity.

hermyjoe · Mar 9, 2020

Love it

Maher1510 · Mar 9, 2020

FrankOceanXray said:
Awesome.

All wheel weights?? That's a'lotta lead.

Wasn’t wheel weights, it was pure lead we melted into ingots. (I’m the brother). Haha.

welder516 · Mar 9, 2020

If you Smelted you dealted

Brickman301 · Mar 9, 2020

welder516 said:
If you Smelted you dealted

inkd · Mar 10, 2020

I like that bottom pour pot!!! If you don't mind me asking, how did you build it?

Brickman301 · Mar 10, 2020

inkd said:
I like that bottom pour pot!!! If you don't mind me asking, how did you build it?

I’ll let my brother reply to you on this. He was the one who did most of it himself, like 99 percent of it! I just helped him with some ideas, and I went and got supplies, he and I thought we would need.
He figured it all out, after that.

Maher1510 · Mar 13, 2020

I am Brickman’s brother. I tapered the all thread at the bottom to almost a point. And the hole in the bottom of the pot I reamed a little out so when the two match up, they sealed. I welded a coupler nut to the side of the pot. Well, I added two small pieces of 1/4” flat steel to it to bump it out so my hole wasn’t so close to the bottom edge of the pot. I had to run a tap through the coupler nut so the piece of all thread would thread all the way through. I added a small piece of pipe to the bottom of the pot to clear the turkey fryer top and welded the piece of angle steel to the pipe.

Maher1510 · Mar 13, 2020

Here is the coupler nut

Maher1510 · Mar 13, 2020

Maher1510 · Mar 13, 2020

John from MD · Mar 13, 2020

True American ingenuity! You guys do great work. :party29:

Maher1510 · Mar 13, 2020

John from MD said:
True American ingenuity! You guys do great work.

Thanks!

Smelted some lead today.

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