My new pot.

[grubbylabs]

My new smelting pot. It seems to take a while to come to temp, but once it does, it works awesome.

[Gibbs44]

I'm guessing homemade? Nice even if it's not.

[grubbylabs]

Farmer made. Even better.

[3jimbo3]

I like the valve design. What size spring(in LBS) is on it?

[grubbylabs]

It's a honda ATV valve spring.

[VHoward]

Put a skirt around the bottom of the pot to hold more of the heat from the burner. Looks good.

[txsnowman2k2]

it has one, i could barely see it but in the inside shot you can see the weld heat marks...gonna make one if you don't mind my copying your design...tx

[dikman]

We have a phrase for things like that - "rough as guts".
But I like it, nice job. Worth quite a few Brownie points, I reckon.

[grubbylabs]

Well there is no copy write or patten so your free to do as you will. I hope yours works just as good as mine, it really makes things quite a bit easier. I told my friend it works great but I need more ingot molds, he says well I can make a few more/ So now I have a few more of those coming to make it even easier.

[WILCO]

Nice!

[weasel 21]

Where's Hansen in the 'ho ?

[BNE]

Nicely done. I bet you will enjoy it!

[JASON4X4]

I like your set up. I was going to maka one like that I have the propane tank now I just need to get to work.

[grubbylabs]

Where's Hansen in the 'ho ?

Between Burley and Twin Falls.

[grubbylabs]

Well I got to give the pot a good work out the other night and she did real well. We went through about a 5gal bucket.

Once we got a system down for cooling the mold we went through the lead pretty quick.

[Huskerguy]

Nice design and excellent work. A few questions if you don't mind.

1. What did you use for the valve seal? Is it slightly raised to keep crude away from valve?
2. The bottom pour spout. Is that open channel iron or tubing? I would think channel would work better to keep clean.
3. If you could redo and change anything to make it better what would it be?

Thanks for sharing.

[williamwaco]

Propane bottle?

[Rugerman]

Very nice.

[grubbylabs]

Nice design and excellent work. A few questions if you don't mind.

1. What did you use for the valve seal? Is it slightly raised to keep crude away from valve?
2. The bottom pour spout. Is that open channel iron or tubing? I would think channel would work better to keep clean.
3. If you could redo and change anything to make it better what would it be?

Thanks for sharing.

First, I did not make it, a friend made it for me. I am very lucky, to say the least.
1. The Valve seal is a tapered screw. I believe the screws are made for hydraulics, but not sure.
2. The bottom pour is right on the bottom.
3. The valve is always going to be the week spot I think, I am not sure what else can be done to make it better. But so far I have smelted quite a bit of lead in the thing and it seems to work very well.

The worst thing is I have not taken the time to build a stand for the ingot mold, so I am always rigging something up at the last minute. Running a second ingot mold would really help things as well. Another issue is my thermometer does not reach the bottom of the pot, so unless its full I have no idea what temp I am at unless I take the time to dip the thermometer into the melt. Another issue is heat loss, I think the only way around this is to build a shield to encompass the whole thing. So much lead can fit in there, that it takes a while to get it all come to temp.

I use a 25lb propane bottle, basic BBQ size.