Which Melter?

[44man]

There is a huge amount of trash and dirt on WW's. Then they toss valve stems in the buckets too. There is tape, grease, zinc, aluminum, etc there too.
Smelt separate and keep the melt at 600° and skim off what does not melt.
Yes you will want to raise the temps but what you think you save is not good.
Do NOT flux until you skim, even pure antimony will melt in at 600° with flux.
Pick out and toss stick on weights, They have strange metals today due to the nuts in Kalifornication. Seems birds steal them from wheels! The last batch I melted were almost all zinc. Pot was all oatmeal, nasty junk. Some SO's are strips of pure and you can tell.

[Tatume]

For small time production of ingots for personal use, it is practical to pick out the lead wheel weights, examine them individually (or a handful at a time), and drop them into the pot. When I go out to cast, sometimes I'll smelt one pot of wheel weights and cast ingots, then smelt another pot full, and cast bullets of it. I get almost no macro trash (valve stems, for example), and can easily check suspect wheel weighs for zinc using a side cutter pliers.

If I were smelting barrels of wheel weights for ingots to sell, I would not use my casting pot, for a variety of reasons. For one, it is too small.

[bangerjim]

For VERY VERY small production, a non-bottom pour pot is fine for re-melting and fluxing. Most of us do hundreds of pounds of lead and alloy at a time and a large gas-fired pot is the best for our needs.

I cast in mostly 6 cavity molds and the bottom pours are fast and efficient. I can crank out hundreds of perfect boolits in an hour! I only use 2 cav molds when Lee does not make a 6 cav version.

I hope you can find a friend that has a 4-20 bottom pour you can try sometime. Once you use one and see the volume of QUALITY output, you will be sold! My bottom/side CI ladle just hangs on the shop wall.......been there a while........gathering dust.

Have fun with you new melter. It is sure better than a coleman stove.

bangerjim

[NavyVet1959]

I only smelt in the dead of winter and outside (due to the smoke from fluxing and trash in the wheelweights), so I smelt in larger batches. Unless I have at least a 5g bucket of wheelweights, I don't even bother with it. A cast iron dutch oven, cutoff freon tank, or cutoff 20-lb propane tank and gas burner is plenty for a couple of 5g buckets of wheelweights. When I'm casting though, I do it in the garage with the door open. Not as much smoke is produced, so I don't need the same amount of airflow that I need when smelting. Plus, when smelting, I sometimes use used motor oil for a flux and that will often burst into flames. Don't want to be doing that under a roof.

[Tatume]

I use five or six-cavity molds almost exclusively, and wouldn't consider changing to a bottom pour pot. I don't like them, and in my opinion they don't produce the quality of bullets that ladle casting does. Learn to use what you have. You won't look back.

[gwpercle]

I tried the bottom pour pot, couldn't master it, I cast more boolits all right but had a high rate of rejects. I want them well filled out, sharp edges , no wrinkles or voids and perfect bases.
Discovered me and my 2 cavity moulds cast more keepers with Lyman ladle and Lee open top Magnum Melter. Love the big capacity of the Magnum.
I'm thinking bottom pour pots are great for 6 cavity moulds, but I don't own any.
Just for reference , 2 cavity Lee mould, Lyman ladle , open pot, 1 hour produced 250 perfect or darn near perfect boolits. Without rushing...just took my time. Lee open top pots are great, they never leak! Lee spoon type ladles I don't care for, Get one that has a spout on the side. This is my experience on the subject, jump in there and cast...experience is a great teacher.
Gary

[bangerjim]

In the past I have cast with a ladle in 1, 2, 4, & 6 cavity molds. Excellent boolits - as long as the mold is preheated to CASTING TEMP. But very slow and low production rate.

Do the exact same now with Lee 4-20 bottom pours. Same exact excellent boolits. Tons of them!

I just cannot see why people say they get better boolits with a ladle??????

Only difference I saw was 3 to 6 times as many excellent boolits with the bottom pour because it is so dog-gone fast. And on the odd occasion when you have a cantankerous mold that will not fill out right, pressure casting is faaaaaaar better with 15-18# of molten lead above the spigot!!

Everybody I teach casting to, they start out with a Lee 4-20 bottom pour and 6 cav molds.......with excellent success!

To each his own. It is just what you are used to. Start out big......stay big.

banger

[Super Sneaky Steve]

Today I cleaned my Lee 20lb bottom pour for the first time since I got it about 5 years ago. I disassembled it to get to the hole. I found using a small propane torch helped heat up the junk enough for me to scrape it out.

Even after cleaning it good, it still drips, but what forced me to do this cleaning in the first place is I couldn't get more than a trickle of lead to come out.

It's so cheap my first thought was just to buy a new one, but the penny pincher in me decided to try and fix it.

[MT Chambers]

One word: RCBS Promelt

[bangerjim]

One word: RCBS Promelt

That's two words!!!!!!! Or some letters and a word!

[Le Loup Solitaire]

I have always done my smelting in an old Saeco model 34 non bottom pour 20 pound pot so no issues with range lead or crudded up WW's. I have ladle with an RCBS and a Lyman ladle from it when it has been cleaned up and gotten excellent bullets. I have two bottom pours....a Saeco model 24 that I use for single and double cavity molds and an RCBS Pro Melt for the 4 cav molds. The PM has been going strong since 1978 without a hitch and produces equally excellent quality bullets. I have successfully ladle casted with my 4 cavity molds using a soup type ladle before I could afford a bottom pour and got excellent quality bullets as well, but it was a fairly sloppy process with lots of splashing and grotesque sprues...but it worked well. LLS

[RogerDat]

I don't smelt scrap lead in the same pot I cast out of. Too much grunge in the pot when melting scrap and WW's lead. Those nice clean well fluxed ingots poured from the grungy smelting pot go in the casting pot. I have a bucket for washing the car, I don't use the dishpan I use for dishes. Desire bullets to have the least amount of dross and garbage possible so that extra step of making clean ingots works for me.

I have never tried a bottom pour, I use the Lyman little dipper and in three casting sessions all less than 2 hours. Have at least 500 45 colt RF 255 gr and 800 38 SWC 158 gr. Two bread loaf pans of cast output is plenty to feed revolvers, now if I shot auto loaders.....

I would rather have the larger capacity melter for ladle than a bottom pour but then I don't run a lot of volume either.

[Sasquatch-1]

Even after cleaning it good, it still drips, but what forced me to do this cleaning in the first place is I couldn't get more than a trickle of lead to come out.

The next time you have the problem with the spout plugging up take an old paper clip, and a pair of pliers to hold it with, and run the clip up the spout while draining lead. This will help get rid of any dirt they may have migrated to the spout. When done with your casting session drain the pot, turn it upside down, using method previously mentioned for draining, and tap lightly with a stick like you would use to open the sprue plate.

No matter how careful I have been are I still end up with dirt in my pot.

[Ken O]

I smelt in a turkey fryer, and do a 5 gallon bucket of WWs at a time. There were plans on here many years ago to make the turkey fryer a bottom pour, on the same principle at the Lee pot. Only cost a couple bucks for parts. You lift the handle, and the lead flows out a bottom pipe to fill the ingot. That way the **** that is floating on top of the smelt doesn't get into the ingot. There were many casters who made the pot, works like a champ.

For the molds I bottom pour from the big Lee. I occasionally go back and ladle pour, but not for long.

[44man]

I tried the bottom pour pot, couldn't master it, I cast more boolits all right but had a high rate of rejects. I want them well filled out, sharp edges , no wrinkles or voids and perfect bases.
Discovered me and my 2 cavity moulds cast more keepers with Lyman ladle and Lee open top Magnum Melter. Love the big capacity of the Magnum.
I'm thinking bottom pour pots are great for 6 cavity moulds, but I don't own any.
Just for reference , 2 cavity Lee mould, Lyman ladle , open pot, 1 hour produced 250 perfect or darn near perfect boolits. Without rushing...just took my time. Lee open top pots are great, they never leak! Lee spoon type ladles I don't care for, Get one that has a spout on the side. This is my experience on the subject, jump in there and cast...experience is a great teacher.
Gary

Me too. I can cast 20# all the way to scraping the last out of the bottom without a reject. I don't need a level of lead in the pot.
Pressure cast is a myth, you can't compress molten lead, you just force air out. A ladle works fine for that. To dribble lead in a mold has some cooling before the cavity is full.
Lead is colder at the pot bottom since there are no heat coils there. There is crud at the bottom that does not float. To pick at the hole to open it is nuts.
Cast fast with a huge mold and toss over half back in the pot or shoot scuds is not for me.

[Sasquatch-1]

I beg to differ with you Jim but my Lyman pot has the heating coil at the very bottom.


Also I find failure to fill out the mold is more a lack of tin. Since I started adding pewter to the mix I get great fill out.

Lead is colder at the pot bottom since there are no heat coils there. There is crud at the bottom that does not float. To pick at the hole to open it is nuts.

[NavyVet1959]

I smelt in a turkey fryer, and do a 5 gallon bucket of WWs at a time.

Most of the turkey fryers that I've seen are aluminum pots. I believe that there is a general consensus against using aluminum pots for smelting lead due to localized heating when you are first starting off a batch or the fact that aluminum is starting to weaken when it gets to smelting temperatures.

There are some stainless steel turkey fryers though...

[RogerDat]

The aluminum turkey fryer pot goes to the dear wife, the burner on the other hand does a bang up job of melting lead in your favorite cast iron dutch oven or heavy stainless steel pot.

I added some drop in angle iron cross pieces so I can set a small stainless pot on the burner to cast from.

[45-70 Chevroner]

I finally got rid of my old, ooooold 4-20 Lee pot. I know it was old because I bought it when Lee first came out with it. I rebuilt it one time a while back, but it finally just would not work properly. I've got two ten pounders (bottom pour also) that are older than the 4-20 and still working just fine. I will be getting a new 4-20 though. My preference is bottom pour. I used ladel pour for several years when I first started casting, that was before I even knew about bottom pour pots.

[44man]

I beg to differ with you Jim but my Lyman pot has the heating coil at the very bottom.


Also I find failure to fill out the mold is more a lack of tin. Since I started adding pewter to the mix I get great fill out.

None of mine did. I tore one apart and the coil was only on the sides. The biggest problems were the bi-metal thermostats were subject to direct heat and the strips would over heat and lose tension.