Making winter CWW ingots

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
Well spring ingots I guess, it's just that 3 feet of snow outside with more coming just feels kinda like winter.

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My set up for making ingots. Good fan ventilation for cooking wheel weights indoors.

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318 pounds of CWW ingots so far, with about 50 pounds to go till the job will be completed. The cupcake ingots weight in at about 2#.
 

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
Thanks Ben, I'll keep that in mind. But I'm pretty sure think I can find a corner somewhere.
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
I'm waiting for a warmer day with no wind ( Wind is an issue in my smelting area) I still have 200 lbs of Jacketed range scrap to smelt. I smelted all my Range picked Commercial cast last November but Never got enough of the Jacketed smelted to make my mix
I blend my bullet alloy with 1 ingot of Commercial cast range pick with 2 ingots of Commercial Jacketed range pick!
That gets me an alloy that cast great at around 11-12 BHN after 3 weeks
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
barely broke 30 today, then hailed and snowed and hailed and snowed,,,even with the cover I have for the smelter I'm not standing out there...LOL
 

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
Finished mine last winter and a good feeling. Did you know that Lyman, RCBS and SAECO one pounders fit exactly between the studs of 2X4's on 16 inch centers? A 12 foot wall stacked four feet high is 2000 pounds! Congratulations!
 

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
Finely finished up with the wheel weights, total 397 pounds of clean ingots. I have a little over 100 pounds of one pound ingots of almost pure lead that falls under BHN 8 some right at BHN 5. I've got quite a few ingots that where cast in 13 x 9 and some in 8 x 8 cake pans, as well as quite a few cast in 5 x 9 bread pans. I cast them up a number of years ago for ballasting a vessel I rebuilt and for weighting a larger commercial flatbed truck. Have about 8 of the 13 x 9 ingots under a sheet of plywood in my Dodge pickup for winter weight. Gets around quite well on the hard pack snow/ice that we drive on 5 or 6 months a year. Some of these ingots are all wheel weights and some are from a ballast weight from a mobile home moving truck.
I need to start breaking down some of these larger ingots to a usable size to fit in my Lee 20# pot. Don't really want to remelt these to smaller ingots, I'd rather saw them up as needed. I've not had good luck with sawzall blades as the lead seems to load up the teeth. So any ideas on making little one's out of big one's without remelting?
 

Rick

Moderator
Staff member
Before I had the Magma pot I had some 10 pound ingots that weren't about to go into the RCBS Pro melt. I held the ingot with vice grips over the pot and used a propane torch to melt the bottom of the ingot. It dripped and flowed right into the pot until the ingot was small enough to fit.
 

358156 hp

At large, whereabouts unknown.
I saw a video of a guy who put large chunks of lead on a cookie sheet set up cinder blocks in his driveway. He had it tipped at an angle with a large ingot mould under it and he was melting the lead with a weed burner and letting it run into the ingot moulds. Every so often he'd swap out the ingot moulds.

Oh, I see the mailmans here with my new H&G 10 cavity!
 

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
Ric
My lightest ingot is 22 pounds so holding that one handed for a time would not be practical. But, I do use a 10" cast iron pan for melting, so that might be the way. I could put the 9 x 13 ingots back in the cake pans and heat them on the camp stove.
 

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
The truck weight was in cast in steel to facilitating mount it in the truck frame which made it handier to handle. I have a over head crane in my shop so I hung it from the over head and did use a weed burner. I had cut a corner out of the steel case. Worked good, that's where the bread and cake pans molds came in handy. Also had all garage doors open, summer time project.
 

USSR

Finger Lakes Region of NY
Finally got a halfway decent day yesterday, so I smelted 45# of pure into ingots. Only got 137# to go.

Don
 

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
How do you melt WW to make your ingots, electric pot, propane stove?

Well if you don't want to pick out the stick on WW, which are easy to see cook them all up.

I use a propane camp stove with 2 cast iron pan. The burner on full would only get the melt after removal of clips and dirt to a temp of between 550* to 650* the zinc weights float with the clips. Zinc melts at 780*. I watch the temperature and stay below 650*. The electric casting pot can get over 780*. I would think the big cast iron camp stoves more then exceed those temperatures. So watch the thermometer.

I'm sure Ben would take that batch off your hands if don't want to mess with them.
 
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Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
Nice set up. I'm stuck inside for another month till I can keep the garage doors up. Last time I had a batch that looked that dirty I dumped them on a full sheet of plywood on a slight angle and use a low pressure pressure washer and a garden rake. Of course they need to dry out afterwards
 
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GRMPS

Active Member
There is no hazard in smelting wet lead IF you start with a cold pot. I have a pair of compound side cutters I use to test the WW I can't see the markings. not concerned about FE just ZN. If I'm not 100% certain I got all the ZN, I will flux with copper sulfate which takes out the ZN.

I getting the gist that Ben would be happy to help ANYONE with the removal of a lead "problem" :)