TexasCHLforum.com

Thanks for the info. I haven't yet been to a flea market in the US - might be the perfect excuse

Gyrogearhead wrote:Got two cornbread stick moulds from the flea market and they make nice 1"X1" X8" ingots.

Gerry

P.S. How do you guys get bigger pictures in your postings?

I love that ingot-mold - I'll have to look around for something like that. I also like your ladle - very stout. Nice job

Bigger pictures - well, I upload my pics to Imageshack.us, thencopy the URL and then paste that URL between IMG tags (you'll see the "Img" button just above where you type your first line of text.

Gyrogearhead wrote:Hi Andy,

Here's where I got my Tel-tru thermometer delivered to my doorstep for $22.89 last March:

http://bbqbonanza.com/

Thank you, Gerry - that's extremely useful, thank you.

And a public apology to Jumping Frog for my snappiness - I was over-sensitive for some reason

I can't afford a thermometer yet, and I'm still getting used to how hot my new burner actually gets. I said that I know it's too hot - is that all right with you?

Nice, Dave!

Depends what metal you're talking about - each metal has a different melting temperature. Also - definitely sift out as much dirt as you can before starting to smelt the scrap bullets, otherwise the dirt floats on top of the lead like a blanket and acts as an insulator towards the metal on top - it slows things down dramatically.

V-rog and I did another batch today, smelting about 180 lbs of lead and Lord alone knows how much copper. We use corn-cob cast-iron molds (for easy insertion into a casting pot) as well as small bread-tins (larger ingots for future bulk alloying).

The setup:


Got the lead a bit too hot here, but the colors are awesome:


V-rog rubbing his hands with glee, Scrooge-style:


Me hamming it up as well:

Oh, those aren't cases, Jim - those are bullet jackets. Pretty valuable, too, if copper is going for about $3/lb...

Thank you kindly - I've just gotten started on the pile that I intend having

My guess is that it's going to be real soft lead, seeing as 99% of it was jacketed.... I might just tart it up a wee bit with some 50/50 bar solder if it doesn't fill out the mold-cavities as is.

I haven't done this in years, but my local range allowed me to scrape a few bucket loads of bullets from their berm - filling two 5-gallon buckets to about 2/3rds full (to avoid breaking their handles from the weight) in about 15 minutes.

I went out today and invested in an inexpensive fish-fryer from Bass Pro for $30 - I liked the fact that it has extra stabilizers on the base so it won't tip over.

I bought a 5qt Dutch oven too and couldn't help but get a cast iron corn-cob type pan so I can cast lead ingots in handy shapes for my Lee melting-pot - almost had to fight the wife off when she saw the last two items; what is it with women and cast-iron cookware?

Put the fryer together in about 15 minutes, loaded it up with about a half bucket of range scrap and set it going:



After about 20 minutes of this beast roaring like a jet-engine and watching the pile settle lower and lower into the pot, we got this:



After scraping all the copper jackets off the top of the lead:



The final result of a 2/3rds bucket of range scrap - 37 or so corn-cob ingots of perhaps a pound apiece, a single ingot of the remaining lead in the pot of about 5 pounds and (not shown) about 10 pounds of copper jackets which I'll probably sell to a scrap dealer - ingots shown next to a few .45 boolits for scale:



Basically, this little bucket of range scrap bullets will probably cast about 1,700 boolits