I randomly melt lead for for black powder rifles and for a S&W 686 as well as for fishing jigs and sinkers.

Unexpectedly my small Lee furnace melted, one side has actually partially melted and looks like a spout. This little unit has served me very well since 1989 and owes me nothing. I have always used a dipper to fill various molds.

Needing a replacement it seems most furnaces are bottom pouring. Do I need to be concerned with leakage? Even the Lee website mentions slight dripping as being normal with use.

I have visions of the lever getting stuck with debris i.e. rust or whatever, and 20 pounds of molten lead pouring out the bottom and setting fire to anything in reach.

Is this irrational, or a real concern?

Thanks.

Ken.

I have used a RCBS bottom pour for yeas with no trouble now. With the bottom pours as long as the lead/alloy fills the pot all the dross is far away and can't block the stopper from closing.
It's the dross that will cause the dripping to occur, as what happened to me the one time when I was learning.

Great. Good advice thank you.

I have used a couple of different brands and never had a problem. Your production should increase with a bottom pour over a ladle.

I have used the 10lb Lee for over 25 years and the best advise I can give to prevent dripping spout syndrome is:

1. if you're going to be melting wheelweights like I do, flux often to get the gunk to rise to the top and away from the spout.

2. put the melter away full to the top. That way no rust can form in the inside walls while in storage.

I nearly always left my small furnace full of lead to help keep rust away.

Someone at the Lee factory today suggested leaving the pot about 1/2 full otherwise it takes forever to heat, but spray the empty portion with WD40 to keep the rust away.

No doubt both methods work.

Here in Canada I checked about 8 sources for furnaces and found our government is messing about with CSA or Canadian Standards Association regulations with the result there was only one 10 pound Lee furnace to be had anywhere. It was a bottom feeder and is now on my reloading bench. The system is so simple I wonder what caused my concern. The concern is now gone.

Personally I only melt and pour lead outside.

Thanks for the input, it helped.

Ken.

I forgot to mention the lead comes from shot. My older son obtained 600 or 700 pounds of lead shot so the new furnace will not likely last as long as the first one did.

quote:

Originally posted by gatsby:
I have used a couple of different brands and never had a problem. Your production should increase with a bottom pour over a ladle.

You are so right. My production is now about a factor of 3X previous, probably more.

On first heating the furnace lead came poring out the bottom is a steady stream. My pre-planned contingency was to have an ingot mold under the spout, with a spare ingot mold beside it. Once almost drained I found a slight adjustment to the control solved the problem for the rest of the session.

Want a useful upgrade this has been!

Ken.

I ladle pour, nobody will ever talk me into a bottom pour but I have had to buy pots with it. I remove all the junk and plug the hole from the inside with a tapered plug. Problem solved.

I have an old 10# Lee & newer 20#. Mine rarely drip because:
I do NOT smelt in them, the debris/crud can work it's way into the spout & cause drips. I only use clean alloy.
I do NOT empty the pot. Again, depris/crud will get into the spout & cause drips. Any minor dripping can be erased by turning the slotted head on the spout plug once or twice a when a drip occurs.

I have lyman and lee pots , I got a choke /hood release from a junked car cut it about 8 " long with plastic handle still attached when I get dripping stiuation I set a lyman inget mold under the spout and open the handle and run the wire threw the spout from top down and it clears the pluged area and it works for another year ! I won't ever buy another lyman pot as they will not sell the temp control unless you send the pot to them for repair ! I have one that is dead and need a new controler .

gray fox,

i've used a lee pro20-4 for a few years; i learned from other postings to clamp a pair of vise-grips to the top of the control rod...the extra weight keeps dripping to the absolute minimum.

in the event some debris fouls the rod's seat, i use a screw-driver to turn the rod back and forth, clearing the trouble.

Two observations from this thread:

If you are going to use shot, be very careful about fumes, even moreso than just lead. Lead shot has arsenic in it. Enough said.

And BFR, there is a lot to be said for ladle pouring, but until you have used a 10-cavity H&G and turned out 500 bullets in about 30 minutes, all of them within a grain, you haven't seen the beauty of a bottom pour pot. I spend a lot less time casting than I do shooting! I have a ladle pour pot as well and use it for certain applications, but that RCBS Pro-Melt II has cast literally hundreds of thousands of bullets for me over the last 30 years.

Thank you for the warning, I did not know the arsenic problem.

Arsenic is put into lead shot to make it harder... it does that, but in doing so holds the threat of making us all sick if we don't pay attention and take care of ourselves.

No thanks necessary, but you are welcome. Just trying to help as fellow member of the best fraternity in the world: that of shooting, hunting, casting, and loading.

theres arsenic in ww's too.
in the shot it's there because it is a surface tensioner.
to help it be round.
arsenic is a blessing when manipulating lead alloys through quenching.

The Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook talks at some length about the value of arsenic in antimonial alloys, and specifically about how it helps in quench hardening and lead shot roundness...

I used to cast professionnally using pure linotype, Hensley & Gibbs moulds and an RCBS Pro-Melt bottom pour. It must have had three tons of linotype through it during that time.

I always regularly fluxed and always at the end of a casting session ran it empty with one long pour into an ingot mould to drain it completely after it got to about half full.

I never had a dripping problem with it.

I started out with ladle and after several years went to bottom pour--much prefer bottom pour. The crud is lighter than the alloy thus floats but I do my melting in a cast iron pot and use clean ingots and my Lee really doesnt give a problem. Keep an ingot mold handy if it does leak.

I had the same problem and have gone back to ladle pouring out of my 1969 Lyman cast iron pot over a propane turkey fryer, and find I get better bullets. No more bottom pours for me.