Hi all, I hit the second hand shops today looking for a hot plate for melting lead. I couldn't find one, but did get an old waffle iron. Do you think if I tweaked the thermostat that it will get hot enough? I also picked up a couple of heavy cast aluminum sauce pans. Is there any problem with melting WW in alumunum pans?

I tried casting some shot, but I guess I wasn't pouring from high enough as it just made a mess when it hit the bucket.

Lar45,
You could tweak the t-stat or wire around it. If it is teflon coated I wouldn't use it though until all the teflon was removed.
As far as using aluminum pans for melting lead I think you will find the aluminum will also melt. I forget the exact melt temp of alum but it's not that much higher than lead. Orygun

Aluminum is bad news. The melting point isn't much higher than lead, normally right about 1050F, but Aluminum loses it's strength at temp very rapidly. So you might very well wind up with molten lead bursting out the bottom of your otherwise intact pot.

Use cast iron or steel. 10-15qt Dutch ovens work great with about a 20-30K BTU burner. I use a 3 qt steel soup pot for small batches of alloys like 20:1 or #2, on a 5K BTU burner. The big burner and dutch oven pot is for bulk wheelweights. S/F...Ken M

Look around the garage sales for cast iron pots or harbor freight has the for about $12.oo bucks and this month they have free shipping if you ask.

Ed B

Lar 45: I've been using 2 alum pots for melting lead for quite a while with out a problem. Of course they are very heavy duty pots. I been meaning to buy a turkey cooker, which I did this
week. I may even do a turkey as I bought $30 worth of peanut oil. Now I can retire my alum pots amd use a large cast iron pot I have. Walmart has turkey cookers for $37 and $48. Over a year or 2 period you probably can save enough money with the turkey cooker over a hot plate and propane and gas camping stove. Of course a electric hot plate real handy for pre heating moulds and making 2 alloy bullets. ben.

Lar45 - My name is Tim, I too had a problem with using aluminum to melt lead in.

I started with a Coleman 50 (single burner white gas military stove) and a 2 qt aluminum saucepan. I have seen the bottom of the aluminum pan redish when emptying it. I really don't know what I would do with two quarts of molten lead and a sauce pan with no bottom.

Anyway, LOOK in the places like Goodwill, DAV, YMCA Thriftshops and Salvation Army second hand stores. I've found plenty of heavy duty stainless and some old cast iron in places like those. You WILL find something, maybe not today, but....

In 1966 I melted some lead in an aluminum pan on the kitchen stove. Lead melted just fine and then a hole developed in the bottom of the pan and droped ten pounds of liquid lead into the stove.

When it cooled, I lifted out the large chunks and use tin snips to cut up the thin stuff and got it all out. No damage done, but the wife got all torqued up about the event.

This fall I was looking for a turkey cooker to clean lead. WAl Mart had about about 5 different kinds outside in the garden center, up in the storage racks. I got one in a ratty box marked down from $59.99 to $27. The whole deal, 30 qt aluminum pot, bottle of marinade, thermometer, syringe, even a video. Saving all that to do a turkey. I use a cast iron dutch oven to melt lead. Works great.

You can get a plumbers lead pot from a plumbing supply. The pots have a nice high handle, pouring spout, and a lip opposite the pouring spout you can hold with a pair of channel locks.

C. 1975, the NRA put out a warning against using aluminum pots for casting. They had had several reports like Chargar's. There was a long technical explanation attached, but all I needed to remember was "Don't use aluminum pots".

Doing something a thousand times does not prove that something is safe. One failure proves it is dangerous.

Listen to this one. My dad use to make his own fishing sinkers when I was a little kid. He used a cast iron skillet on a gas stove that was in the basemetn. The skillet had a handle that cast with the whole body, but it had a nice round wooden handle on that extention. He poured from the skillet into the sinker moulds as the skillet had a spout on the edge. He always told me to back away right before he got ready to move the skillet. He had done this many many times. One day he was ready to pour and I got about six feet away from him and as shoot as he slid the skillet off the burner the skillet turned because the heat after many used had charred the insides of that wooden handle and the rod skillet extention inside that wooden handle was like a sleeve and bearing. Well about ten pounds of molten lead hit the very cold concret floor and jumped and most of it went down my right shoe. Remember back in those days kids wore those high top leather shoes.
Took my dad quite a few minutes to catch me as I was doing the Indian dance screaming and crying. They had to cut my shoe off. It looked like a bronzed baby shoe except in lead. I got burned all the way to the bone. Took along time to heal. My poor dad never forgave himself for that one. Did I become scared to death of casting anything. Hell no. Moral of the story? It's better to be safe then sorry. Go get the proper cast melting pot.

Joe

The lads in the maintenance shop at the gold mine where I'm employed made me a smelting pot for wheelweights etc.

A section of 6"-diameter heavy-wall steel pipe about five inches "long" had a 1/4"-plate bottom welded in. They then formed a nice pouring spout on one side, and welded a chipping-hammer handle to the opposite side of the pot. A good heavy bail handle for lifting the pot was then attached, and it makes a great outfit! It holds around sixty pounds of alloy. Picking it up by the bail, the pot is tilted with the hammer-handle to pour the alloy into the ingot moulds (also fabricated by my pards in the shop). Cost: zero. I use a weed-burner for heat.

Aluminum is very iffy in this use, as far as safety goes. I'd avoid it.

Regards from BruceB (aka Bren Mk1)

Lodge sells a smallish one piece cast iron pot they coincidentially call a "Melting Pot". It's about 4" in diameter and about 2 1/2 deep. It has a handy spout in one side already there. I use that and a coleman stove to melt WW and mix my alloy. It'll hold about 10lbs with room to spare for safety's sake.
I bought a skillet at first but it sloshes too easily. This one is very stable. Ace hardware had one on the shelf last time I was there.Lodge Manufacturing

good luck,
Ian

I USE A 20LB PROPANE TANK WITH THE TOP CUT OFF,2- ONE INCH WASHERS WELDED TO THE SIDES TO ALLOW FOR A HANDEL, A POURING SPOUT OPOSITE TO A 'D' SHAPED HANDEL ABOUT TWO-THIRDS OF THE WAY DOWN THE SIDE AND A LID TO HELP KEEP THE HEAT IN AND THE SMOKE DOWN. HEAT WITH A PROPANE BURNER.

Remember to un-screw the valve, fill the tank with water and cut a 4x4 inch piece out of the top of the tank to make sure there is no gas in it prior to cutting off the top.

wills, left-over dj: I've done the same thing for years for making ingots with my old 20-lb. SAECO dip pot, only I use 2 pairs Vise-Grips - one to lift the pot by the bail and the other clamped hard onto the tab opposite the spout. I have used channel-locks, but the Vise-Grips are more trustworthy. I got the old lead-all-over-the-kitchen-stove (and me!) bit out of the way, back in the '40's, making "tin soldiers". Remember when you could buy these sets (ladle, moulds and tin-lead alloy) for kids? No way these days. floodgate

Floodgate, I make two pairs of Visegrips to be about 8 times as safe as one pair of channel locks. I use visegrips myself to tip ingot moulds and to tip my big dutch oven enough to get most of the last 20 pounds of alloy out.

But if I go lifting any serious weight of molten lead, I am gonna have a serious handle on the pot.

I did not get to be this old and ugly by taking avoidable risks. You only have to mess up once.

For my smelter I use a 5 gal. steel bucket with the botton cut out of it with 3 1x2x6in Alum.
legs screwed to the sides, holds the bucket about 5in off the floor, to one leg I mounted a burner out of an old gas water heater with a valve and quick disconnect air line fittings. I cut 4 vert. 1/4x1 1/2in slots 90 deg. apart about 6in down form the top and used 3/16x1 cold rolled bar for supports for a 10 qt. stainless steel pressure cooker.
This cooker will safely hold 70+#'s of ww with room left to skim and flux.
I dip the clean ww with a soup ladle and pour into ingot molds.

Calamity Jake

Propane camp stove holds my dutch oven safely about 2" off the ground and keeps the pot from cooling. I melt from the top with a propane weed burner that gets the flame right into a stack of WW's, goes much faster when ya heat the clips and burns off any moisture also. Heating my cast iron ladle directly in the flame keeps the lead from clinging when I'm ready to fill the muffin pans. Plus I jes' love playin' with fire!

I used a aluminum pot on a turkey cooker untill I noticed the the bottom of the pot was molding itself to the support rods of the cooker. I now use a cutoff propane tank. I have to watch how full I get it because the legs of the cooker start to give out. ohshooter

I have a turkey cooker and use it for cleaning buckets of WW and pouring into ingots. What I was looking for was something smaller to set on the bench to keep a pot of molten WW at temp to refill my Lee bottom pour pot to keep the temp more even during casting. If I'm running 2 or 3 large cavity molds, is there anything else?, then it sometimes doesn't keep up with melting ingots and I have to wait, then the temp of the molds goes down.....
This is an old waffle iron, pre teflon. I'll go back for some cast or steel pans and throw the aluminum ones out. We have a Harbour freight in town so no shipping.

Hi Lar45

I know one guy who uses two of the Lee Bottom pour pots -- one higher and feeding the other!

This is really slick: ingots go in the top pot,melt and are fed into the second pot which stays extremely consistent regarding temperature.

This guy casts big bullets in multi-cavity molds, and he swears that he gets almost no rejects and his bullets are extremely consistent this way.

If I recall right, his upper pot is only a 10lb Lee because of its low cost. Might be worth thinking about perhaps...

jpb