I've got a piece of steel pipe 14" diameter and 5' long filled with lead......estimating just under 2 tons. Looking for ideas on how to get the lead out of the pipe. One idea is a "stacked brick" enclosure partially filled with charcoal and a fan to increase airflow. Hopefully we can cast about 2/3 of it into dutch oven sized ingots for scrap. Any ideas?

You don't have to get fancy, your steel pipe IS your enclosure.

Stack a fire built from logs, put the pipe inside the stack hanging "down" slightly off horizontal with the end of the pipe resting over a series of shallow ditches radiating out from where the molten lead will drip out of the pipe.

Light the fire, wait and when the lead runs out of the pipe have a pair of tongs ready to grab on to the solidified runners that will run out in your ditches and jell starting out from your pour zone (which will be way too close to the fire and way too hot to deal with).

The runners will carry the lead out into a cooler "doable" reach with the tongs, where it will then solidify and get picked up.

Yes, you'll make a mess on the ground and you'll have some sand in the resulting ingots but you can cut the runner-ingots into handleable chunks for resmelting and fluxing and cleaning.

Oldfeller

Oldfeller...pm me your email addy.

Joe