Hey guys,

Just thought I’d post some photos of the 360 lbs of pure lead I just finished melting down from  six 60 lb ingots into much more manageable 1 lb ingots.  I got a 1-time deal on the lead & could not pass it up.  You can see the stack of large ingots in the top left hand corner of the photo along with about 1000 lbs of wheel weight lead which is also in 1 lb ingots.

As noted in the photos I used an outdoor cooker for the heat source but what made it relatively easy was the very large 16 qt. cast iron pot I picked up from Academy Outdoor Sports for $39.95, a heck of a deal since everyone else wanted close to twice or 3X as much, and shipping was free.  It’s actually a 14â€� (top inside diameter) by 6.5â€� deep, pre-seasoned Dutch oven & came with the lid, which was of no use for this project.  The negative when using a large pot is it radiates a lot of heat, requiring longer time to come up to lead melting temp.  But when handling 60 lb or larger ingots a large heavy pot is much more stable (read safer).  It fit the cooker perfectly.  I had 180 lbs of molten lead in it at one time.

If you’re wondering where the ingot mould came from?  It’s a standard RCBS mould with a coil spring ventilated handle welded on that I cut off from a cheap Harbor Freight welding hammer.  Works great, speeds up the process and is very stable.  Anyway, I’m now in great shape with plenty of pure lead and a bunch of tin.  It was hell trying to cut a few lbs off the 60 lb ingots.

The whole process went very smooth, no hiccups, no splattering or split lead.  The folded red towel in the photo was soaked with water and used to quickly cool down the ingot mould until the lead hardened sufficiently to dump on the garage floor.  The mould was supported by the edge of the pot while filling it with the 2 lb dipper.  Gloves, boots, blue jeans, long sleeve heavy cotton shirt, safety goggles were the norm.

Ran out of room so more comments and photo in next post.
Wayne

I look forward to see how peroxide and vinigar works. Also I found a pair of large commercial muffin plates (like truck stop or SAMs have) for moulds. They fit perfect in lee ir lyman 20 lb opening. Each pan holds 12 ingots

Wayne - a  nice neat representative picture of your melting process and results
* Suggestion: Drill holes along the edges of your dross spoon.  Allows the melt to drain back into the pot and just dross to stay in the spoon
BTW - is that a tall scotch & water in the glass? 

I've got a 5 gallon pail of range lead retrieved from my club's indoor range. It's full of wood splinters, burnt powder, and assorted gunk. I tried melting it down once, but was just too much smoke. One of these days I need to wash it, and figure out how to drain the water, but save the lead. Then let it dry long enough to be sure no water remains.
Just never got around to it, since I have 500+ lbs. of clean lead, so the dirty just sits in a corner.

Pentz wrote on Mar 13^th, 2015 at 9:45am:


Or 6300 of the 400 gr .40 caliber that I typically shoot.  And about 6 years worth at the rate I currently use them.

Wayne

Just thought I'd give you guys another option.
Wayne

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