First big melt

Camaroguy

CGN Regular
Rating - 100%
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Location
Manitoba
Finally got around to building a big melter for scrap lead. 4 pounds at a time on a 1000 watt hotplate was starting to get on my nerves. Runs on scrap would from 2x4s or pallets from work because I'm too cheap to run a turkey burner on propane. :p First melt today was about 120 pounds of pure lead and from start up to completed melt took 20 minutes. Next step is rigging up a valve and a spout for bottom pouring. This thing sure does go through alot of wood in a hurry though.
Initial start up.

Getting all the wood burning.

Full power! Ain't nobody got time for waiting!
 
Yeah, 30 pounder on bottom, 20 pounder on top. Blower is salvaged from an old dryer someone threw away. Not sure what the lead originally was, the guy I got it off of said it was melted out of something. I didn't get any details. Compared to my range scrap ingots, these are dead soft.
 
Nothing like the fresh smell of melting dirty lead. I've got almost 20 years of it in my nose. Now if the next door neighbors are having a garden party and the wind is just right, I hope you're already feuding with them.
 
Had a similar set up and the bottom pour would get plugged all the time. The dust and particles sunk down and I was always cleaning the hole. Mine was a large propane tank end on top of a 45 gallon drum. It would hold 300 lbs of liquid lead. I welded a pipe end that would hold 12 lbs of lead at a time to another pipe and filled my muffin trays(3lbs each muffin full). Spray your ingot with liquid graphite from c-tire and they fall right out. Cleaned 2800 lbs of indoor range scraps lead this way. 3rd move and it is still coming with me.
 
Next set of pictures I want to see that yard cleaned up, Mister.

:)

You sound like my wife! Believe it or not, the yard is much better now than it was two months ago. She finally made me take in my aluminum scrap that I was hoarding.

Lyman54: My neighbors tend to stay inside and try to do my stink causing activities on calm days where the smoke will rise mostly straight up.
 
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