Lee Lead Pot issues?

T

the young gun

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Southern Ontario (GTA)
Picked up an older 10 lb lee pot the other day, and decided to get back into casting.

Having a friend who works at a auto scrap yard comes in handy, so before I knew it, I was in business.

The order of the day was to cast ingots, in preparation for the winter casting session.

Got the lead clean(ish) and started spewing ingots.

The problem I realized right away is that the nozzle spits lead at such a slow pace. drip drip drip drip in a stream that I know is way to slow for anything. I only ended up doing 2 trays on ingots while trying to trouble shoot the problem. Couldn't make the necessary adjustments to make it drop lead faster. Aside from the fact that I can see the layers in the ingots, which isn't a big deal now, I see the potential problems of improper mould fill out.

The bottom of the pot was a bit grungy at first but ended up fluxing it a few times over and digging down to clean as much as I could. I've heard of using a tip cleaner on the nozzle, but tip cleaners are at work. Also, I was using parafin wax as a flux. Any ideas to remedy the problem? Ill hook whoever can help with 1000 Lbs of scrap wheel weights-shipped collect of course. :D


Young Gun
 
Get a dutch oven for doing your cleaning and fluxing! Keep the dirty alloy out of your lee pot! It is going to drip enough without adding dirt to the buissiness end of it. Also I use sawdust for fluxing and a DRY clean wodden paint stir stick to mix it with , Does a better job and less offensive smoke etc. to deal with!
 
When my pot doesn't pour well I use a finishing nail held in a pair of vise grips to clean the bottom hole, followed by a few test pours into an old metal pan. For melting dirty wheel weights I picked up a $20 single burner stove element at Canadian tire. I set this up outside with an extension cord and pour ingots into a mini muffin pan using a ladle. This keeps my casting pot cleaner. I found out about the $20 burners elsewhere on CGN (thank you to whoever posted that originally, it works great!)
 
You are suffering from Lee pot nozzle drip, been the same for 30 years and of course lee does nothing to cure it. Now how to modify the pot so you can at least some what use it.

If there is any lead in the pot then plug it in and turn the pot over to remove any remaining lead. Remove the 2 1/4" screws holding the Lever arm and Valve rod, remove the rod and arm and move them to the side so you have an open pot to work on. Now clean the pot by putting a little water in it and with steel wool or a steel brush scrub all the gunk out of there. All that brown crap needs to be removed and make sure you clean the nozzle out entirely, you might have to heat the pot for a minute and with a small nail clean that orifice out totally so no junk is in it.

Now with valve grinding compound , get about a medium grit (buy it at crappy tire for 5 bucks) and put a dab into the top of the nozzle. Take the cleaned valve rod, put it into a drill and what you want to do is basically mimic the same angle that the rod is in normally when it is installed. You now want to very slowly start the drill so it is just barely turning the valve rod into the nozzle and hold it (not much pressure at all, just sitting in there) there for about 10 seconds. What you are doing is using the valve grinding compound which is basically grease with sand embedded to take out any imperfections from the nozzle and the valve rod.

Clean the nozzle out with a Q-tip and repeat about 4 times. Slowly turning the valve rod in the nozzle with the grinding compound and you will start to see where the imperfections were and the valve rod will now fit the nozzle somewhat better. Make sure all the compound is removed from the nozzle and reassemble the two screws and the valve rod and handle.

You can add some more weight onto the end of the handle by unscrewing the knob and adding more bolts or something heavy to add more downward pressure on the valve to help with the nasal drip. I have also seen a spring attached to the end of the knob and the bottom of the plate to make sure the arm is under pressure in the home position.

Once you have done this you should see a marked improvement in the flow and it should work much better. This will get you by until you have finally had enough of the piece of crap and buy a Lyman or RCBS pot and relegated this to a pre-heat lead pot only.
 
My 10lb lee pot spout was slow when i got it off ebay used - took it apart to clean it up and sanded the spout blocking rod - made no differance. Empty it again- let it cool down and got a drill bit that was a tight fit in the spout outside drain hole and ran it up into the pot slowly making sure it was following the original hole. Melted more lead and it works like a dream now but i only use the pot for making slugs
For making Ingots i find using a old propane camp stove - old steel pot and ladle with thick aluminum cup cake tins works quick and easy for me.
 
Bitumen said:
The problem is that you are using Lee equipment.
Click to expand...

Wow, that took 7 posts :) The polite thing to do when making a statement like that is to use the "poke the hive with a stick" emoticon, or perhaps the "peek from behind the couch" one haha.

I find the drip-o-matic makes bullets just fine. My Lee press loads them up, and they all come flying out the smoky end. Your comment will do nothing to help the OP with his problem I'm afraid. . .
 
I have two lee furnaces they both dripped. I ended up removing the plug completely and screwing a screw into the spout to block the lead from coming out the bottom hole. I purchased a lyman lead ladle and I cast with it. The lyman ladle holds enough lead to easily fill a 6 cavity 9mm mold. Ladling is very slightly slower then pouring.
 
leverboy said:
Wow, that took 7 posts :) The polite thing to do when making a statement like that is to use the "poke the hive with a stick" emoticon, or perhaps the "peek from behind the couch" one haha.

I find the drip-o-matic makes bullets just fine. My Lee press loads them up, and they all come flying out the smoky end. Your comment will do nothing to help the OP with his problem I'm afraid. . .
Click to expand...


No emoticon from me because I really think that Lee reloading equipment is cheap POS.
 
JBD said:
I have two lee furnaces they both dripped. I ended up removing the plug completely and screwing a screw into the spout to block the lead from coming out the bottom hole. I purchased a lyman lead ladle and I cast with it. The lyman ladle holds enough lead to easily fill a 6 cavity 9mm mold. Ladling is very slightly slower then pouring.
Click to expand...

This was my solution too for the drip problem.
 
"the young gun", take the good advice and avoid melting the scrap lead in the pot.
then clean the nozzle and the bottom of the pot and you're good to go.
if it drips later on, keep a stainless steel sauce thingie ($0.5 at the dollar store) under the nozzle and collect the drips.
So far I've cast 175 lbs of lead with mine with great results.
 
Turkey fryer burner,cast iron frying pan,strainer ladle to get rid of the clips,flux of some sort,then a ladle to fill your muffin tins,big table or bench to dump the ingots on.Easy peasy. Lee's gonna drip no matter what, but it helps to keep as much of the crap out of it as possible.
 
Sounds reasonable. Do appreciate the input gents. Casting ingots from the pot was a major pain in the ass, took forever, and trying to bring the clips out and keep the dross to a minimum in such a small pot wasn't worth it. I will however need to clean out that nozzle as I don't like pouring bullets by ladle. I kind of wanted to keep the operation to a minimum as I live in the burbs, but tomorrow.... Bright and early at the crack of noon I'll be out there in my fudgies cookin' lead.

Thanks fellas
 
I have an old Saeco pot that can drip like a Lee, if it picks up some filth in the valve.

A bit of bent wire that will fit the spout is handy to stick in and wiggle about, to knock the gunk loose.

A drip catcher under the spout is handy. Return the drippings to the pot every now and then, if required.

Some extra weight on the feed lever can make a difference, too. I generally clamp a pair of locking pliers onto mine. They extend the length of the lever, allowing me to lift it with the back of my hand, too.

The Lee valve rod has a screwdriver slot in it as well, yes? Sometimes, along with the valve grinding paste trick, just giving the valve rod a twist with the driver will break up the bit of gunk that is causing the problem.

Yeah. Lee pots drip. Whatever. There are a lot of more expensive pots out there that only work as well as the Lee ones.
I timed myself with my bottom pour pot, and I was making a pretty consistent 7 bullets per minute with a single cavity mold. Can't do that with a ladle. Small bullets. Had to keep up the pace to keep the mold at temperature.

FWIW, I have processed around 300 pounds of wheel weights in my little Saeco pot. I sandblasted it to clean it, after I was done. Made a huge difference in the quality of the pour. Take the advice given, clean ingots only, into the pot, if you are looking to make decent bullets.

Check out the casting forum on the castboolits site. There are a lot of Lee users there that have posted their experiences and the general list of simple things to do to get best use out of a Lee pot.

Cheers
Trev
 
I learned to do thing like Trevj above says.

For the money Lee stuff (all of it) is great thing.Just like other things it takes a bit of getting use to it.

My only wish would be if Lee made 30 Lbs pot.4-20 pot got small really fast and I have no idea how 10 ponder can be useful (I know it is-met some folks using it).
 
I've used two of the smaller Lee bottom pour pots for both melting WW and pouring bullets. One I keep for WW and the other I use for bullets. Have melted a nasty pile of WW and poured a heap of bullets. If they start to dribble, it's because there is dirt in between the needle and the seat. I also have a new 20 lb bottom pour I will crack out one of these days to melt WW. I'll probably buy a new 10 lb for casting bullets. I love those Lee pots.

Just don't pay attention to those who criticize your equipment. Enjoy your hobby.
 
To each his own. Needless to say the lee pot is cleaned and running great. It is interesting picking up new techniques as my old man initially taught me loading techniques which are now referenced to as "what they used to do in the old days..." in reloading publications.
 
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