BattleRife
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- of No Fixed Address
I have put some effort into building my scrap lead melter, and I thought I would share the setup with the group, as I know people always like looking at different approaches. I also have an ulterior motive, which I will get into later.
The system is designed to pack down to a minimum size, to make it relatively easy to store and transport.
Unpacked, you can see the pot on its stand, the legs, the burner, propane regulator and hose, three five-ingot moulds, and a bag of fasteners.
The stand is strictly for storage and transport. To prepare for use the three captive bolts are loosened and the stand removed, then the burner is attached to the same mounting points with its three bolts.
I feel the integral burner is one of the most unique parts of this system. It is based on the “Reil burner” design, one of a series of burners designed to be made in the shop by individuals using very common hardware store parts. It was developed for and seems popular with the knife making and home blacksmithing communities. You can find most of the information on building one at https://www.abana.org/ronreil/design1.shtml#Reil. The only significant modification I have made to the burner is the addition of the 90° elbow at the burner tip, which directs the flame upward and acts as a very effective flame spreader. The exit mouth of the elbow has been opened up with a die grinder and stone to produce a tapered mouth. I use propane as a fuel, and a variable high pressure regulator that is listed as delivering 0-20 psi.
The legs are made of slotted angle iron, which provides good strength and rigidity with light weight and easy assembly. The legs are quickly installed with bolts and washers. Make sure to remember to rotate the feet into the proper position.
Here it is all set up and ready to go. Note I do not normally set this up indoors, but I needed to melt a little leftover lead out of the bottom so I could work on the bottom tap, and it gave me the opportunity to take some pictures.
The pot is sized to hold 100kg of molten lead. It is wrapped with two turns of mineral wool insulation, then cladded with galvanized sheet metal to protect the insulation. A nozzle with threaded tap is located at the bottom so that clean lead can be tapped into ingots while the dross floats harmlessly on top. The ingot moulds are sized to produce triangular ingots weighing 1kg, when using pure lead.
The burner produces a nice blue flame. It has proven both effective and efficient.
Here it is tapping that bit of scrap lead out of the pot.
I also made a series of stamps out of bolts, it's a fast and easy way to mark ingots as lead, wheel weights or something less well defined.
I took this picture last fall, it shows some of the product of the melter. The 1kg ingots are a great size, 4 can be placed into a Lee 4-20 melter at once, and the triangular shape stacks very nicely.
Overall it seems to me a pretty good system. About the only problem I have is keeping it housed and fed. It is has become evident that it takes me at least a couple of years to collect enough lead to justify a single afternoon processing it into ingots. In the meantime it just sits. I feel I have done a pretty good job making it store compactly, but even so it becomes a bit of a pain in the confines of my one-car garage on my Edmonton inner city lot.
Last fall I loaned the melter to another CGN member from the area. He had it for a number of weeks as he worked through an impressive collection of scrap lead he had accumulated over the course of years. This was a great opportunity to share a homebrew with a fellow shooter, and also a chance to get another pair of hands and eyes to use the melter to help find and troubleshoot any deficiencies it had. But I also couldn’t help but appreciate the bonus of the extra space in my garage/shop! I had the luxury of a little extra room, and I was confident in the knowledge that my melter was only a phone call away if I needed it. Which brings me to my ulterior motive, mentioned earlier: I am very willing to let this sucker out on a medium-term basis to anyone wanting to melt their lead stocks and willing to take reasonably good care and provide proper storage for it. If a half dozen Albertans want to take it for a month each and pass it around putting it to good use, well I would be certain to take the opportunity to give the shop a good cleaning and squaring away. And so long as folks took decent care of it and were prepared to send it back to me on a few weeks’ notice, I would be none the worse for it. This then is the official invitation. If you have a little lead lying around you would like to ingotize, and you are prepared to stop by in Edmonton to pick it up, I have a melter here you can borrow. No payment required, but of course a sixer of micro-brew is never turned away.
The system is designed to pack down to a minimum size, to make it relatively easy to store and transport.
Unpacked, you can see the pot on its stand, the legs, the burner, propane regulator and hose, three five-ingot moulds, and a bag of fasteners.
The stand is strictly for storage and transport. To prepare for use the three captive bolts are loosened and the stand removed, then the burner is attached to the same mounting points with its three bolts.
I feel the integral burner is one of the most unique parts of this system. It is based on the “Reil burner” design, one of a series of burners designed to be made in the shop by individuals using very common hardware store parts. It was developed for and seems popular with the knife making and home blacksmithing communities. You can find most of the information on building one at https://www.abana.org/ronreil/design1.shtml#Reil. The only significant modification I have made to the burner is the addition of the 90° elbow at the burner tip, which directs the flame upward and acts as a very effective flame spreader. The exit mouth of the elbow has been opened up with a die grinder and stone to produce a tapered mouth. I use propane as a fuel, and a variable high pressure regulator that is listed as delivering 0-20 psi.
The legs are made of slotted angle iron, which provides good strength and rigidity with light weight and easy assembly. The legs are quickly installed with bolts and washers. Make sure to remember to rotate the feet into the proper position.
Here it is all set up and ready to go. Note I do not normally set this up indoors, but I needed to melt a little leftover lead out of the bottom so I could work on the bottom tap, and it gave me the opportunity to take some pictures.
The pot is sized to hold 100kg of molten lead. It is wrapped with two turns of mineral wool insulation, then cladded with galvanized sheet metal to protect the insulation. A nozzle with threaded tap is located at the bottom so that clean lead can be tapped into ingots while the dross floats harmlessly on top. The ingot moulds are sized to produce triangular ingots weighing 1kg, when using pure lead.
The burner produces a nice blue flame. It has proven both effective and efficient.
Here it is tapping that bit of scrap lead out of the pot.
I also made a series of stamps out of bolts, it's a fast and easy way to mark ingots as lead, wheel weights or something less well defined.
I took this picture last fall, it shows some of the product of the melter. The 1kg ingots are a great size, 4 can be placed into a Lee 4-20 melter at once, and the triangular shape stacks very nicely.
Overall it seems to me a pretty good system. About the only problem I have is keeping it housed and fed. It is has become evident that it takes me at least a couple of years to collect enough lead to justify a single afternoon processing it into ingots. In the meantime it just sits. I feel I have done a pretty good job making it store compactly, but even so it becomes a bit of a pain in the confines of my one-car garage on my Edmonton inner city lot.
Last fall I loaned the melter to another CGN member from the area. He had it for a number of weeks as he worked through an impressive collection of scrap lead he had accumulated over the course of years. This was a great opportunity to share a homebrew with a fellow shooter, and also a chance to get another pair of hands and eyes to use the melter to help find and troubleshoot any deficiencies it had. But I also couldn’t help but appreciate the bonus of the extra space in my garage/shop! I had the luxury of a little extra room, and I was confident in the knowledge that my melter was only a phone call away if I needed it. Which brings me to my ulterior motive, mentioned earlier: I am very willing to let this sucker out on a medium-term basis to anyone wanting to melt their lead stocks and willing to take reasonably good care and provide proper storage for it. If a half dozen Albertans want to take it for a month each and pass it around putting it to good use, well I would be certain to take the opportunity to give the shop a good cleaning and squaring away. And so long as folks took decent care of it and were prepared to send it back to me on a few weeks’ notice, I would be none the worse for it. This then is the official invitation. If you have a little lead lying around you would like to ingotize, and you are prepared to stop by in Edmonton to pick it up, I have a melter here you can borrow. No payment required, but of course a sixer of micro-brew is never turned away.
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