Borrowers report (long winded)
First off I would like to give my thanks to BattleRife for allowing me to borrow his setup. It was a pleasure to use and saved me tons of time.
I started reading this thread in March and was impressed with the melting pot and more impressed with BattleRife’s offer to lend this to fellow casters. Once I had a supply of wheel weights large enough to justify running this pot I sent a PM. He was more than willing to lend it out and I picked it up a couple of weeks later when I was in Edmonton.
We met up and he gave me a run through on the assembly and operation, we talked shop for a bit and he told me about some of the improvements some of the fellow borrowers had added.
After using the pot, besides a dollar store ladle for removing dross, all I could add was weight to this compact package. So I decided I should record my experience, try to answer some of the unanswered questions I found in the thread so far and share what worked best for me.
I started off with 334 lbs. of sorted clip on WW and another 78 lbs. of stick on WW’s. The COWW included a fair supply of rejected boolits.
For fun I weighed a level to the top 5 gallon (16 Liter) bucket of sorted wheel weight. This one weighed in at 137.8 lbs. It’s amazing how good the handles on buckets are.
Setting up the pot was very easy with the aid of the pictures BattleRife had posted in this thread. The legs are a little tricky to sort out, but with the pictures, numbering and color coding the pot was assembled in less than a half an hour.
For my first run I started with the full 78 lbs. of stick on wheel weights. The outside temp was 1 degree C and I started the run with the pot cold. The burner fired right up and was louder than I was expecting, so I did not run it as hot as I could have.
It took ~ 35 minutes to melt the lead. I removed the smoldering stickers and tossed in some wax for flux. Melted, 78 lbs. of lead is only about 3” deep in the pot. I began the first pour and learned my first lesson to share.
I had been warned when I picked it up, but I chose to turn down the heat to not over heat the lead while pouring. This allowed the flow control bolt to cool preventing me from shutting off the flow of lead. Luckily there is lots of mold capacity and cranking the heat freed the bolt almost immediately. The rest of this run went as smooth as butter and netted me 77 lbs. of lead. Total run time was 1 hour and I only lost ~1 lb. during smelting.
My second run I decided to answer one of the questions. I pinch every WW when sorting so I was quite confident I had no zinc in the mix. So I loaded the pot to the point of overflowing with COWW to see how long it would take to melt.
Once again it took 35 – 40 minutes to fully melt the batch. The clips were manageable with the ice fishing scoop added by Dmay, but a large Tim’s can would not hold them all. Fluxed this one and learned my second lesson of the day.
Sadly for me, BattleRife also warned me of this one as well, but I just forgot in the moment. Dmay also added a sweet double handled wrench to the package ( picture below). This gives tons of leverage and will not hit the molds under the pot. It is also a great heat sink, hence lesson #2… remove the wrench when not in use or the bolt cools and you can’t shut off the flow of lead. Once again an easy fix with the bolt unfreezing in just a few seconds.
This run also took ~ 1 hour start to finish and yielded me 82.2 lbs. of lead.
My third and final run was on day 2 and I decided to try the safe method. This was to start with just a few weights, melt them and add slowly to the pool. This way you can control the temp and avoid zinc contamination. If you are concerned about zinc, this is the way to go.
I found it worked well adding a full ice fishing scoop about every 2 minutes to the pot, stir them, remove the clips and repeat. Each time the lead would get a bit “slushy” confirming that the temp was managed.
This method was a good bit slower adding about 30% more time to the process. But if I knew I was going to use this method I would not bother sorting wheel weights. I’d separate the stick on, pick out the junk and run them. If you are attentive there is no chance of melting zinc.
I had zero issues on this final run, netting 192 lbs. of lead in about 3 hours. I did flux and pour off about 70 lbs. in the middle of the run, keeping the max weight in the pot around 120 lbs. By volume this pot would hold 320 lbs. of lead, but less than half full felt reasonable to me.
In total I smelted 298 lbs. of COWW ( I lost ~ 11% of the weight to clips etc.) and 77 lbs. of SOWW. Total 375 lbs. in ~5 hours of running. Not sure of the exact propane usage, but I would guess less than ¾ of a 20 lb. tank in 5 hours.
How I would operate in the future:
• Slowly add wheel weights to an empty pot and don’t bother sorting. Skim off clips and add another scoop. Repeat as required.
• Run it hot and keep it there.
• Remove the wrench every time you use it. Every time.
• Have a bottle torch handy for freeze offs.
• Have a suitable pot within reach in case you have a tap freeze off.
• Put a smooth surface under the molds to decrease rocking when sliding the mold. No real issue, but cosmetically the ingots look better without the flashing on the sides.
In summary this thing works great. It is easy to assemble, works efficiently and packs up for easy storage. Do as the owner says (run hot and remove the wrench) and it will run flawlessly.
Thanks again BattleRife for letting me use it.
MRM
First off I would like to give my thanks to BattleRife for allowing me to borrow his setup. It was a pleasure to use and saved me tons of time.
I started reading this thread in March and was impressed with the melting pot and more impressed with BattleRife’s offer to lend this to fellow casters. Once I had a supply of wheel weights large enough to justify running this pot I sent a PM. He was more than willing to lend it out and I picked it up a couple of weeks later when I was in Edmonton.
We met up and he gave me a run through on the assembly and operation, we talked shop for a bit and he told me about some of the improvements some of the fellow borrowers had added.
After using the pot, besides a dollar store ladle for removing dross, all I could add was weight to this compact package. So I decided I should record my experience, try to answer some of the unanswered questions I found in the thread so far and share what worked best for me.
I started off with 334 lbs. of sorted clip on WW and another 78 lbs. of stick on WW’s. The COWW included a fair supply of rejected boolits.
For fun I weighed a level to the top 5 gallon (16 Liter) bucket of sorted wheel weight. This one weighed in at 137.8 lbs. It’s amazing how good the handles on buckets are.
Setting up the pot was very easy with the aid of the pictures BattleRife had posted in this thread. The legs are a little tricky to sort out, but with the pictures, numbering and color coding the pot was assembled in less than a half an hour.
For my first run I started with the full 78 lbs. of stick on wheel weights. The outside temp was 1 degree C and I started the run with the pot cold. The burner fired right up and was louder than I was expecting, so I did not run it as hot as I could have.
It took ~ 35 minutes to melt the lead. I removed the smoldering stickers and tossed in some wax for flux. Melted, 78 lbs. of lead is only about 3” deep in the pot. I began the first pour and learned my first lesson to share.
I had been warned when I picked it up, but I chose to turn down the heat to not over heat the lead while pouring. This allowed the flow control bolt to cool preventing me from shutting off the flow of lead. Luckily there is lots of mold capacity and cranking the heat freed the bolt almost immediately. The rest of this run went as smooth as butter and netted me 77 lbs. of lead. Total run time was 1 hour and I only lost ~1 lb. during smelting.
My second run I decided to answer one of the questions. I pinch every WW when sorting so I was quite confident I had no zinc in the mix. So I loaded the pot to the point of overflowing with COWW to see how long it would take to melt.
Once again it took 35 – 40 minutes to fully melt the batch. The clips were manageable with the ice fishing scoop added by Dmay, but a large Tim’s can would not hold them all. Fluxed this one and learned my second lesson of the day.
Sadly for me, BattleRife also warned me of this one as well, but I just forgot in the moment. Dmay also added a sweet double handled wrench to the package ( picture below). This gives tons of leverage and will not hit the molds under the pot. It is also a great heat sink, hence lesson #2… remove the wrench when not in use or the bolt cools and you can’t shut off the flow of lead. Once again an easy fix with the bolt unfreezing in just a few seconds.
This run also took ~ 1 hour start to finish and yielded me 82.2 lbs. of lead.
My third and final run was on day 2 and I decided to try the safe method. This was to start with just a few weights, melt them and add slowly to the pool. This way you can control the temp and avoid zinc contamination. If you are concerned about zinc, this is the way to go.
I found it worked well adding a full ice fishing scoop about every 2 minutes to the pot, stir them, remove the clips and repeat. Each time the lead would get a bit “slushy” confirming that the temp was managed.
This method was a good bit slower adding about 30% more time to the process. But if I knew I was going to use this method I would not bother sorting wheel weights. I’d separate the stick on, pick out the junk and run them. If you are attentive there is no chance of melting zinc.
I had zero issues on this final run, netting 192 lbs. of lead in about 3 hours. I did flux and pour off about 70 lbs. in the middle of the run, keeping the max weight in the pot around 120 lbs. By volume this pot would hold 320 lbs. of lead, but less than half full felt reasonable to me.
In total I smelted 298 lbs. of COWW ( I lost ~ 11% of the weight to clips etc.) and 77 lbs. of SOWW. Total 375 lbs. in ~5 hours of running. Not sure of the exact propane usage, but I would guess less than ¾ of a 20 lb. tank in 5 hours.
How I would operate in the future:
• Slowly add wheel weights to an empty pot and don’t bother sorting. Skim off clips and add another scoop. Repeat as required.
• Run it hot and keep it there.
• Remove the wrench every time you use it. Every time.
• Have a bottle torch handy for freeze offs.
• Have a suitable pot within reach in case you have a tap freeze off.
• Put a smooth surface under the molds to decrease rocking when sliding the mold. No real issue, but cosmetically the ingots look better without the flashing on the sides.
In summary this thing works great. It is easy to assemble, works efficiently and packs up for easy storage. Do as the owner says (run hot and remove the wrench) and it will run flawlessly.
Thanks again BattleRife for letting me use it.
MRM
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