Where to buy a single gas burner for smelting.

migrant hunter

migrant hunter

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Any of you who are casting lead. I am looking for a single gas burner for smelting weights and range scrap.
Any idea who sells one? Crappy tire, peavey mart?
Please point me in the right direction!
 
Propane or Natural Gas?

I took an old Coleman Camp stove that I found in the garbage and put a burner from an old water heater inside. I brazed some pipe pieces to the grate to add support and there you go. In hind sight what I should have done is cut the pipe pieces a bit shorter and put them under the grate and brazed them there instead of beside the grate, oh well it has lasted 15 years and has quietly gone into retirement for the last 5 years. I have the inlet hooked up to a quick connect so I can just connect it to my bbq natural gas line and away I go.

I literally just threw out 2 of those old cast iron burners that are on propane yesterday, if you want one of them then I will rescue them from the garbage. You of course will have to set it up in some kind of an enclose like I made in the pictures below.

You can also just buy a turkey fryer and use that, some people have also added some extra braces for support.

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That little coleman stove has smelted over 4 tones of lead over that last decade, ah the good old days when you could walk into a tire shop and ask for there wheel weights and the owner looks at you funny because he normally has to pay some recycler to come and pick them up. He calls for the boys to come and load all the 5 gallon buckets of used weights into my truck and I come home with another 10 buckets of free lead. Now you are hard pressed to even find someone to sell them to you.
 
I use a 64kbtuh fish fryer I got from bass pro and added a heat shield, works great. My last melt of 200lbs used barely any propane since I added the heat shield. Before that the same amount used half a tank.
 
A little advice if you decide to buy a turkey fryer...

These burner are pretty powerfull and if you don't separate your zinc from your lead before melting, and if you set your burner too high, you could have this:


I tought that zinc wheel weights would float on top after all! The problem is that everything melted so fast that some zinc weights in the bottom melted with the lead. We learn from our mistakes I guess...
 
migrant hunter said:
I"m planning on getting the 20lb pot for casting, but is it big
enough for smelting range scrap and w weights?
Click to expand...

For doing very small batches yes, but don't as it will crud up your pot and cause it to leak (assuming bottom pour)

You can use a steel or cast iron pot and a hot plate for small batches. Then you need not worry about crud messing up the pot.
 
I used this one http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/masterchef-stand-fryer-0853259p.html and did over 700lbs. I used an old propane tank as the pot but had to put a old BBQ grill across the burner to support the weight.
 
I cook lead on an old BBQ. I simply lowered the grill so the flames touch the pot. My pot is a coated cast iron pot I stole from the wife's cooking set:)

The setup works great and it doesn't use much propane.
 
There a lot of crud in wheel weights. The crud will slowly rot away your casting pot from my experience using lead for other things. Range scrap would probably be ok.
As a side note. If you get zinc into your melt, it's easily removed by adding charcoal into the lead. If you use the briquettes, have some kind of strainer to push them down and mix them in. You want the charcoal to have as much contact with the lead throughout the pot. The zinc will float to the top and can be skimmed off...
 
I cast with a 20 lb Lee bottom pour. I bought a 2nd Lee 20lber which is designed for ladle casting. Use it for cleaning up wheelweights 20 lbs at a time. May sound slow but did up 600lbs this summer. Melts quick and might(??) be cheaper to operate than propane. May also be safer than having up to a hundred lbs of molten lead at a time?
 
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I use a propane fired "Plumber's Pot". Back in the days of cast iron sewer pipes, the joints were sealed with lead. The lead was melted in the "Plumber's pot. Does over 50lbs at a time! Been using mine for over 40 years\!
Mike
 
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