Lead, lead and more lead or maybe something else

[ok-22shooter]

I now have over 50 of the ~40# lead slugs at the shop. around 2,000 pounds plus about 200 pounds of pure lead in thin sheet form with backing. hope to get the BIG pot up and running later in the week. small pot for the sheet lead. ordering a single banjo 200,000 BTU burner. should be plenty to heat the pot.

 

[ok-22shooter]

cooler weather and no burn ban. Smelted around 200# of used Linotype into ingots Saturday morning. Fired up burner a little b4 10. using both the burner and a propane lance, I had around 120# of dirty slushy Lino in the bottom of the pot in 30 minutes. many handfuls of sawdust and stirring I ended up with a couple of buckets of hot 30# or so of fines and some lead that came up with the fines. added two more batches of the slugs over the next hour and pot was just under 2/3s full. maybe 60# or so total of the fines. Poured 200# of ingots, tilted pot and down to about 1/2" in deepest part, cover 2/3 of pot bottom. should be fairly easy to knock out. need to do a little welding on the pot b4 the next pour. even at 725 deg F, it takes lots of sawdust to get the fines to break out of the slushy lead. nephew in law has cabinet shop and will pick several 5 gal buckets of sawdust this week.
The first angle iron mold I made was from rusty iron. wire brushed and it releases easily. the second mold was from painted angle iron. ingots are very difficult to get to release. brought it home and will wire brush away the paint to see if that helps. the second mold has twice the angle on the end caps as the first so I don't think that is the issue. I made a divider that goes perpendicular across the molds at the center, does a good job of providing a open section of the ingot. smack with a hammer and the ingot breaks at the open section into 2 3# ingot.

this smelting is taking more time that what I hoped. next time will plan for a full day and try to get 400#. Then alloy half Lino with half pure lead to get 300# plus of something close to #2 Alloy. with cooler weather, will fire up the Master Caster and convert a hundred pounds of lead into bullets in a few hours.

 

[OKCHunter]

cooler weather and no burn ban. Smelted around 200# of used Linotype into ingots Saturday morning. Fired up burner a little b4 10. using both the burner and a propane lance, I had around 120# of dirty slushy Lino in the bottom of the pot in 30 minutes. many handfuls of sawdust and stirring I ended up with a couple of buckets of hot 30# or so of fines and some lead that came up with the fines. added two more batches of the slugs over the next hour and pot was just under 2/3s full. maybe 60# or so total of the fines. Poured 200# of ingots, tilted pot and down to about 1/2" in deepest part, cover 2/3 of pot bottom. should be fairly easy to knock out. need to do a little welding on the pot b4 the next pour. even at 725 deg F, it takes lots of sawdust to get the fines to break out of the slushy lead. nephew in law has cabinet shop and will pick several 5 gal buckets of sawdust this week.
The first angle iron mold I made was from rusty iron. wire brushed and it releases easily. the second mold was from painted angle iron. ingots are very difficult to get to release. brought it home and will wire brush away the paint to see if that helps. the second mold has twice the angle on the end caps as the first so I don't think that is the issue. I made a divider that goes perpendicular across the molds at the center, does a good job of providing a open section of the ingot. smack with a hammer and the ingot breaks at the open section into 2 3# ingot.

this smelting is taking more time that what I hoped. next time will plan for a full day and try to get 400#. Then alloy half Lino with half pure lead to get 300# plus of something close to #2 Alloy. with cooler weather, will fire up the Master Caster and convert a hundred pounds of lead into bullets in a few hours.

Are you planning to lube or coat the bullets?

 

[ok-22shooter]

while I have 3 lube sizers, all of my cast bullets over the last year have been PC. the #2 batch of lead is to have something consistent to start with. I have been PCing COWW + 2% tin alloy bullets with very good results. I picked up 140# of 95% tin alloy awhile back thinking it would work great with COWW. Now I need pure lead and may do some swapping

 

[ok-22shooter]

I was looking thru the rotometal site at pricing. trying to figure out how much I can pay for pure lead and not over pay. if I mix 50% my used Linotype with 50% pure lead, rotometal calls 2% Tin and 6% Antimony their hard ball alloy. This is what I am hoping to have in a 300# plus batch to run thru my Master Caster.

 

[ok-22shooter]

A good day at the shop. Melted down about 300# of used Linotype lead slugs and 60# of pure lead in a second pot. 250# of ingots on the carts. about 50# still in the pot. Now have around 500# of the used Linotype in clean ingots. next melt will be around 175# of lino and adding in 175# of pure lead to get hard ball bullet alloy. 7.5" of depth in my 12" tall by 12" diameter pot is around 350#.

I have made 2 of the angle iron molds, 2x2" angle by 12" long. there are 4 angles in each mold. Will probably make a couple more. the 4 ingot molds are pretty heavy when full of lead at around 400 deg F. the new molds will have only 3 pieces of angles. the good thing about the angle molds is they cool fairly quickly as the bottom of the angle is open to air. the 3 by 3 ingot mold I have is a great mold and I like the 2.5# ingots and they stack fairly well. the problem is the center ingot takes a long time to solidify as there is lots of lead around it. might be faster to not pour that ingot and cycle thru faster.

 

[ok-22shooter]

A big lead pour day. Smelted around 350# of used Lino, poured 120# into ingots. Added 150# of mostly pure lead. Then poured almost 200# of Bullet alloy. still have 2" in the pot, around 100#. used Lino with 3.8% tin pours a lot better than the bullet alloy with half as much tin.
did not get as much bullet alloy as I had hoped. when running the master caster, will add equal weight Lino to pure lead to get a somewhat consistent alloy. time to start casting bullets and shooting, not making ingots. far cart is 120# Lino and near is 200# hard ball alloy