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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ok-22shooter" data-source="post: 4354528" data-attributes="member: 42477">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.</blockquote>

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