I picked up a homemade lead melter. Its nothing more than a 12" bit of pipe with a nice larger burner in it, hooked to a bit of pipe with some corrigated steel welded to the top of it as a table.
In operation..the flame is blue for about 2" in hight, and above that its yellow and almost..almost sooty.
The top of the corregated steel, where the pot sits, is almost 3.5" above the burner..so I have almost 1.5" of yellow flame below the pot.
The pot is the same diameter as the melter..so there is little flame coming up and around, unless I crank the valve wide open. In any flow rate the flame is indeed touching the bottom of the pot. Hot enough to keep the corregated steel "top" a nice red color.
The question is...should the blue part of the flame be bearing on the bottom of the pot? All the heat is rising upwards and is striking the bottom of the melting pot..but am I losing much heat efficency this way?
In the past couple days Ive melted down about 250lbs of wheel weights and cast them into ingots with about 2 gallons of propane, so it is working well enough and melt time is only about 10 minutes from a cold start and 1/2" of lead sitting in the pot. I fire it up, fill the pot with wheel weights, go do something else, come back and flux a bit, then with a big spoon with holes drilled in it...seperate the clips that are floating on the top, mix a bit more than ladle into the ingot molds, refill with wheel weights and repeat.
The ingots will be used to fill my various 20lb electric bottom pour pots and be used for casting bullets during the cold winter evenings when the fog is thick
The reason I ask, is that Im considering modifying this and replacing the melting pot with a nice big bull plug and a valve and spout so I dont have to use a ladle to fill my 1lb ingot molds and when I do, I can drop the bull plug down a bit into the blue flame.
Or is it simply guilding the lilly?
The current "melting pot" is nothing more than a nice heavy, thick walled aluminum "skillet" sort of thingy I had kicking around.
Curious about opinions on this. I gave $5 for it at a yard sale and I believe it was used to melt babbet in the oil patch. Had a good hose and regulator in my Stuff and dogrobbed the BBQ bottle off the BBQ.
I built one 25 yrs ago that ran on natural gas, hadbottom pour lead valve etc etc..a very good working unit and loaned it out..and the guy disappeared. As best as I can recall..the bottom of the bullplug was just about in the blue of the flame and it worked quite well for both casting bullets and keeping the shop warm.
For those that dont know what a bull plug is....
I can snag em here in the oil patch all the way to 18" or bigger diameter if I ask for a "used one that is no longer needed"
Gunner
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