Howdy all,
I am obtaining a fairly good flow of raw lead coming in, and want to make ingotizing it easier on my back and legs. So, Want to come up with a bottom pour Smelter. Any Suggestions or Thoughts are appreciated. Size, Material , Design or precautions. Am starting from Scratch so, What would you do?
Thanks,
Sam :D
Texas Flyboy (I think) made a large electric bottom pour pot several years ago.
documented with photos and sketches. Made a copy of everything and gave Ken a copy for posterity as I recall. Don't remember what thread or when, just that it looked impressive and he didn't do it in one weekend. TF made his pot for pouring into moulds not ingots. bottom pour spout may leak a little smelting lead into ingots.
Get good sized ingot molds and have a way to manage them. I tried the bottom pour thing on my smelter and it wasnt very effective.
I have enough ingot molds that I can probably pour 80 pounds of ingots at once. Basicly I wanted to be able to empty most of the pot.
Get pot full of molten lead, pour ingots emptying pot (almost) then melt more as the ingots cool. By the time the pot was ready the ingots had cooled, were dumped and labled.
Pretty much a continous flow.
Anyway doing that with a large ladle is pretty handy because you take the lead to the molds in 8lb "dips" and can leave the ingot molds full of molten lead lay where they are.
Now when I tried the bottom pour I needed to jockey the ingot molds around under the spout and regulate flow at the same time and honestly it made a bit of a mess.
I was using 4 and 6 cavity (4 to 5 pound ingots) molds.
If you manage the ingot molds better I think it would work real well.
I seen a commercial setup that had a carousel that rotated a empty ingot molds under the smelter as needed, looked real nice
Muddy Creek Sam,
If you have access to a metal lathe, drill press or milling machine and welding machine, Hot Guns design is really great. I made one last winter, I added a simple foot pedal to operate the valve to free up my hands. Hot guns asked me to post pictures but I don't know how. I have a guy that is going to show me how to get this done. As soon as he does I'll post pictures. jmsj
jmsj,
Pm sent.
Sam :D