stainless steel melting pot

[powell river]

can i use a 1 cubic foot stainless steel pot to melt lead in. it has 1\8'' wall thicknes what would happen. i was going to use a tiger tourch under aswell if any one finds a problem to this plz help me

 

[bullseye308]

Stainless should be fine. Most of us use a cast iron pot over a turkey fryer. Just be wary of aluminum pots.

 

[Walkalong]

Should work.

Cast iron is good because it holds heat which helps to melt lead faster as well as hold a more even temp.

I used a club aluminum pan surrounded by a cast iron pipe to help hold in heat on my home made rig. I used a homemade heat source using a 220 Volt stove eye. I enclosed the bottom under the eye to hold heat as well.

 

[kelbro]

1/8" stainless will work very well.

 

[Myke_Hart]

I use a stainless pan. No problems here. Other than my wife commenting that my smelting pot is nicer than her cooking pots. Mine is one of those paula dean fancy ones with the pour spout.

 

[depoloni]

Haha... mine's probably thinner than 1/8" stainless. But it rocked me for all of 6 bucks, the plastic handle hasn't melted after a year's use, and the bottom hasn't burned through yet LOL

Heats up and melts fast too, real fast. Have it over a 5000 BTU propane camp stove burner, which I turn down to low once things are well on their way to melting. It's my smelting pot, handy to pour the pot into the ingot molds I use rather than use even a big dipper. Just have to watch, due to the thickness (thinness) if I don't evenly spread wheelweights/etc about the bottom it turns red in the "dry" spots until enough melts. Avoid that to avoid killing the ($6) pot prematurely I guess.

Edit: Does NOT have the residual heat bonus of my dutch oven, and is only 2qt size for reference. But the batches I smelt more than half fill it at a go, so there's plenty of residual heat in that mass of lead (if not the pot) to keep it plenty fluid and even for fluxing/pouring.