Thermodynamics of melting lead

[mdi]

Do not use aluminum pots for melting lead! I have heard (and seen one) horror stories about aluminum pans failing when melting lead. Aluminum does not "glow, turn colors" when approaching their melting/failure point, so everything looks fine then suddenly the bottom drops out of the pot and melted lead goes everywhere (hot!). Dangerous not to mention the huge mess!
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?413484-Aluminum-pot-for-melting-lead

 

[AJC1]

I couldn't hold a 4 hole steel mold up long enough now to get anything done. With my method of helping the melt an mold heating I am casting quicker than 30 minutes. Casting is just work so I can shoot more and I like to get it done and over with as quickly as possible.

I enjoy casting... different strokes for different fokes. Turning scrap into beautiful boolits makes me happy

 

[barnfrog]

Who sells a good mold or an accurate rifle

Dead people's surviving relatives.

 

[J-Bar]

I started casting about 20 years ago with the inexpensive Lee pot. The drips got worse, so I bought an RCBS Pro Melt furnace. I should have bought it first. Much faster, cleaner, safer. It still needs cleaning occasionally, particularly if I cast wheel weight stuff, but cleaning is not hard to do.

I find it easier and more efficient to run my pot and molds hot. I like having a lot of lead overflow onto the sprue plate during each pour to keep it hot. I don't hammer the sprue cutter when opening the mold; the mold is a precision tool, not something to beat on. Cutting the sprue with only thumb pressure is easy when my temperatures are where I want them. The sprue is recycled to the pot immediately after cutting while it's still hot. I try to get 2 or 3 pours per minute. All of this to say that I don't think I could maintain the temperatures I need/want if I used a hot plate.

 

[Jeff62]

I have used gasoline campstoves in my shop to melt lead For years I put a cast iron pot on my coal forge. All that worked well.
Last year I sprung for a Lee 20# bottom pour. I wish I had done this twenty years ago.

 

[bullseye308]

Its yardsale time, get out and see what you can find. .50 slotted spoons or ladles abound. Cheap stainless pots, even cast iron can be had cheap. Coleman stoves or even turkey fryers are out there too. Boxes of old sinkers may present themselves as well as actual casting equipment, molds, sizers, etc.

I started out with a coleman stove, small cast iron pan, goodwill ladles, and 2 cavity Lee molds. I've since upgraded to a Lee 4# pot, Lee ladle, and more 2 cavity Lee molds, a Lee reloader press to size, and lee sizer dies. Minimal investment and sufficient for my needs. I do use a turkey fryer, cast iron dutch oven, and cheap slotted spoon for melting wheel weights and alloying.

 

[Bcwitt]

Give it a boost w a propane torch & id imagine that will work fine.

 

[dredd]

Melting casting alloys on a hot plate in a cast iron pot must be one of those old-school things that only worked during the upside down dark ages before Algore invented the internet - the same as drinking out of water hoses and running around in the grass with bare feet.
It’s remarkable my generation survived childhood!

So.... to stay on topic....

My very first casting experience was helping my grandfather pour fishing weights.
He set a pot on top of the shop heater. He had a big metal plate bolted to it.
It melted lead just fine.

It also cooked up Calf Fries on occasion.

And.... We made it without helmets, knee pads, elbow pads etc.
Running around bare footed was great, but you leaned which yards had stickers and dog activity.

I could write a book on home body repair.
I didn't get my first set of real stitches until my dad couldn't stop the bleeding no matter how much assorted tape & such he wrapped around me! LOL

 

[GooseGestapo]

In a word, YES!
But it likely depends on the hot-plate.

I started casting in college in the ‘70’s using one in my efficiency apartment.
I quickly moved it outside on the balcony setting it on a folding table in an aluminum cookie pan sitting on a piece of plywood.
Several years later after I started working for a Police Department, I moved outside to a picnic table using a Coleman stove. That did Yeoman duty for a decade till I set up a table with a stove hood and ventilation fans.
I still use a microwave table set up with a Lee IV Production pot. I feed it with ingots cast in cast iron corn bread molds. (1.5-2lb each). Those are in turn smelted from scrap in an industrial two man pot I inherited when a local textile mill shut down and moved to Honduras. A retiring engineer whom I had shared cast bullets with gifted it to me. I use it on a fish fryer burner. I can only handle about 50lbs at a time. (I have about a ton of scrap lead on hand, to include 150lbs of linotype plates).

You’ll figure it out. Cost of set up is inversely proportional to how industrious and imaginative you are. (And how good of a scrounger you are).

 

[J-Bar]

The Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook is a good $25 investment and will answer a lot of questions before you even think of them.

 

[kmw1954]

I first started with a two burner hot plate, don't recall what the wattage was on it but it fit a 2qt sauce pan nicely. As I recall it would hold about 10 or 12 lbs of melted lead. Would take forever to melt but covering it with the fitted lid would help tremendously. Worked well with a Lyman dipper and two cavity molds. One it would get to operating temps it would stay consistent if I was dropping the spruces right back into the pan and would keep the level up. I also built a taller wind screen around it to help retain the heat.

I could fill the ban about 3/4 full with scrap bullets and render it down, then dump ingots until the pan was down to about 1" deep and throw in more scrap and it would melt pretty quickly. Though empty the pan much more than that and it would lose too much heat and take much longer to get it back up. I now use a large steel pot and a turkey fryer to render my scrap and mixed on using a bottom pour lead pot and the old SS pot and hot plate. The Hot plate and pan work great for dipping.

 

[thump_rrr]

I’m not supposed to drink from a garden hose? When did that happen?

That was just after they banned lawn darts.
It’s all so tiresome.

 

[Shooterbob]

Yes it is tiresome. Every day seeing our country erode .

 

[GeoDudeFlorida]

That was just after they banned lawn darts.
It’s all so tiresome.

They banned the F-16?!
About time…
We moved to a rural farming community to get away from the nattering Nannie’s who like to ban things for everyone else’s own good. The problem is, now that they have sucked the life out of where we came from they’re following us out here. It’s getting harder to find a place to enjoy hunting, fishing and camping around here and it won’t be long before we won’t be able to shoot anywhere. It’s a sad state of affairs.

 

[mdi]

Yep. Before I retired we did a few years research. Couldn't find a decent place in CA and the ultra liberal left ruled that state and I needed to escape. Some areas in N. CA were nice but still in the state, same laws in Fortuna as in LA!. We were visiting a nice small town in So. Oregon. Clean, quiet and no graffiti, and while looking around in a box store observed a young man and his wife and son purchase a handgun. He picked out what he wanted, paid for it, clerk ran an NICS, and he walked out with a new 1911 in about 20 minutes to a half hour. But we didn't know there was a huge influx of CA liberals moving into the state and mostly settling in the larger cities. Now Oregon is almost as far left as CA. Small town votes don't mean much as the large cities liberalism runs the state. Thinking about moving to N. Idaho...

But back on topic. A hot plate would probably work, maybe not as good as a $300.00 casting pot, but doable. I started casting sinkers when I was about 12 on Ma's kitchen stove (when she wasn't home) which gave me a lot of satisfaction and fun learning how to make usable fishin' stuff.. But the OP seems to want to get started, so if it gets hot enough, use it. One doesn't need to spend $300.00 for a pot, $200.00 for a mold and another $100.00 for misc. tools to learn bullet casting. My Coleman stove (difficult alloy temp. control) Ideal single cavity mold (sloooooow), Lee ladle, various kitchen tools and a $6.00 Lee lube/sizing kit (long discontinued) kept my Ruger fed with boolits for quite a while and taught me a lot...