Lead Casting!!!

Well lead casting was a success!! 

I decided to go with a single pour bulb instead of halves.  I dont have any awesome technical reason for doing this besides it seemed like one solid bulb would be better than two bolted togeather. 




The video below is not my video but i used the basic principles of this video for my pour. Bolting the mold halves togeather is super important.  We didnt bolt them tight enough and the weight of the lead will actually lift the top half of the mold off the bottom and let lead out inbetween the halves.

Here is a video of my crucible test using water.  The only thing i added was a handle to the pipe.  This is just threaded rod and a threaded angle from a plumbing store.

After the Crucible was built i decided to cut my big chunks of lead down into smaller ones to make it faster to melt.  I dont know if this helped or not.  Cutting lead is a pain in the a$$ so we decided to use our wood splitter and shear it apart it worked great!


                            



Here is a short video of mealting the lead.  We used a standard turkey fryer and a ground torch.  we went thru about 3 standard propane tanks it took slightly over an hour to get all the lead melted and no chunks floating around or stuck in the corners.

                             


Here are a few pictures of the process.

Warming up the Concrete mold in the powdercoating oven.  We slowley warmed it up to about 245 degrees.

Raw Lead Before Melting.  We filled up the crucible to make sure it could take the weight.

Myself mealting the lead.

The mold just after the pour.

Here is with 1/2 the mold removed.

The moment we started taking it apart my mold just crumbled.  I would recommend wire mesh that might help hold it togeather.

Here is the bulb fresh out of the mold.

She is a bit heavy.  Time to start fairing and put her on a diet!  I am thinking this should weigh about 165 lbs all said and done.

Started cutting off the pour and vent holes with a sawsall.

Took awhile but got them all cut off.

Here it is in comparrison to my plug.

Using a crappy rasp from auto zone to start shaping and getting the crap off the mold.  It works amazingly well and fast.  It only took 2 hours or so to clean up my bulb.

Beer Count: 3 (i was pouring molten lead give me a break)

Total Beers so far: 69

Hours:30

Hours so far: 168