On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 00:27:45 GMT, "Lew Hodgett"
wrote:

"James Johnson" writes:

would probably make the total
cost prohibitive. Otherwise I would be very interested.

Then find an asphalt contractor who does parking lots.

They use a 500,000 BTU hand held burner /w/ a hose connected to a 20 lb
propane bottle to seal the edges of the asphalt joints.

Find out who sells them in your area. About $60 will get you the whole
thing.

SFWIW, a 500,000 BTU burner is just about minimum if you expect to get
anything done, based on my experience.

Thanks for the tip. I will look for one of those.


IMHO, screw any cobbled together molten lead control valves.

They are destined to be a bigger PITA than they are worth.

Buy a plumber's ladle, it holds about 8 lbs of molten lead, and ladle the
lead from the molten pot directly into the mold.


How long did that take? And did your arms look like Popeye's when you were
done? ;-)

Thank goodness I am only thinking about casting 1850 pounds.


(If you can believe it, I probably did close to 30,000 lbs this way, one
ladle at a time.)

Working with molten lead can be a little tricky.

It transitions from solid to liquid rather slowly.

It transitions from liquid to solid very quickly, but is still very
dangerous if not handled properly.

The largest lead casting I have done has been 40 pound centerboard weights for a
sailing dingy, and I noticed that behavior.


A 500,000 BTU flame thrower working for you settles a lot of problems before
they develop.

A word of CAUTION:

NEVER IMPINGE A OPEN FLAME DIRECTLY ON LEAD.

I suppose this is for avoiding the breathing of lead fumes? When I did the
dinghy weights I used an air supplied respirator, flame retardant coveralls,
welders gloves, and heavy boots.

May be a bit of overkill but before I became a programmer I worked in nuclear
plants for 20 years as a systems operator and health physics specialist, and I
have a strong aversion to riding lying down in the back of an ambulance. (Did
that once, it motivated me to go back to school and get out of the power
industry)

NEVER.

Find a piece of angle iron, 4"x4"x1/4"x48"-60" long.

Weld in 1/4" dividers on 12" intervals.

The above ingot mold will produce 30 lb triangular lead pigs, 12" long, that
can be stacked in an interlocked pattern for trim ballast.

HTH

Lew

Thanks for all the tips.

JJ

P,S, I'm not usually up at this time of night. But was paged with a production
problem that turned out to be system related and I am waiting on the system
administers to call me back. (If I had root privileges I could have done it
myself but application programmers are not allowed to step into sys admin
territory)


James Johnson
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