On Aug 18, 9:30 am, "Ivan Vegvary" wrote:

Stan, do you also have a 'plumbers torch' or what used to be called a 'pot'.
When I was a teenager in the 50's I bought one at Sears so I could melt lead
for a few pipe joints I was working on. After that it was for fishing
sinkers, soldiers, fun etc.

I'm surprised that I have never seen a use 'pot' for sale ever since the
early sixties. I attend flea markets and garage sales frequently and have
NEVER seen one.

Ivan Vegvary- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Have a couple I use for melting down scrap lead for bullets and making
up alloys. One is gas-fired, like a giant blow torch, the other is
propane fired. You don't run across them very often, I got my propane
one from a scrapper. The gasoline-fired one came from my granddad.
It can also be used for heating up soldering coppers. MSC used to
have the propane fired ones, they're now a ground unit with rubber
hose instead of the bottle mounted one that I have. Takes a special
tank valve. Really, one of the fish/turkey fryer burners puts out at
least as much or more heat and is a lot more available. A lot less
exciting to start up than that gasoline jobbie, that's definitely not
something to start up in the basement although I've seen my granddad
do it. All of them are noisy. I've got about a ton of wheelweights
to get melted, way too hot the last couple of months.

The 'pots' are the iron crucibles, you can run across those at
auctions sometimes or a real hardware store might have one on a bottom
shelf with the pig lead, oakum and lead wool. Right now I'm using a
cast -iron pot with legs on it, my dad called it a Dutch oven. Don't
think it is, though, the bottom isn't flat and there's no provision
for a lid. Holds about 70 lbs of wheelweights. Think it's just an
old pot that was made to be used in the coals on a hearth. One of the
burners will melt a load in it in about 10 minutes from cold.

For most poured joints, my granddad didn't bother with a pot, just
melted the lead in a ladle and poured right from there. Nothing wrong
with cast iron drains and lead joints except that the iron doesn't
stay in good shape when buried for 100 years and it takes some skill
to do the joints so they don't leak. Just about any moron can be
taught to swab goop on plastic pipe and stuff it into fittings these
days Sometimes they don't leak, too. But that's the reason you don't
see much lead-working plumbing tools out there.

Stan