With all due respect, I never gave you a passing thought.
My comment was to Texcl. I don't care if you or anyone prefers to use a dipper.
I was explaining how to fix the problem with the bottom pour pots. This is not a new problem.
My father has been dead more than 12 years. He got his first bottom pour when I was in high school, in the early 1960s.[ Lee was not even making pots then.] Dad bought a larger pot in the 1970s. Dad was the Fixer- upper in the family. He was always making things rather than buying something. He taught my brother and me how to do the same kind of thinking and analysis. He said his own father, who died in 1929, was the same way.
To this day, even when I can afford to replace things, I am looking to find out what failed, and if it can't be fixed with a minimum of effort. I laugh at myself, and call myself " CHEAP", but my friends all think I am very special because I have learned to use tools and do things to fix appliances, and other things. They like the fact I can put a razor's edge on knives and chisels, without expensive power tools. The admire my ability to make fire with flint and steel, or a bow and drill. And some people admire my ability to tune both percussion and flintlocks, and share that information with others. More than once, people have asked me why I bother? My response, is why not?
Only recently have ladles been offered that can be easily used with a left hand. Traditional ladles could only be handled with the right hand efficiently. I got turned off of them very early on. My father got upset after paying good money to buy his Lyman bottom pour pot, and then found that the hole in the bottom was cast, and not drilled, so that it was not ROUND. So, with our help, he drilled out the hole a size or two larger, polished the heck out of it, then gave us the plug to polish with fine emery cloth. It was turned, but still had tool marks on it. We polished it for about an hour by hand to finally get it smooth, and then put oil on the used emery cloth to put an even finer finish on the steel plug. When we were done, it fit the hole like a finger in a tight glove. And, NO MORE DRIPS, unless some dross or debris got down into the pot. That only happened when we got careless about fluxing the molten lead every time we added to the pot. We learned. I don't know how many thousands of bullets and balls I have cast from bottom pour pots over the years. One of my good friends was a commercial caster for years, and still casts lots of bullets for friends, and family. I have spent hours with him, watching his technique, and have watched how he clears debris from the hole in his pot on the rare occasion something get into that hole. We have talked about how we fix the problem, and found we reached the same remedies years earlier. I don't think Jim ever met Dad. I know they would have gotten along very well, and Dad would have admired Jim's casting set-up.
So, Take that knot out of your shorts, buck-o. A little paranoia is healthy, but you are pushing it a bit to think I would ever single you out to criticize. Dip Away. :shocked2: :youcrazy: :rotf: :thumbsup:
