Thoughts about making ladles

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vtsteam:
Cupolas normally use ladles instead of crucibles. The ladle is often a metal pot with a ladle wash of refractory to protect it. I thought I'd open this thread to get feedback and ideas on making them.

I'll probably just put down some random thoughts here. Feel free to join in on the topic.

I've found that when I made a crucible out of 4" diameter iron pipe for melting aluminum that it wasn't easy to pour with compared to some other shaped crucibles I have.

A straight narrow cylinder seems to pour all at once rather than gradually like a "bilge" shape in a conventional crucible.

I think the same thing would happen with a ladle made from 4" pipe. Or maybe worse. Because you have to line it, which effectively makes it even narrower and proportionately taller for its volume.

Another problem with a pipe crucible is that to fully empty it you have to tilt it at a greater angle. At least it seemed that way to me. The greater the angle, the further away from the sprue hole it needs to be held.

Since the flow varies as you pour you have to move it horizontally to adjust for the change. All in all it tends to make for more misses and miss-pours than a bilge or tapered cone shape.

vtsteam:
It seems to me that crucible proportions have been worked out over time to ease pouring and accuracy.

So I think a ladle shaped with a bilge, along crucible proportions might be something to try to make.

Well one way to make that would be to pour it. But since I can't do that yet, I was thinking about maybe trying to weld one up.

Would it be possible to make one with dart shapes welded together?

I have some 11 ga. (approx 1/8") sheet that I could jigsaw into the dart shapes -- maybe joined at the widest part, and then maybe weld those together to get a good approximation.

vtsteam:
Another thought is the teapot type of ladle.

These look like a watering can with the spout tight to the main body. Their advantage is that they are self skimming. So they would make pouring easier for a one man operation.

The problem with them as I see it is, how do you line it?

Particularly the part where the spout joins the main part. I'm guessing that the lining should be about 1/2" thick.

vtsteam:
In my case a teapot would be rather small, which might make lining even harder or even impossible.

Here's a big one!

vtsteam:
Right now I'm thinking about ladles to hold about 10 pounds of iron.

Probably good to figure out how much volume that actually is.

491 lbs/cuft

so

10/491 = .02 cuft or 34.5 cu in. (or 566 cc)

Let's see how tall a 4" dia pipe that would require:

4 * PI * h = 34.5

h = 34.5/ (4* PI) = 2-3/4"

Wow! That's not much -- is that right?

So a 4 inch deep piece of 4" diameter pipe would easily hold 10 lbs?

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