The other day I was in goodwill looking for things I could use to pour lead ingots into. I found this old cast iron cornbread pan for $9.99. Worked fantastic, and it has 8 slots. Each ingot turns out to weigh about 2 pounds. They fall right out too. Highly recommend if you find one.

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What could possibly go wrong?

I make cornbread with mine!

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Possum—The other white meat!

Me too!

Ingredients List

1-1/2 cups plain cornmeal (not cornmeal mix or self-rising)
1/2 cup flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder (preferably Rumford)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar (up to 1/2 cup)
1-1/4 cup milk (fat-free works fine)
1/2 cup vegetable oil (can cut to 1/3 cup, if desired)
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 400°F, placing pans in the oven while it heats.

Blend dry ingredients in a large bowl. Blend milk, oil, and eggs in another bowl, then add to the dry ingredients. Blend until all is combined.

Remove hot pans from the oven one at a time and slip a small amount of Crisco or bacon drippings (about 1/4 teaspoon) into each stick form, brushing it to cover all surfaces well. (I just spray it with PAM) Place pans back in the oven for a few minutes—you want them to be very hot.

Remove hot pan from the oven, set on a heat-proof surface, and using a Tablespoon from your silverware drawer, put a generous spoonful of batter into each form. You should have enough batter for 24 cornsticks and 8 thin crusty wedges.

Bake at 400°F until golden brown on the tops, about 15 minutes for the sticks and about 20 minutes for the wedges.

To remove cornbread from the pan, gently ease the tines of a fork under the edges of the cornstick and carefully pry up. If the pan was preheated and greased well, it should pop right out.

If you prefer, bake the whole recipe in a 9-inch cast iron skillet for about 30 minutes and cut into wedges to serve, or use a 13x9 pan and cut into squares.

They actually had a cast iron cornstick pan too. I should go back and look for it.

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What could possibly go wrong?

I believe lead won't stick on cast iron. When I was a teenager we collected used wheel weights from gas stations and tire shops. We melted the lead and poured it into an old cast iron scrap metal chunk with divots for fishing weights.

I have seen cast iron pans with bas relief corn cobs so you could get corn shaped corn bread servings.

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U.S. Coast Guard, retired CPO

I don’t know how big the OP wants his ingots but there is a cast iron muffin pan that would make the ingots a bit smaller. I see them frequently and they are fairly common. You might try one of those if you wanted smaller ingots.

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Possum—The other white meat!

Try adding a can of creamed corn to your recipe. Cornbread comes out super moist!

I make ingots in mine too! I also have the cast iron cornbread pans that are shaped like an ear of corn. They are the best ingots ever!

Back in the days when I was casting bullets, I just used one of my wife's muffin/cupcake baking pans for casting ingots. Those are made of stamped steel and work fine.

I use a cast Iron muffin pan for my ingots. Works good.

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USMC 69-93 Combat Pistol Inst.

I have a Lyman and Lee mold that make smaller ingots. I wanted something a little larger for my pure lead and range scrap. I use the smaller ones for my Hardening alloys. I do have some muffin pans I might try.

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What could possibly go wrong?

Dang, I passed that up. They had one of those at Goodwill too. I was thinking they wouldn't stack very well. Gonna have to go back and see if they still have it.

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What could possibly go wrong?

I use 2 regular muffin pans for my ingots. Each is sprayed with graphite before use. They fall right out when the pan is turned over.

BTW This thread brought back a memory from the dinosaur era. Then we would melt lead in a soup can on the Coleman stove. We would take a pencil and drive it into the ground making holes. Holding the can with a pair of pliers, we would pour the lead into the holes. When hardened we would pull it out by the puddle on top. We would cut it in lengths with a chisel and partial split it with a knife and hammer. We used this on our trotlines and bush lines.

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S&W Accumulator

I would have offered them $5..

I love the corn bread pans for corn bread. Great recipe.

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Sal,
SWCA #2768

I used an aluminum muffin pan - worked like a champ...

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Merle, retired
western PA

What type of hardening alloy do you use?
I have lead and the melting pot so have been considering buying some bullet molds. I didn't know you needed the hardening alloy.

I like cornbread pans.

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I have the exact same pan. It works great.

I have one of these cast iron pans too. I used to use those sized ingots in a small bottom pour Potter melter. They don't lower the temp as much as large ingots and are quicker to recover when casting. Also use them in my Littleton shotmakers..But I'm going to dispose of them probably on fleabay

Great find. love the recipes on this thread, too. I guess I need to go to Goodwill to check out their stuff.

Two warnings:
1. regarding muffin pans, beware of the ones where the "cup" is a separate piece pressed or soldered in. The high temps and the violence of dumping the ingots out can/will dislodge them eventually. I have three mini muffin pans that are solid stamped aluminum. They are amazing, and can't remember for the life of me where they came from!

2. it goes without saying, any time a food/kitchen item is drafted into casting use, it is NEVER to be used for food prep again.

I've got one of those. Bought it to make ingots but can't get myself to ruin it for cooking purposes.

CORNBREAD

There was a little girl who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good she was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid!
(Traditional nursery rhyme,
Attributed to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Cornbread is like the girl with the curl. When cornbread is good, it is delicious, but when it is bad it isn’t fit to eat: there is nothing in between. (Fruitcake and peanut soup are like that as well.) Unfortunately, you can’t buy good cornbread: not in a supermarket, not in a bakery, not even in a 5-star restaurant. The only way to get good cornbread is to make it yourself, and you must make it by the traditional recipe, and bake it in the traditional cast iron skillet. If you think you don’t like cornbread, it is only because you have never tried the good kind. Use this recipe and you will experience an epiphany.

1 cup self-rising cornmeal
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup grease (bacon drippings are best, but any cooking fat will do, even vegetable oil if you don’t have anything better).

Put the grease in a well-seasoned cast iron skillet (9” or less) and put the skillet in the oven while it pre-heats to 425 degrees. While it is heating, mix the other ingredients. When the skillet is hot, pour the grease into the batter and stir it in, then pour the batter into the hot skillet. The batter must go into the skillet while it is still hot. The heat forms a crust which keeps the pone from sticking to the skillet. That’s why you must use cast iron – no other material will hold the heat as well. It might be possible to get the pone out of a lighter pan with a non-stick lining, but then the finished product won’t have the crust, which is a delightful part of the cornbread experience. Bake until it is a medium amber color all the way to the center, darker brown near the sides. That will usually take about 20-25 minutes. Turn the pone out onto a plate, and if the skillet was hot enough it will come cleanly out, leaving nothing stuck to the skillet.

Cut the pone into wedges, and serve it hot from the oven, with lots of genuine creamery butter. Cornbread does not keep well nor reheat well.

Some people put sugar in cornbread. Col. Sanders said it best when he wrinkled up his nose and said with a sneer, “Sugar in cornbread is yankee!” Calling a recipe “yankee” is the worst insult a good cook could imagine.

Oh, by the way, those scurrilous rumors about me being opinionated are simply not true.

Found a cast iron corn cob corn bread pan years ago in an abandoned house. My wife uses it for a decoration. Doubt she will let me use it for ingots. Will have to stick with my cast iron muffin pan.

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USMC 69-93 Combat Pistol Inst.

I use an old cast iron pot for melting and cleaning scrap lead. Please mark your cornbread pan in such a way that it will never be used for food again! I used an electric engraver to inscribe "LEAD ONLY" both inside and outside.

For ingot molds I have several old aluminum muffin pans. After blending my metals to the alloys I want the metal is poured into "muffins". When cool I mark them to indicate the alloy or hardness level.

I have some pure lead which I purchased and range scrap which I scrounge from the gun club (legally). The pure lead is really soft, so to make it harder, depending on how hard you want it, I'll add some linotype, or hardening alloy. The hardening alloy is 70% lead 30% antimony. The linotype is 84% lead, 4% tin and 12% antimony.

Pure lead has a Brinell hardness of about 8.6, so that's good for lead shot or slugs. Range scrap is usually closer to 12, which makes it perfect for plinking rounds that aren't too hot at around 850 ft/sec. +P rounds you want harder, up around 16. Magnum loads around 18. If you're casting rifle bullets up past 1750 ft/sec you want 20-21 hardness.

There are lots of recipes on-line for hitting your desired hardness.

The pure lead, hardening alloy and linotype you can buy at lots of shooting supply stores.

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What could possibly go wrong?

That first batch looks a little heavy.

Color is a little off too. LOL. My wife just told me we have one of those pans too/ But we never use it. She told me I bought it at a yard sale a couple or 3 years ago. Good grief...I is got old timers. Told me where I got it and I remember buying the gun safe and some other stuff....

If the muffin tins were stamped steel, your lead ingots were soldered to the steel VERY securely. If the ingots fell out, the muffin tins were aluminum. I used steel "non-stick" muffin tins ONCE. The muffin may not stick but the lead sure did.

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S&WHF 366

You guys cut it out...........

Just the thought of hot corn bread in any way,shape or form, has my full attention !!

I don't even want to start with all the fixings that I can put on top of that super food, to make it taste even better..

Cornbread and Pinto Beans.........!!!!

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USMC 69-93 Combat Pistol Inst.

Another vote for Aluminum Muffin Pan.

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

I've been using 2 of the muffin pans like you mentioned with the pressed in cups for several years. Like I said in my other post. If you spray the pan with graphite FIRST then when you turn it over the ingots will fall right out. Doesn't hurt the pan at all.

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S&W Accumulator

ANY pan works very well if you spray it with graphite FIRST. The ingot will fall right out when you turn it over. I've been using the muffin pans with the pressed in cups for years.

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S&W Accumulator

I've been using a mold exactly like that for years, I used it today while mixing up a new 30lb batch of 30:1 for the Sharps 2.4. The thing I like about these ingots is that they weight roughly 2.5lbs and are easily held by the point while setting into the pot.

Yep!(+more characters).

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What could possibly go wrong?