One of my home made crucibles, made from 1/4 thick seamless steel pipe. Base, lifting pins, and tilting pivot were welded on. I also ran a weld around the inside of the crucible at the base. A small pouring lip was formed by heating the pipe red hot using the Oxy-Acetylene torch, and hammering it using a steel dowl for a form. As can be seen by the scale, this crucible has seen lots of use,. I use ITC-213 to coat the inside of the crucible, recoating every 4 or 5 melts. It prevents the Al from dissolving much of the steel, as well as making it easier to clean the crucible.
The lifting tool and tilting tool, used to lift and pour from the crucible. The two round hooks on the lifting tool shown on the left go under the pins on the crucible to lift it out, then the point on other tool is inserted into the hole in the pivot, and lifted to tilt the crucible to pour.
The skimmer, and pliers to add ingots or scrap to the melt. The base of the skimmer is a piece of stainless with holes drilled in it. The pliers on long handles are a cheap way to make some tongs to grasp ingots or pieces to be melted.
A pyrometer is really needed to do good castings. The digital pyrometer was obtained from H.F. on sale. Since it only reads Centigrade, I printed out a conversion table, for relative temperatures in degrees F. The type "K" thermocouple tip was left over from my hot glass days. It uses heavy thermcouple wire (1/8" dia), so element burnout has not been a problem, even with repeated use.
