Bass Bug,

You'll enjoy this story...

A friend of mine had just moved in with his girlfriend of several years. They were planning on getting married, and she had a nice apartment. He, however, was a fanatical bass fisherman.

He wanted to make some lead jigs and spinnerbaits. I had some molds and lead. He had an old kitchen pan that his dad had used to melt lead for casting musket balls and an old lead ladle. Match made in fishing heaven.

Unfortunitly, she worked evenings.

So, while the lovely lady was at work, we got together to make some lures. We went to his place. I was married, and I knew better already. Started out on the balcony with a propane stove. Stove was not working right, so he says:

"We can do this in the house if we are careful."

So in we go. Lead pot with about ten pounds of lead goes on the stove. A nice built in gas range. In about half an hour or so, with the gas on high, we have melted lead.

Being careful guys, we lay a piece of plywood over the unused side of the stove top to set the molds on and start pouring. Pouring like this with a ladle takes some practice. Lucky we put that piece of wood on top of the stove. But we are now producing lead jigs at a pretty good clip. He's pouring and I'm clearing the molds and setting them up for him. Little assembly line working well.

We decide to take a break and cut the sprues off of what we've done so far. We do this at the kitchen table.

After gettting this done, and realizing that it hadn't taken all that long, we go back to pouring more baits.

He says:

"I didn't think we'd used that much lead?"

I look in the pot, it's almost empty. There was more lead in that pot to begin with that we could have poured this way in several days.

Niether of us thought about turning down the heat. Or about how old that pot was. Or about what it was made of.

Apparently a hole had appeared in the pot, on the bottom near the back side. The melted lead ran through this hole and onto the top of the range. Under the plywood, which was held above it by the grates on the unused burners. Of course, the lead also ran down into the stove, made it's way to the oven, and some even made into the pan strorage drawer under the oven.

You should have seen us trying to get all that cleaned up before she got home. We didn't make it. The ensuing erruption was impressive. I was no longer welcome at their place, as I was an evil influence.

They survived it, got married, and had a couple of nice kids. But he quit bass fishing.

Evil Shrew!

Buddy