Before Christmas break I got an invitation to help clean up my grandson's ROTC high school pellet rifle range room. 3 students and I spent about 45 minutes sweeping the floor and replacing the target backers. 2 sheets of 1/2" plywood, 2 sheets of cardboard the size of a paper target from 20 frames. I got about 4 gallons of pellets along with wood and paper chips, 2 50 lb feed bags of backers with pellets embedded.
I've had a lot going on since I brought it home so saturday was the first day I got to melt any of it. Seems like I only get out when my chickens get to scratch in the yard in this cooler weather. I built a fire in the pit, filled the cast iron pot with the clean up with a bottom layer of stick on wheel weights. Sat the pot on coals and added more wood around the pot. The chips on top would burn and would need to be stirred. When I had more ash than chips in the pot I added more wood to the pot and pit, covered it with the screen and came in after locking the chickens up.
Yesterday I dumped the ash and a 2 1/2" cake of lead from the pot. Cleaned out the pit and started over. It will be about 3 pm before I get out today. I have one more pot of the chips to do before starting on the backers. The plywood is larger than the pot so each sheet will have to be held up so it won't flip into the pit. I'm thinking 2 sticks of rebar will hold them up when laid across the pit, I'll see.