Melting the Kitchen

Melting the Kettle is small time compared to what I did to our kitchen when I was about 12.

For some reason I'd become obsessed with melting down lead and making things out of it. The only objects for which I could find moulds for were fishing sinkers and so I acquired about 6 different aluminium moulds and then started collecting the lead wrappers from wine bottles.

Using a small pot and the electric hob in the kitchen I melted the lead until it was liquid. Luckily the fumes and smoke from the burning paint and paper on the lead wrappers kept everyone else out of the kitchen. Using a double oven mitt I would then transport the lead across the kitchen to the moulds and pour it before it set.

The last time I ever did this the pot slipped out of my hand, landed on the kitchen table and bounced onto the floor spraying molten lead around the kitchen. About 25% of the kitchen, cupboards, appliances, stools etc. had a thin layer of rapidly cooling and solidifying lead.

Lead melts at 621F (327C) so the paint on most of the surfaces was pretty much toast. Luckily I wasn't hit by the molten metal and the kitchen was in bad need of a repaint anyway and so I don't recall getting into much trouble over that. Perhaps it was the relief that molten lead wouldn't be bubbling away next to the boiling potatoes that saved me.