Did something today I won't do again, but it seemed like good idea at the time!
I had a couple hundred pounds of pure lead that came to me in the form of a counter weight from a garage door. Kinda tough to cut up since it was in a steel tube. I figured OK, I'll just prop it up on some blocks, build a fire under it and let it flow into a big pot. Seemed reasonable.
It was working fine until, I guess, the lead all melted at once, flooded out of the tube, knocked the pot over and ended up like a lava flow on the ground - but it was out of the tube. I tried chopping it up with an axe and succeeded in cutting it up into a few manageable sections, but I needed it smaller. Suddenly it dawned on me that saw steel is much harder than lead so I tried a saws-all with a wood cutting blade and that was working so well I figured that my table saw would be much quicker. It worked like a charm. Got it all cut up into nice little strips.
I was so proud of my ingenuity until I noticed the exorbitant amount of lead "sawdust" all over everywhere. Soooooooo needless to say it gave me a good reason to clean my shop cleaner than it ever has been. It took nearly the entire afternoon. Not my favorite thing to do today. I should have known when the stuff started pelting me and I had to put up a plywood shield between me and the saw, but I guess I figured the shield would keep it somewhat contained. WRONG! The saws-all was slower but wasn't nearly so messy and would have ultimately saved several hours.
Lesson learned!!!