Poor boy melting aluminum

I've been trying to melt aluminum for a few months and i keep running into problems. My first was that my fire wasn't getting hot enough.

Burning wood gets hot but charcoal gets hotter. I made some charcoal by starting a fire and once its fully engulfed, extinguish it. So now I have a fire hot enough to melt aluminum like butter. I can keep in more heat by adding a tophat to my funace. My next problem was my crucible. It was an old fire extinguisher that i cut the top off of and it worked great for a few meltings until today. It decided to form a hole in the side near the bottom and most of my good molten aluminum fell out into the fire. Oh well time to get a graphite one and try again.
This is the glob of alumium from the bottom of the fire.

Thanks for reading my crappy grammar.