Minecraft – Tinkers construct nothing happend when adding a layer to smeltery

Looking at the Minecraft Forum post for Tinkers Construct, and this is at the top of the post:

Metal parts, including iron, have to be made with metal casts and the Smeltery. Casts are crafted by pouring Aluminum Brass/Gold on a tool part.

I've noticed the same bugs. I think these are just a result of the version of Tinker's Construct that Hexxit currently uses, as the second one is not present in other modpacks I've played that use newer versions. Here are ways I coped with them:

• Lava not displaying in the smeltery GUI: typically, the lava meter on the right of the GUI will appear empty even when lava is in there. The next time the smeltery uses some of it, it should render properly. You don't really have to use this meter though, since the level of lava in the tank block renders properly and you can easily approximate how much is left (it holds 4 buckets when totally full).

• Liquid not moving to the bottom of the smeltery when selected: this bug is a little annoying, since you are forced to always pour whatever is on the bottom first. That's a problem if the amount isn't an integer multiple of an ingot or a block. There are three ways around it:

  1. Pour out whatever nuggets are left on the bottom and get rid of them by breaking the casting table/basin (wasteful, I know).
  2. Always be sure that when you smelt ores or alloys that your result will be an integer multiple of ingots of blocks, then you can empty your smeltery completely every time you use it. Check your in-game TC manuals to get exact ratios needed for creating alloys in integer multiples (can be a little tedious).
  3. You should be able to store molten ore in the same type of tank block that the lava is in, so with a channel system and a series of tanks you can store partial amounts of ore in their own dedicated tanks, keeping your smeltery empty.