Huge amount of lead near Santa Rosa, CA

I wouldn't even attempt to buy that at even at .40/lb. Just the sheer size alone would make it an enormous task just to cut it into workable pieces. Interesting to see anyway. :)
 
Looks like sailboat keel ballast to me. Whittling it down to size wouldn't be an awfully hard task, time consuming for sure. It would be easy enough to run through some of the biggest chunks with an electric chainsaw. Another would be, if you could just build a fire around it and melt it into thinner pieces.

Lastly would be to simply break out one of the bigger propane tanks a decent lenght piece of hose and go to work on it with one of these,
Dual Propane Torch Kit
 
A portable band saw or gas-powered saw would make quick work of that.


But....
I'd be hesitant to buy it even at $0.50/lb, or so. Most boat ballast weights poured from "lead" are poured from whatever scrap the caster could get their hands on. There's no way of knowing what alloy that is, and what contaminants are in it.
 
A stout meat cleaver and a hammer to make some break lines in it. we bit of effort.

Agreed on the unknown alloy though, there's still plenty of sources for pure lead if ya look around and my new years resolution is to never leave the range without a bucket full and to build myself a trap for what I shoot at home.
 
Id like to see you get a pound of lead for a dollar off ebay. Aint going to happen.
The lead costs a dollar and another dollar/lb to ship it. Thats makes it $2/lb no matter how you try and figure it.

Theres no way I would buy ingots off ebay. WAY too many idiots that dont know what they are doing or putting in there, just trying to make a fast buck. I would buy WW, but not ingots.
 
This discussion spent a fair amount of time covering options to hack apart lead, so I thought I'd tack this in here since I just had the chore.

Handsaw no. Bandsaw no. Drill no. Lead is soft, but very malleable. So when you try and cut it, it binds things up. Won against bimetal blade and HSS steel. Tried to melt it into the pot with a commercial lead pot burner, but the mass of the metal prevented melting before the whole piece got way too hot to fumble with gloves.

Ultimately I put it on a 20k press and pushed a splitting maul through the piece and it was only 102 pounds- about 6x6" and 3' long. A log splitter would have made quick work of it.
 
I acquired some window counterweights about 3' long and 2" square. I tried using a hacksaw...:eek:

After doing a Google search, ended up using a splitting maul and mallet. Still a lot of work.

And yes pure lead is very malleable. It won't split or crack.
 
Interesting. It must depend on what blade you're using, and how well you keep the cut clean.

One of my brothers comes across large counterweights on occasion, in his work. He has never had any problems hacking them up with a portable band saw. I don't know what type of blade he keeps in it, though.

And, a few years ago, we cut up the lead on a 5" diameter "plumbers mallet" (pure lead cast around a steel pipe) with a rip saw (nasty, gnarly wood-cutting teeth).
 
Maybe oiling the blade would do it.
I've cut a lotta lead pipe with a bandsaw without oil.

You can drill lead bricks very easily actually by keeping WD40 on the bit. We do it all the time on stock cars.
 
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