Lead for casting is getting harder to find

G

Gator Weiss

New member
All my old sources for lead have dried up. No more wheel weights from garages because they have to turn the old ones in for recycle to the vendors or to their district warehouses. They cant sell or give away the lead anymore. Linotype is all gone. Metal scrap yards are all dealing in iron, copper, and aluminum now, and havent had anyone bringing them lead in a long, long, time. Ingots on Ebay are expensive and could be anything as far as a mixture goes. Roofing companies arent finding as much lead on the older roofs like they used to find, and they have none to sell or give away like before. Hospital Xray outfits cant give away lead packing material anymore, they have to turn it back in to the vendors.

Insofar as pure unalloyed lead for hollowbase slugs seems to be just about unobtainable.

I have a friend that owns a humongous shooting range. I can dig there if I want, but the bullets there are full of sand particles and abrasive oxides.

Does anyone have any ideas on sources for casting lead?
 
Just something to keep an eye on if you have a large Wal-Mart in your area. They sell lead anchors for duck decoys that are pure lead and about 8lbs/pack. At the end of season they clearance them out around $4/pack. I bought about 100lbs there last year. Have to be inovative.
 
Go to a tire shop and don't talk to the manager, talk to the repairmen. They'll likely as not give you a bucket or two. You can melt down scrounged range lead. The impurities will float to the top.
 
Talk to the recyclers themselves. They will sell you WW, though it will be more expensive than getting it straight from the shop.

I've built up a lead reserve that I estimate to be around 2,500-3,000 pounds. So I think I might be set for awhile.
 
robhof

For B/p shooting ww lead is too hard, unless it's the stick ons that are pure or near(soft enough for b/p). I rake the berms at our local outdoor range after rains for jacketed bullets(the cores are very soft lead) I use the cast bullets for adding to my ww lead for modern:D pistol and rifle.
 
My best source of lead is the pistol range. Whenever I go shoot there, I take a gallon ziplock bag and a trowel with me. If I'm the only one there, it just takes a minute or two to scrape up 15 pounds or so of lead under the steel targets. (the "if I'm the only one there" part is because it wouldn't be right for me to expect people to stop shooting even for a couple of minutes for me to go downrange to scrounge.) All the sand and grit and oxides are not a problem, you get rid of those when you melt the stuff -- some of the oxides turn back into good lead if you do it right.

It's probably too hard for good blackpowder bullets. For soft lead, you might have to order it from a foundry.

I got 300 pounds of lead a couple of years ago just asking for it on craigslist. I think I paid 35¢ a pound for it for pure soft lead. The scrap yards were paying about 50¢ a pound at the time and charging over a dollar.
 
A few years ago. the trap club I belong to closed. I was able to mine/recover all the #7 1/2 & #8 shot I wanted. One of my Friends had a small front end loader, and I had a high banker I used for gold mining. It worked like a champ. His cut, 6 buckets ( 5 gal each), my cut, 5 buckets ( 5 gal each), and we passed out a few more to some of the old members.
 
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I have a friend that owns a humongous shooting range. I can dig there if I want, but the bullets there are full of sand particles and abrasive oxides.
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As the folks are telling you, all this junk will float to the top during your smelting proccess, even the jackets off the bullets. Right now, lead around here is going for about 50 Cents a pound. Another potential source is fellas at gun shows. I just picked up about 200lbs. from one of those referals. Bought it off a shooters widow. She also had some 50/50, which I can't use and one problems in getting it to those that can, is shipping. Our Son-Outlaw works in a steel mill and he brings home big globs that I cast decoy weights for him. Some I test and use and other, I castt for him. It's out there but sometimes, you have to srounge for it.


Be Safe !!!
 
Scuba weights.
Look for them at garage sales or maybe buy old ones from the scuba shops.
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Be EXTREMELY careful if you are melting used items that have been underwater. The pressure at depth has a way of filling every interior void with water. I was melting big, old used sinkers in the melting pot once and one of the sinkers started bubbling and then exploded, blasting all the molten lead in the pot all over the place, up to twelve feet away and even up into the eaves. I got burned but good on the exposed areas of my face and neck. Those sinkers had had more than a year to dry out in my hot garage. Once the water is in them, it can stay there for a very, very long time. I no longer smelt anything that had anything to do with water. It's just not worth it to me. Potentially dangerous, so beware.
 
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I save up air gun pellets from my indoor pellet trap which AFIK are pure lead. Because I run NRA air pistol matches I get it from some of the shooters when they clean out their traps. Put the word out and find some indoor air gun shooters before they throw out their pellet lead. Some folks will accumulate 10 or 20 years worth of used pellets and they don't know what to do with them.
My indoor .22 club scraps most of the lead chips & dust from the back stop but it's a hassle. Every once in a while the guys will have a casting party to make ingots which some of them use for cowboy action shooting. But that doesn't use it all up so talk to an indoor club that has a surplus of it because the scrap yards don't pay as much for it as they do for bulky lead. Not too many scrap yards want to deal with the lead chips and dust from the indoor ranges and aren't set up for it.
Some scrap yards that accumulate enough bulk lead will sell it if it's profitable. Call and check with different yards because sometimes it comes and goes quickly.
 
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Model-P,
Boy am I glad that I mentioned scuba weights and you replied.
I was seriously thinking about using them.
Thanks for the warning.
Do you suppose there's a way to heat them in an old oven, (not one used for food anymore), to get the water out?
 
If they are brand new weights then there shouldn't be any problem.

The problem with used weights is that the water can be forced into a void, even through a pin sized hole. A diver going to 100 feet is under four atmospheres of pressure, and that pressure will force water into every nook and crannie. Deep sea weights are even worse. Most of them have eyelets moulded into them that are ripe for having hidden passageways and voids around them, and deep sea weights could have been used at 200 or 300 feet (133 psi of pressure) or more.

If you decide to use used weights, I would definitely do some type of pre-heat to try to drive any water out. Keep the temperature just below 212 degrees for a couple hours, then it might be good to take the temperature on up past boiling for a while too. If it's going to explode, it would be better to do so in an open environment than while submerged in a pot of molten lead.
 
These scuba weights have been a lot deeper than the 100 ft you mentioned.
(With me attached).
But they've also been laying in the garage for many years, probably ten or so.
If I get my courage up, I might try drying one out in the oven.
If you see a mushroom cloud, don't panic, it's just our garage.
 
10 years and you're probably fine.
They don't explode like a bomb. The lead just opens up for the steam to escape. There's no loud bang or displacement of thousands of cubic feet of air. It is just a "POP". But, given the force required to break that lead open, it's amazing how powerful steam can be. You just don't want it popping open like that while in or near molten lead that can be blown all over the place.

If I were you, though, I'd just get back to diving them:)
(I'm wearing about 500 bullets worth of lead in the photo;))
09a.jpg
 
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Why not just cover the melter with a heavy lid? Or put the weights in the cold pot and heat it slowly until they melt? Y'all are *trying* to make it difficult! ;)
 
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