[Marlin]

Howdy,new to board,would like to know if any one uses lead like major utilities might use for wiping lead cables,joint,s etc. for casting bullets? TIA.

[Sven]

Marlin,

Welcome to the forum. Not sure about sources for lead you mention, but you'd probably want to test hardness before casting.

-s

[Mike Irwin]

As far as I know that should be pretty much pure lead foil. May have a small amount of trace elements in it.

[dickwholliday]

back when my dad was casting he got lead from everywhere....power companies.....hospitals.....phone companies.....tire places....i'd come home from school and there would be a pile of lead sheeting that came off telephone connections or the like....most of it was pure lead or pretty close....he'd alloy it up with tin or whatever and cast it up.......now that he's quit i';ve got bunches of his ingots stacked up in the garage waiting to be cast into something that i shoot......DICK

[pumpgunn]

The lead you have is considered soft. Good for front loaders,
fishing sinkers. Mix it 1 to four with wheel weights for
pistol bullets. For max pistol add more wheel weights.
If you can find any linotype you can mix it in to soften
the lino up a bit.

[Paul "Fitz" Jones]

The most common and easily available lead source for pistol bullets is used tire weights usually direct from tire stores. Hospitals that do radiation therapy generate lead shipping containers after any radiation has lessened. I have picked up a couple of tons of it. Cute packaging.

Telephone companies generating sheet lead is unlikely nowadays but you may find a bunch of it in an old timers stash that he collected when it was common. I still have a hundred pounds of 5 pound ingots of telephone company solder that I got in the 1950's. Along with 30 pound linotype bars.

The lead telephone sheathing was on joints of overhead lines mainly in cities and rats and squirrels loved the telephone lines as their freeways.

Unfortunately both of them loved to sharpen their teeth on the soft lead allowing water into the joints and that cause the demise of the use of lead and probably messed up the rodents also.

Old timers are really pack rats.

I am one of them.

John Paul Retired
Commercial Bullet caster