Casting lead bullets

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Plumbing lead. I was quoted a little less than 1.00 per pound. It came in 25 lb. linked ingots. I'm thinking it was 20 bucks for 25 lbs. It was Coburns Plumbing Supply, they also had to order it but the clerk said it wasn't a big deal.

I never bought it because I stumbled across about 600 lbs. in my Dads garage. I still have the biggest part of it. I usually try to make an alloy rated at a BHN of ten.
 
I have also had very poor luck finding good sources of cheap lead. I have melted down a couple hundred pounds of WWs but, where I am at, the cheapest price I have found is .60 per pound. They are also so full of steel and zinc that I only end up with about 50-60% useable lead. I estimated that it is costing me a little over 1.20 per pound with fuel etc. I find lead regularly on ebay (either range lead or wws) for around 1.40 per pound. I haven't had a bad batch yet and, to me, it isn't worth my time to save .20 to .30 per pound. I am still on the lookout for cheaper WWs but won't do it again at the prices I am seeing.
 
One of the issues of buying wheelweights for casting bullets is that an increasing percentage of tire weights are being manufactured in steel and Zinc. The steel ones just float to the top and you can skim them off the top.

The zinc ones also float to the top. But donot allow them to get too hot, or they will melt into your lead alloy and ruin it. It turns to a porage like consistancy.

I spend some time before melting the weights and go through them to remove non lead wieghts. I just
Take a smallsetrated knife and scratch each weight as I pick it up. Lead is very distinct in the big scratches it shows.
Zinc is Wayyy lighter, and wayy harder!

If it doesnt scratch easy, its scrap. Some wheel weights are marked as well. I have been lucky to get around 1500 pounds of wheel weight lead for free. No need for quite some time to replenish
My Stock.
 
What is the best way to go about testing the hardness of the lead ingots? I have seen the Lee test kits that go into a press, but is there a better or more efficient way of doing it without spending a bunch on the Lee kit?
 
There are a number of ways that folks check for basic hardness. Some use their thumbnail some use a drop test, some simply hit it with a hammer. They all work for what ever use the person doing the test is looking for.

When I started out I found the following link and after reading through it a few times decided to give it a try with my then unknown alloy.
Testing-hardness-with-pencils

While it isn't the finite end all to hardness testing it will get you in the ball park with a little practice. Then there is the Lee testing kit, as well as a Saeco, and LBT, and the Cabine Tree testers. For me the pencils worked for close to a year until I started to blend my own alloy into different batches for different uses. WHen I got to that point I went with the Cabine Tree kit, and have been happy ever since.

While the others are also great and you will get great reports from users of all of them, the Cabine Tree IMO is the easiest to use and most adaptable to my uses. I use a variety of ingot molds and the Cabine Tree will accommodate just about all of them with the exception of the angle iron ones. You have to have something which will sit flat against the plunger while the point is screwed into the other side.

Pick your favorite search engine and put in lead bullet hardness testers and it should bring up some example of them all.

Hope this helps,
 
You could try a web site that is for giving things away free and asking for things for free. Up here we have one in new england called freecycle. com , I asked for some lead to cast fishing wieghts with my grand son , got 3 buckets for free.
Also talk to some hospital lab people. They return the stuff that comes in lead shields and they can give you main supplier phone # and they will sell old ones at decent price.
Any big construction on a hospital can get you some x-ray wall sheeting. just have to burn the paper off.
If you have anyold boat yards around, many keels are wieghted with lead, maybe they will have some.
Just my thoughts, good luck.
 
Call a plumbing supply house. They often have very good lead at reasonable prices. It probably will come in five pound ingots, linked together in groups of five.
My plumber son keeps me supplied with those, he is a union guy and they are left overs from large commercial jobs.
 
Here's another great source if you know what alloys you have going into your smelting.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?105952-Lead-alloy-calculators
I've got a deal with a guy here local. He gives me raw unprocessed lead, and I give him cast, lubed and sized bullets based off of the amount of lead he gives me. So 100 pounds @ $1.00/pound scrap price. Once I calculate out the time to process the lead, cast it, lube and size it. I give him back the appropriate amount of bullets.
So last time he gave me 190 pounds of lead and I would have gave him 3900 .45 ACP LRN bullets, but instead of bullets he convinced me to load for him and gave me the brass to reload. So for 190 pounds of lead I loaded him 1,000 rounds. So for powder and primers for the 1K cost me $40 I got to pocket 170 pounds of lead. Which puts me at a raw cost of ~ $.24/pound for the lead. I made bullet buckets to catch and recycle my lead so 170 pounds will last me litterally forever. By doing that I calculate my cost of each round shot based off of the lead being 1st shot or recycled from my bullet buckets. So right now I am shooting .45 ACP for the cost of powder and primers puts me at about $.05/round. Can't get much cheaper than that.
 
All ready done did it

You gotta be careful with doing this. From a legal standpoint. Just look into it. :)

I am by no means an uneducated person and I have been around the reloading scene for awhile and I research anything that could have potentially dangerous outcomes whether personally, physically, legally, or financially. It's a program that I have to review and train people on every year called ORM (Operational Risk Management). I all ready looked into it and after I gave him the full lecture of the pros and cons of shooting OPR's (Other peoples reloads) he gave his full understanding from one military man to another that he accepted full liability and responsibility for the ammo he received. Also with the understanding that as we are both in the military he understands my understanding of procedural compliance. Especially due to the fact that we both serve in a very unique branch of the service that beats into us from day one that you WILL follow procedure, and you WILL check, second check, and then recheck everything, and always have a backup for a backup. Because if not, people WILL die. That was proven with the loss of the USS Thresher in 1963. I fully well understand that neglect on my part can cause the death of myself and those around me and that is something that I live every day of my life and have for the past 13 years and will continue to do so until the day that I die. I guess it is a unique trait that military men and women adopt over time that 99% of the population fail to recognize the fact that there are other people in the world outside their own personal little bubble and their actions can and do affect those around them.
So enough of my rant, I'm off my soap box and thank you for looking out for me an assuming that I know nothing and I am part of the 99%. Us 1% need to stick together. Maybe next time ask a question vice assuming that I am uneducated. Just sayin....
 
So you mean to tell me that every guy and gal that has a booth setup at a gun show has paid the ITAR license fee and has an FFL 06? Resellers of ammunition are not required to have an FFL 06. Only persons manufacturing ammunition for the purpose of SALE from a fixed place of business are required to apply for an FFL 06. This came from the FAQ on the ATF website.
So in this case my friend gave me lead and brass, i provided the powder and primer. How is this a sale? Now if I sold the lead he gave me for a profit I could see how that could constitute a sales transaction as having taken place but that is stretching it and really trying to grab for a thread. But there was no money excahnged, and I in no way have made a monetary gain. The only other straw you have left to grab at is the $30 license for 3 years required for the manufacturing of projectiles for sale. But again I haven't sold anything, no money has exchanged hands, and I did not profit from this transaction at all.
If you break it down I got 170 pounds of raw scrap lead. The scrap yard here pays $.30/pound for dirty scrap lead. That comes out to $51 dollars. He gave me the lead and brass and he got 1000 rounds of .45 ACP. Sportsmanswarehouse here local sells HSM (Remanufactured or reloaded ammunition) for $22/50 rounds that's $440/1000 rounds. SO ifffffffffffffffffffff I was in the business of selling ammunition I would be a horrible business man and I would be out of business faster than any other business in history. Once you look at the numbers from a business or profit standpoint I fail to see how I made a sale or a profitable one at that. Just the cast bullets alone are worth more resale than the lead he gave me. The brass as well, well acctually he was short 200 cases that I gave him so there I was out another ~$20 in .45 ACP brass. So after crunching the numbers I got $51 worth of lead, and I gave him $20 worth of brass, $25 worth of powder, $25 worth of primers, $100 worth of bullets, and 4 hours of my time for smelting, casting, reloading, @ $10/hour so another $40, $5 for other material costs, plus I delivered them 60 miles round trip at 4 gallons of gas at $4.50 a total of $18. For an overall total of $233 subtract the costs of the raw lead of $51 and that brings me to a total of -$182. What sale?
 
tl;dr

I'm not going to argue with you. But you need to be careful and discreet. ITAR and FFL06 and liability insurance are the issues; you're a big boy, you can decide what to do.
 
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