Watcha gonna do, make bullets?

[BBQJOE]

I mentioned this elsewhere, but tomorrow I'm going to an old master's house to learn, and cast bullets.
I'll mostly be making .44 240gr SWC as well as some 9mm.

he said it wasn't necessary right away, but would appreciate a donation towards his lead bank. He has a brother who is a chemist who deals with making the proper mix of lead and antimony, so ANY lead would be appreciated.

I went to our local scrap yard and was directed to a small dumpster.
In it I found wheel weights, large solid sinkers, some big cylindrical yellow painted things and some huge folded sheets from the hospital.
(The sheets were way too heavy to manage)

I filled a 5 gal bucket half full, and came to realize I should have brought my own fork lift.

After muscling the bucket to the scale, the first thing the guy asked was, going to make bullets, huh?
Having never done this before, I was forced to think how obvious my actions were, and that there must be a whole lot of this going on.

Edited to add: I paid around .60 cents a pound.

 

[Walkalong]

I remember the first time I went around town scrounging wheel weights. I felt like I was collecting gold. They used to give them away to keep from fooling with them.

 

[USSR]

He has a brother who is a chemist who deals with making the proper mix of lead and antimony...

Odd statement? All you need to do is identify the type of lead you have, determine it's alloy composition, and mix different lead types together by weight to get the "proper mix of lead and antimony".

Don

 

[jmorris]

You can get really close by going by weight alone. I can cast bullets in a 230 grain mold that weigh 240 grains (pure lead) to 211 grains (silver solider). WW generally come out 232 or so and that works but you can mix in a little Lynotype and get them right on if that's important to you.

 

[popper]

some big cylindrical yellow painted things and some huge folded sheets from the hospital. - really good stuff, should have gotten it. You can fold the sheets till they break to get smaller portions, if not too thick, or use a hachet.