where does one get lead for casting

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TheBigAR2003

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Been looking into casting my own .454s
I can find molds easy enough and I can build a fire
But where can I find lead to melt down other than the
I know a guy source?
 
tire weights but they are often a hard alloy.

old batteries (not worth the enviromental trouble or dealing with the acid i think).

recyle your old lead if you use a bullet catcher for most of your shooting.
midway sells it and probably a lot of other places.

may also be worth melting down old fishing weights if you can find them cheap enough.

a sweep of your local range with metal detector or gold pan is another possible source (just an idea)


it seems like its getting hard to buy
 
castboolits.gunloads.com has a trading section where guys trade/sell everything including wheel weight ingots, usually about $1-1.5 per pound plsu shipping. Also, Seafab Metals in Casa Grande AZ has 25 pound string ingots of certified 92/6/2 metal for $2.03 a pound.
Don't get the Midway certified metal, eeek on price.
Do you smelt? If so haunt the tire shops for wheel weights. Ones marked Zn are zinc, discard, clip ons are lead alloy, stick ons are generally pure lead.

Find MUCH more info at castboolits.gunloads.com/
 
My best source is just picking it up off the ground at the pistol range during the summer. Just takes a few minutes to fill up a gallon ziplock bag using a small trowel.
 
I have used plumber's lead, lead flashing and OO buckshot. I was given 10 lbs of plumber's lead several years ago, bought 50 lbs of buckshot cheap from a friend of mine and was given about 75 lbs of lead flashing a couple of years ago. All of this is soft lead even the buckshot.
 
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In a quick trip around to the local auto shops, I made off with 300lbs of wheel weights for free. It is good stuff, but it is really dirty. I used a turkey fryer and a cast iron pan to cook it down. A stainless steel slotted spoon worked great to skim dirt and clips off the top. I used a soup ladle for filling my home made ingot mold.

Don't dump the weights directly from the container the auto shop had into your pan. I found plenty of motor oil and water in them. Oil just burns, water goes BANG!!! BE CAREFUL!!!!

Heavy truck wheel weights seem to be made of better stuff. If you have a truck shop around, talk to them first. Truck weights are also way bigger so you will have less crud and clips to deal with.

Ventilation is important, don't screw around. Also be careful not to over heat the lead. You can boil it with a turkey fryer. I hear the lead will vaporize if you boil it, the vapors can make you sick.
 
EPA says that no one ie.... tire shops or scrap yards etc is to resell lead. It is to be sent to a smelter. That's not to say that one won't do it.

I went down to the local phone company and asked where their construction yard was then headed over there and got to pick out about 500 pounds from their scrap pile. They have a scrap company come in monthly to take all the cable for the copper. They sand the scrapper just take the lead jackets and they get nothing for it. Scrapper just gets rid of their problem for them.
 
I avoid scuba and fishing weights now after having one explode and shower me and the eaves of my house with molten lead. Water is squeezed into each and every void when deep in the water, and won't come out for a very, very long time. The fishing weight that exploded had been sitting in my uninsulated garage for an entire hot summer, and it apparently still had water in it.
 
People sell lead online, if you don't want to scrounge for it. Evil-bay has a lot of lead sellers. USPS flat rate boxes can hold 70lbs with no extra charge. Less than $1/pound is a good price. Remember 1lb=7000 grains.
 
Couple years ago I was at Lowe's and they were selling their damaged flashing for about a quarter a pound.I got about fifty pounds of it, all they had left.
 
I recover spent bullets from our local outdooor range; jacketed cores are very soft to pure lead and the lead bullets I use for casting for my modern pistols, mixed with ww's and some lino for extra hardness.
 
Hardware store some times like the small ones. In Laconia next to where i live theres a store small one that sells let in sheets.
 
Lot of trouble unless you just want to do it. I have done it years ago just messing around and to learn a little about it..Wheel weights (tire weights) will work. When the lead melts just skim it. The stuff you remove will rise to the top as the lead melts and it is referred to as 'dross'. Once you skim it you will have some good and soft and malleable lead. (guess I spelled malleable wrong but anyway, by skimming you will end up with some good lead)....
 
Wheel weights work fine if you can find the clip on ones, stick ons are either pure lead or in some cases zinc or steel. For a .454 you may want them pretty hard. Clip on WW have some arsenic in them so you can heat treat them or quench them to make them harder. Stay away from batteries there are some nasty things in there you don't want to expose yourself to. If you melt WW. keep temp below 700 FH and flux and stir so you keep as much of the tin and antimony in the melt as possible and limit oxidation. Ask the graybeards around your gunclub and range, you would be surprised how many of them picked up a few pounds to a few thousand pounds of wheel weights over the years and in some cases they will even be melted down, cleaned and in nice easy to use ingots.
 
wow, I didn't think finding lead was that big a problem. In this area, folks are still pulling lead pipe out of houses, remodeled hospital x-ray rooms have lots of lead. 30 years ago, the telephone companies stopped using the old lead shielded telephone cables. I bought 1,000 lbs from a telephone co lineman back then. Recently, I purchased a round 250 lbs of lead from the estate of a guy that had collected lead to make fishing sinkers. I have a non-shooting buddy that works for a remodeling company. He has given me over 20 old pure lead window sash counterweights from old victorian houses he worked on. They weigh about 25 lbs each. I realize it is getting harder to find.

Here's one for you. At a recent real estate auction, I heard it announced that the previous owner had his own pistol range and they actually disclosed this as a possible environmental hazard on the property from the lead in the hillside. A farmer that hosted a black powder match on his property and used the hill in his pasture as the back stop was recently told that the dairy would no longer buy milk from him, for fear the lead would get into grass and in turn, get into the milk. So I understand that the availability is changing.
 
Most of the (non-stick on) wheel weights are too hard for cap and ball shooting but are fine for everything else. Watch both clip on and stick on wheel weights while they are melting. If you have one or some that are reluctant to melt, pull them out and dispose of them. They are probably zinc and will seriously contaminate your alloy, make it unusable.
 
Range lead

I have recovered lead from an outdoor range nearby. I sift the dirt with a 1/4" screen, pick out the bullets. Works for cheap lead, HOWEVER - NEVER put any of this type of lead into a hot pot of lead. You are just asking for trouble with moisture causing molten lead to fly everywhere.

I only start with a cold lead pot, heat up, skim the trash off, bottom pour the lead into ingots. Mostly pure lead this way, but it does have some alloy. The benefit doing it this way is I am far away from the lead pot while it gets up to temp, and the moisture has a chance to just boil off before the lead gets molten. I still don't trust jacketed bullets 100% to not hold any moisture.

Between the unknown composition of the lead you get and the moisture, I think it's better to just buy soft lead, and alloy it if you want harder lead with some solder or linotype, known materials. Range lead is okay if you have to, but for the savings, it might not be worthwhile. That's what I found out, and I never had any problem with molten lead exploding, that right there takes the fun out of it, and could make it very expensive to you if you start a fire or get burned with hot lead spatters. Hot lead can start a fire in tinder. Ingots don't have moisture inside them, if they are solid. Same with lead sheet.
 
Noz wrote:

Most of the (non-stick on) wheel weights are too hard for cap and ball shooting
Click to expand...

I don't know how you can make a blanket statement like that since there are a number of us right here on this board that use wheel weight alloy in our C&B revolvers. I have been using it for about 20 years. Yes it is harder than pure lead and that makes it a little more difficult to load (I now load cylinders on a loading press) but once loaded it is fine and does not lead the bore.
 
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