Would you buy lead at .50 a pound?

[dmftoy1]

Well I just finished cutting and welding up 6 ingot molds and tomorrow I'm going to run to all the thrift shops I can find to try and get some cheap ladles, slotted spoons etc. Sunday morning is D-Day for the turkey fryer and dutch oven.

Have a good one,
Dave

 

[brickeyee]

"95/5 solder is a good way to strenghten lead alloy. ( 5% antimony )"

More likely 5% tin.

 

[skipjack]

Wheel weights are too hard for 45/70 bullets. You will have better results with 20-1 or 30-1 lead to tin. Pure lead can be found in stick on wheel weights, as well as roofing lead and other sources of old lead materials.

50 cents per lb for pure lead is a pretty fair price. You can also try x-ray labs for their scrap lead, and can often get it free. Another good source of lead is to check with indoor ranges and get range scrap. 22 rimfire is usually very soft, and it is alot easier than mining outdoor range berms. Cleaner, too!

I use old muffin tins from thrift stores to pour ingots from my smelting pot.
They are just the right size to fit into an electric melter such as the lee or lyman models. Typically, they cost less than a dollar.

 

[snuffy]

"95/5 solder is a good way to strenghten lead alloy. ( 5% antimony )"

More likely 5% tin.

If I'm not mistaken, the 95 -5 solder is 95% tin and 5% silver. It's a good sourch of tin IF you need to add tin to your alloy. Solder USED TO BE 50% tin--50% lead. The enviromentalists insist on removing lead from the plumbing of houses/bussinesses, where the solder was used to join copper pipe.

Adding tin will help the lead flow better when pouring it into the mold. It helps fill-out the bullet so that the driving bands are clean and sharp. It will NOT harden the resulting bullet much. Tin must be part of the alloy to use antimony to harden the alloy. The tin keeps the antimony in solution. More than 5% tin in casting alloy is wasted.

When melting the scrap lead, be sure to flux the lead well BEFORE skiming any clips or dross off the surface of the melt. Otherwise the agitation of stirring will seperate the valuable tin and antimony from the lead, it then floats to the surface. Fluxing "wets" the lead to allow it to become a solution again. It also seperates dirt from the molten metal.

Flux can be any petroleum product, wax is best. If you're melting 40-50 pounds of lead in a big cast iron pot, use enough flux! A chunk the size of a ping pong ball, allow it to melt then stir and scrape the sides and bottom of the pot. Whats left, skim of and discard. If doing this inside, there will be a LOT of smoke! One way to controll the smoke is to ignite the smoke, it'll burn until the wax is gone. I hear some use sawdust to flux, dunno, never tried it!

Thanks Fred, I'll try it tomorrow. I want to see just what I have from those counterweights!

 

[Duckster]

Free lead at tire stores

I go to the local tire stores and ask for the used tire weights. They usually give it to me free and sometimes save it up for me to come by and pick it up. I've never had a problem casting or shooting these, especially since I only use these rounds for practice.
Also, have seen were a friend of mine had a range in his back yard and used a heavy piece of metal to angle shots into a catcher on the ground. We just gather the lead and remelt it.
Basically you just by powder and primers

 

[brickeyee]

Unless marked as 'lead free' it is 95% lead and 5% tin.
A common high lead wiping solder.
50-50 was used in roofing and sometimes plumbing work, but 60-40 is closer to being eutectic solder that has no 'slush' zone. 63-37 is eutectic and has zero 'slush' as it cools.
The original lead free plumbing solders used tin and antimony. The melting point was enough higher to cause problems on large joints and fittings, and the joints did not look very good.
Tin-copper-silver solders handle like the old tin-lead solders and has become prety easy to find. The silver is typically just a few pecent, with the copper about double the silver. 90% tin is a common level.
Oatey has a number of patents on silver bearing low temperature solders (as opposed to brazing materials with melting points of ~840F and higher).
Tin is not a cheap metal like lead. It runs about $5.50 a pound.

 

[snuffy]

Unless marked as 'lead free' it is 95% lead and 5% tin.
A common high lead wiping solder.

Yes, lead-free was what I was refereing to. I can't seem to find my roll, good thing I don't need it!

Then the remaining 5% was antimony, well even better, it adds some hardness as well as tin!

As for my experiment with a skill saw and thick lead, thanks again Fred! It cuts nicely, but man don't get that blade stuck,,-- the blade lost a couple teeth!

Initial casting with the new lead looks promissing! I'm in the process of casting a few wtih pure lead to compare to. Mold I picked is Lee's copy of the old stand by 45 acp 230 RN. It's a two cavity, I'm just using the front cavity.

Well, the pure lead I have,(midway certified 99.7% pure), casts bullets THE SAME WEIGHT as the counterweight lead! Looks like the mystery is pretty much solved, except that the new lead cast a pretty well filled out bullet using my bottom pour lee pro 4-20, at around 700 degrees. The pure lead is in a simple lee melter that I use a bottom pour ladle with. The pure lead was real difficult to get to fill out the mold. Typical of pure lead. Also it was at max temp for the lee melter. I'm pretty sure there's some tin in with that CW lead, added by the machine tool factory to help fill out their molds for the CWs. It might even be 20-1 or 30-1 lead tin.

 

[ReloaderFred]

Snuffy,

You're supposed to cut straight! It is amazing how easy lead cuts with a Skill saw. How much shredded lead did you collect from those cuts? It's pretty fluffy, too, isn't it?

I've used about every method to reduce large ingots into usable sizes, and the absolute slowest was trying to use a torch to melt it. Next was an axe to cut it, then I stumbled on using my Skill saw out of desperation. It worked like a champ and made the whole process so much easier. I've also used a band saw, but the Skill saw was the handiest and fastest.

Fred

 

[snuffy]

You're supposed to cut straight! It is amazing how easy lead cuts with a Skill saw. How much shredded lead did you collect from those cuts? It's pretty fluffy, too, isn't it?

Durn it, I knew I did somthin wrong! Yeah, I cut over a piece of plastic cardboard to collect the chips, folded it on a crease line so it poured right into my camp stove lead pot. Used the shreds to put in the bottom of the lee pro pot to "start" the melt. I'd bet that cutting that 90 pound chunk into pot sized chunks generated 4 cups of shavings!