How to harvest this free medical waste lead?

[xsquidgator]

I have a line on maybe 50 pounds or so lead sheet for free from the clinic I work with. This lead is in thin lead sheets, maybe 1/16" thick, that was used as radiation shielding for radioactive prostate implant seeds.

The problem I'm having is how to get this rubbery or plastic-y coating off of the lead that seems to have been glued on somehow. So far it's been impossible to tear off more than tiny little shreds of this coating, the stuff is so firmly glued on that when I can peel an edge of the coating up, it just tears instead of pulling off in a nice sheet.

I'm totally new to casting boolits, other than reading a little bit here and some other places. From your guys' experiences, is the kind of thing where maybe I could just throw it in the pot and let the heat burn this up, and then hopefully just skim it off the top? Even if I come up with a mechanical way to remove this covering, there will still be a sticky glue residue on the lead.

The only thing other thing I'm thinking of trying is to find some aggressive solvent like acetone, and see if I can find one that will eat off this coating.

Has anyone here ever used this as a source of lead and found a way to do it?

The good news for me is that I have another 50-100# of waste lead for free, that's much easier to harvest. (and a fairly steady supply of it in the future too!) This is the lead that's used to shield the radiation from small containers of radioactive seeds that come into the hospital- the seeds get used up and all this lead accumulates. Fortunately these containers usually just have a plastic shell that's easy to cut or chisel off, leaving a nice amount of solid clean lead underneath.

[mooman76]

Throw it in the pot and scrape off the sticky stuff as it melts!

[NVcurmudgeon]

Never deal with medical lead, but try soaking a small piece in gasoline, mineral spirits, kerosene, etc. I do that with tape-on WW and the glue and backing come right off in an hour or two.

[454PB]

Welcome to the forum!

This sounds similar to roofing lead that is covered in asphalt. The easiest way is to smelt it outdoors, preferably away from any other homes or people. It will burn off, but it will probably be a stinking, smokey mess.

[schutzen]

As recommended by others burn or smelt the coating off. CAUTION: Stay out of the smoke! Burning plastic is full of nasty stuff. Most plastics produce small amounts carcinogens when burned and some will produce Phosgene Gas (one of the WWI gases). As long as you don’t stand in the smoke and inhale it you’ll be fine. Once it is burned off, treat it as regular soft lead.

[xsquidgator]

Great, thanks all for the advice! I'm pleased that it sounds like I have a good chance of being able to recover the lead in this waste - there's a lot of it here and I like getting free stuff. I shake my head when I think of how much of this stuff I used to throw away before this occurred to me...

[looseprojectile]

I have had good results removing sticky stuff from all kinds of things since I got the HEAT GUN. Works best on heat glue but have used it to take off old bumper stickers and such.
Try heating the lead side and peeling the plastic off.
SWMBO works at the local hospital though I dont know if they have a nuclear program. Have to check it out.
Thanks for the heads up.

[Trez Hensley]

I have been doing a fair amount of smelting lately as I am preparing to get going on a casting session. I have found that if you have a weed burner (hand held high temp. torch), hold it on the top of the burn to add heat and to incinerate the bad stuff. With enough heat, most of the fumes/smoke get burned clean.

It works for me,

[Blammer]

I've delt with that medical lead before, easiest to just put in the pot and wait till it's a charcoal color and not sticky and scrape it off.

It's what I did/do.

[NuJudge]

A weed burner over the smelting pot will help burn off the smoke. It will also make everything melt a lot faster.

CDD

[Misfire99]

I wouldn't want to burn this stuff off in my casting pot. I like to keep it as clean as possible. If I had this stuff I would set up a charcoal pit in my backyard and use a large lead pot to burn it off in then cast what I get into ingots.

I have a shop vac that I can take off the motor and use it as a leaf blower. I have used this to get the coals in the barbecue to get REAL HOT. I think if you dug a pit and had an iron pipe down at the bottom that came up so you could blow in it with your leaf blower you could make a very hot smelter in you back yard. Get a lead pot that will hold twenty five pounds or more and you got yourself a project. If you can get real coal I bet you could smelt iron with that method.

And I have seen lead pots on ebay for cheap.

[corvette8n]

I used to smelt on my Lee 10lb pot, but is was too much of a mess. I then bought a small cast iron frying pan snd smelted outside over a propane burner, it didn't hold much but it worked, I now have an 8qt covered cast iron pot, and a high pressure burner. I throw everything in the pot, put the cover on and walk away to do yard work, I peek back every one and a while, after 20 minutes or so I flux and stir skim etc, the pour into ingot molds.

[Sundogg1911]

I use a propane turkey fryer and a big cast iron dutch oven pot. Only clean ingots hit my casting furnaces