Lead Pipe

[TX BOOMER]

Went by a old freinds house the other day . He is now a gunsmith so we talked guns for awhile about our school days and then I told him I was casting bullets now and did he know where I could get some lead. He said follow me so we went out back and he what looked like about a 100lbs + of lead pipe as well as about a 100lbs or so of some he had melted down. So my question to all of you , is it worth getting and adding some tin to it for my pistol bullets or what ? He also had a sack full of linotype , could get that too. :Fire:

[freedom475]

NEVER pass up free lead!:Fire::mrgreen:

[762cavalier]

Geez you mean it isn't already at home with you:-D

[Trez Hensley]

Where's he live?:-D

Yeah, pick it up! You can do a lot of shooting with 200+lbs of lead.


Your signature line is right on. Stick with Jesus and share his love and forgiveness whenever you can.

[AllanD]

Hi,
this is my first post and while I may be new here I've been casting
since the 1980's

Definatly go and get it but don't be hasty about adding to it to turn it into alloy.
Once you add tin and/or antimony to it you can't take it back out.

The reason I point this out is that alloyed lead is common
UNalloyed lead isn't and the BPCR and muzzle loaders might
be willing to trade WW for relatively pure lead.

I JUST scored a 5gallon pail of lead pipe from a local scrap yard for...
well I don't want to say because others will be jelous or try to
find the source and I want to go back for the rest of it...
Anyway there was wheelweight, Lino and pure lead, I grabbed
the pure lead FIRST because generally it's hardest to get and I
AM a BPCR and I also have muzzle loading pistols

the 75# of pure lead that I will be smelting this afternoon
is mostly going to get turned into 45cal Cap&Ball revolver
conicals and round balls.

AD

[frank505]

Please be careful when melting lead pipe as it will spit molten lead out the end of the pipe with some velocity!!! And no there is no water inside.Also I am pretty confident with the lead pipe I've messed with that it is not all lead. It seems to me that it has something else in there like antimony or maybe tin(?) The color is wrong for simply lead, it will make a soft revolver bullet but is too hard for a black powder bullet.

[Pepe Ray]

Beware the JOINTS!!
Any place you can see where lead pipe has been joined to , an Elbow or other fitting or joined to a longer length of pipe, there will be a higher concentration of TIN. This is necessary or it couldn't be done. Simply saw out the joints and save them as a bonus.
Pepe Ray

[yarro]

The one time that I had lead pipe, I simply pounded them flat and cut it into chunks with my bolt cutter to get the melt started. After that I simply stirred the pot with them to let them melt.

-yarro

[4thebrdz]

Melt, Flux, Pour!! I treat it as pure lead. The bit tin that you may have in it would be negligible, and only helpful. Get out and pic it up!!

[1hole]

I'm no expert with the various sources of lead but what I've read states that pipe is/was about the purest degree of soft lead comercially available.

As noted above, the soldered joints had a tin alloy but the pipe itself was lead, period.

I have good results with a mixture of 10# lead, 1# 60/40 solder, 2# of wheel weights. The antimoney in the wheel weights hardens the alloy and the tin in the solder keeps the antimony from seperating out of the alloy as it solidifies.

[AllanD]

I don;t know what the OP does, but I know I'm not real worried
about it spitting at me because of the way I handle it.

Well, the lead pipe I was working with yielded 44.2lbs smelted fluxed
and remixed lead, added to that is better than 15lbs of yellow brass
that I get to trade back to the scrap yard for more lead.

I do my smelting operations inside a big plate steel enclosure,
my Harmon coal stove :)

I won't be terribly suprised if I'm the only one using coal to melt my lead
But I figuire that the coal stove is gonna be burning anyway and the strong
draft up the flue will deal with the fumes:)

For actually running bullets for ML's there is something... "proper" about
melting the lead with wood or coal, after all that's the way it was done
"way back when".

Anyone with me on this?

AD

[xringshutr]

OK, I had to jump in here because I recently melted down about 6 lbs of lead pipe so I could make some slugs for a couple mil-surps. When I got the pipe melted down and thoroughly fluxed, I noticed a VERY gold colored thin layer on top of the melt. I tried to flux again; nuthin. Dipped a few bullets out into my Lyman 311413 (drops bullets @
.314+ too!. Perfect for slugging and/or sizing down) and the bullets were a nice shiny silver as they should be.
After I was done dropping my slugging boolits, I poured the remaining melt into ingots. These came out nice and silver too.
I can rake the "gold" layer off of the melt and it reappears within 5-10 seconds. I realize it is something oxidizing, but does anyone have any idea what it could be? The melt is definetely clean of impurities, so I've ruled that out. :confused:

[mroliver77]

You coud mix pure lead with wHEEL WEIGHTS 2-1 for pistol boolits or like 5-1 with the lino for pistol.
J

[cohutt]

I've smetled a couple thousand pounds of certified 99.9% pure chielding scrap and/or lead pipe in the last year and have noticed the color of the oxidized surface of this is different than WW or range scrap.
The color of the film is definitetly browner or gold as you describe it as opposed to the more grey/silver layer on WW. I push ignore it when pouring ingots until i get near the bottom of the pot, then just ad the next piles of scrap to the melt and stir in. After i flux the pot full it starts reappearing, ignore again etc.
It is so heavy compared to the flux ash layer i'd rather try and reclaim it due to the obvious high lead content (weight)



OK, I had to jump in here because I recently melted down about 6 lbs of lead pipe so I could make some slugs for a couple mil-surps. When I got the pipe melted down and thoroughly fluxed, I noticed a VERY gold colored thin layer on top of the melt. I tried to flux again; nuthin. Dipped a few bullets out into my Lyman 311413 (drops bullets @
.314+ too!. Perfect for slugging and/or sizing down) and the bullets were a nice shiny silver as they should be.
After I was done dropping my slugging boolits, I poured the remaining melt into ingots. These came out nice and silver too.
I can rake the "gold" layer off of the melt and it reappears within 5-10 seconds. I realize it is something oxidizing, but does anyone have any idea what it could be? The melt is definetely clean of impurities, so I've ruled that out. :confused:

[Ohio Rusty]

I have some lead pipe in the garage also. I have one bucket of just soldered joints. The color of the joint lead and the pipe itself are different. I've not melted those down yet until I know what the joints are.
I've also gotten the 'colors' on the top of pure lead also. In the light somethimes the colors takes on a peacock hue, with blues greens purples and golds. That is my indication that what I have melted is pure lead because WW's or lino will not give you those colors on top. I'm not sure what the colors are, but I do know that when I get a pile of that skimmed color in a can, that lead seems harder than what is in the pot.
Frank505 is correect about lead coming from the pipe. Several years ago I stuck a length of 1/2 inch pipe in the pot to melt down. I put the pipe in the molten pot and walked away to get my coffee cup. Seconds later I heard the pipe hiss and the pipe fired a wad of molten lead as big as a 50 caliber round ball all the way across the garage !! So watch melting that lead pipe and just be safe about it.
I just wish I had 100 lbs of linotype to mix with all that pure lead .... I have too much pure lead for sure......
Ohio Rusty

[xringshutr]

Thanks for the experienced responses guys. I didn't think it was a big deal, just kind of annoying. I've been cutting the pipe down into 6-8" chunks so I wouldn't get a small molten lead cannon in the garage. :-D This site has really helped me learn a lot about casting in a short amount of time. I find that I check for new threads every day if time allows.

It's been too cold to actually go shoot my newly cast bullets so I am just waiting. I guess that gives me a chance to cast some more while I have a little time.

[DLCTEX]

Seperate those soldered joints out, as they are high in tin content. Smelted some lead pipe today which made a clunk when dropped on the concrete floor, the solder joints had more of a ring to it, but not as much as wheel weights. Dale

[boommer]

I melt alot of lead pipe and get it off tear downs on houses When we cut the water services off at the street the newer line is copper or steel and old lead is still in the ground alot of times so I snag it out ! I don,t know but every now and then a pot gets the rainbow colors not often and I cut all joints out and the next pot off same line no rainbow! the only thing I can think of is minerals maybe? Most of the time I pop it on the ground and knock the lose rust and lime out of the pipe. I do have about 12#in ingots that look like they are case harden need to see if I can make some purdy boolits out of it.