Recovering lead by shooting into a wood log

[Andy]

Was talking with a friend recently and discussing ways to recover fired lead rounds. We were looking for something of low value that wouldn't be taken if left at the range, and that didn't cost much to put together.

He came up with the idea to shoot into the end grain of a large-ish log and then split and burn that wood over a piece of metal to recover the lead.

I took a 16" long 12" dia. semi-decayed pine round up the range last week and put about 100 9mm lead loads, 30 .45 acp and a few .380 into it, as well as a couple boxes of .22. Had the log at an angle and nothing penetrated more than 6" by the looks of it. In any case, this size round is easy to move around/set up and I already have it back home.

Any problems with burning it to recover the lead? From what I can gather, wood burns at 550-900 degrees in an open fire without a directed air source, so the lead would likely be melting out, not just dropping out as a solid when the wood burns. There is moisture in the wood and at this time of year there is snow blowing around, is this is recipe for a problem due to water contact?

If water is the problem, let's say you picked up a junked weber kettle grill pot, got the fire going, covered it with the lid and just let the lead pop around in there and drain into a pan in the bottom...

Would you lose the tin/antimony due to uncontrolled temperatures?

Any ideas or recommendations on trying this? I'll wait to do anything until hearing back what you guys think.

[Hickory]

I would first split the log into kindling and extract the lead as you go.
If you burn the wood, I don't think you would get as much lead as some of it will be lost using that method.
But it is worth a try.

[dondiego]

I wouldn't worry about the moisture. The fire will take care of it.

[dudel]

I think you'd have a bunch of wood ash mixed with the lead puddle. If the lead can drop through the grate, then the ash will as well. I don't think that's a major problem (think of it as a prefluxed ingot). Bigger question is how to get the lead puddle broken up so you can clean all the impurities out. Sounds like you could end up with several pounds of lead puddle to deal with. Make sure the container that's receiving the lead puddle can handle the weight. I doubt the Weber grease catcher will do; not even sure the grill could take the load of the log plus lead.

I'd split the wood up into kindling sized pieces (try a wood grenade). Some of the lead may drop out at this point. Then burn the pieces in a dutch oven. When cool, blow off or vacuum up the ash. Smelt the remaining puddle, flux again, strain off dross, and pour your ingots. I don't think moisture will be a problem since you are bringing the whole thing up to heat at the same time.

[btroj]

How many of those log hunks do you have? Not gonna take too long before they have a big hole in the center.

[Harter66]

For several years I was a care taker on a range and I built trap boxes 18x24x8 with 4x material with an 1/8 in crs plate in the back . I had/have lots of scrap wood . It allowed me to pull the front off and take out the shot up center and replace it while recovering several pounds sometimes 20 or more . A plywood box is not the right answer nor is stacked plywood inside . The best part is that you get kindling out of the box the lead is all in 1 place and it's pretty easy to add wheels and make it pickup bed tip in height . You also don't have to split up a whole log and the lead is pre fluxed. I successfully used 1/2 in plywood for the front and rear faces with 2x8 sides and bottom to capture up to some very heavy 45 ,460 S&W or maybe a 500,and when fresh even 308/06' at 30 yd . Yes the plate got beat up some but it was a public range and I was getting 50-100 lbs of J-cores a month and being paid to do it . That range was closed so I have 1 for my own use now and have trapped a few 100 7mm 130s zipping along out the muzzle around 2300 fps with no issues.
I may build a couple more for an upcoming social event.....

[milrifle]

I'm not sure I'm following you, here. Could you post a drawing or photo? What is inside the box? I used to use a 24 x 24 x 8 box made from 2 x 8" with plywood faces and filled with sand. It works for a while but a lot of the bullet turns to fine dust and cannot be separated from the sand.

[Andy]

Sorry, forgot to mention I would be splitting it up into small pieces of course. I figure I would get a good deal of the bullets to fall out as I'm splitting and then burn it for whatever is left. I was going to do this one log for proof of concept before putting too much time into it. Log isn't too shot up for 100 rounds, so I imagine I firewood chunk lasts me for 500 pistol rounds unless the round happens to split. Pine doesn't leave any coals, just a little ash and if I let the thing cool I'm thinking I can just blow the ash off of it with an air hose.

Good to hear I should not have a problem with the moisture/water, I may go give it a shot this a shot this afternoon. I'll report back with what I find.

[Janoosh]

I used to maintain a range that used logs as a backstop. Pine is best, oak/ash is worst. This was a busy range, we stacked logs and rotated out the shot up ones once a year. Log backstop at 100 yds. Shot into ends, not side. Lead and jaxketed easily reclaimed, we gave the shot up logs to members.

[Scharfschuetze]

I can't offer any advice, but I once read that on the Kentucky frontier, they used a log as a backstop at turkey shoots for their muzzle loaders. The winner got to take the log home and keep the lead.

[dnotarianni]

Why not just burn in woodstove for heat and recover the lead when cleaning out the ash

[EMC45]

I've done it for years down my brother's place. Dug out what I could with my pocket knife and my Dad burned all the log/stump remnants and then I scraped all the lead drips and drops out of the ash heap. Got all kinds of lead that way. Pounds at a time.

[country gent]

Pine is soft and burns quickl and hot. The lead will be molten. Water boils at 212* and vaporizes just above that so any moisture will be gone before lead is molten. A sheet metal plate with a vee formed in it and running down hill build a smaller fire under the plate and the shot logs on top of the plate burning. Set an ingot mould under the vee to catch lead as it runs off. The fire under neath will help to keep the plate hot and lead flowing. Ashes should stay on plate and lead flow thru. Splitting the logs first will speed the process up alot.

[rockrat]

Harter66-------------Pics or a drawing would be great

[labradigger1]

Wood will definetly burn hot enough to melt the lead. Revolutionary and civil war soldiers melted countless boolits over wood fires in camps. A a die hard metal detector fanatic I have recovered many many pounds of camp lead where they were casting at camp sites.
Put the wood on a sloped piece of metal and burn it. The lead will run down the incline of the steel.
I have poplar logs at my personal range and it works well.
Lab

[Harter66]

Being a very rough idea this would be looking down at the top and is depicted with 2x6 instead of 2x8 which allows either another 2x or 2 pieces of x4s the metal plate lays in the gap at the top which is generally a 1/4 inch or less . At the time the facility had changed out several dozen signs that were on 24x24 and 16x24 1/8 inch crs and had sent most to salvage. So the inside of the box was cut to fit the plates/signs . Outside finished dimensions being roughly 27 1/2 x 19 1/2 x 8 3/4 with 1/2 inch plywood. It isn't really a cheap way if you have to buy material . It takes 14 4x4 blocks to fill the box so 28 2x4s and at best if you did 16x24 finished 6 boxes from a full sheet just 4 at 24x24 . It was cost effective for me because the jobs running at that time were yielding scrap that fit in the dimensions. I used 48" 2x8 for the sides of the last 1 to make it tall enough to tip into and out of the pickup.


128948

[scottfire1957]

Hmmmm. I might take a log or two to the range, leave 'em, let other people shoot them for a while, then recover the log.


If they get taken, I'll just be out the logs and a little lead.

[JohnH]

I've done this in past and it just ain't as efficient as just digging out the berm. Works fair enough, but lots of lead is sheared off into tiny pits as one tends to bore a hole into the log over time. I simply burned mine right on the ground and picked up the lead after the fact. Still had to run it thru the smelter as it had lots of charcoal bits in it. Worked ell enough, but as soon as I could I just had a load of dirt dumped at the back of my shooting lane and just dig it out once in a while. Best idea for a backstop for easy lead recovery is a box roughly 3x3 filled with rubber mulch. DO a search here, been several posts in past about this method.

[Geezer in NH]

Why not just burn in woodstove for heat and recover the lead when cleaning out the ashBingo!

[Wolfer]

Here at home I have half of a 55 gallon plastic barrel full of sand. When it gets pretty shot up I shovel it into a 1/4" screen on top of my wheel barrow. Once the lead is screened out I rotate the barrel half and cover the back shot up portion with whatever scrap I have laying around.

Here barrels cost about 12 bucks and will take an amazing amount of handgun shots before needing to be replaced.

My rifle range is stacked car tires full of sand.

Most every boolit I shoot has been shot several times already.

[RayinNH]

Why not just burn in woodstove for heat and recover the lead when cleaning out the ash

I would avoid this method. The boiling point/ vaporization temperature of lead is 1750 degrees. The coals in a hot wood stove with the draft open will get to that temperature. A non airtight stove may leak lead vapors into the house.

The open air method would be okay, although I wouldn't toast marshmallows over the fire :wink:.

[Andy]

Got around to making up the fire today, seemed to work fine (just doing it on the frozen dirt drive to test) and saw plenty of bullets run into puddles even with a fairly weak fire. Then I got distracted with work and didn't keep the fire tended properly. My takeaway is that this method will work, but that I should just wait until I have saved up a couple logs worth so that I can make a proper fire that I don't have to babysit every 10 minutes. I'll use a better grade of round next time as this one was somewhat punky and had a lot of water in it I think, real hard to keep the fire going.

I'm going to make a very basic 18-24" high wood cradle (probably just two attached "x" members) to get the log positioned horizontally at a reasonable target height. I'll leave it with a log on it at the range and tell people to shoot it if they feel like it. I figure I'll be replacing the cradle every year or two but I have a lot of scrap wood as a woodworker and the lead I'll gain should offset the minimal time put into it.

We run a wood stove as our primary heat all winter, but I didn't want to fire it in an enclosed, hot fire like that as I figured it would be far too hot and I would be losing the tin up the chimney, that is correct right?

[RayinNH]

Andy I won't give your log cradle two weeks at a club range. People view things like that as a challenge. They'll shoot at it on purpose to see how quickly they can cut it down. At our club we used to use 2x3 uprights with a plywood backer for targets. You would think people would put targets in the middle of the plywood, but no, they had to staple them to the uprights so they could put 2-3 targets wide. In a month they were junk.

[Andy]

We have a pretty low volume range here, small town. The club leaves out upright targets with cardboard on them and they last quite a while without people shooting the side rails deliberately. I'm sure I'll have to replace it due to bullet impacts far before it would have worn out, but I'll bet I get at least a full shooting season out of at least one. Given that I can make them with scrap lumber for next to nothing I'll give it a try.

[trapper9260]

There is one thing you need to watch for if you burn the logs with out taken as much of the lead out is that the logs in time will start to burn hot and you will have lost of some of your lead.But if you do like was stated about cutting it up in small scrap then you have a better chance of getting it .I built a box and fill with sand and shoot into that and have boards and chip board in the front and 2x8 in the back and need to re do it from the 308 but for hand gun no problem.

[303Guy]

I would have thought that since pine is one of the better fluxes, there would be minimal lead loss.

I'm wondering whether my local range would allow me to set up bullet traps that I could recycle from time to time.

[44man]

Not going to happen with my revolvers. I shoot through those logs like butter, 16" plus of seasoned oak. I have a 55 gallon plastic drum on the side full of rubber mulch and boolits are exciting the back.
Watch the little guns, boolits can get caught in grain and turn back.

[Geezer in NH]

Our gun shop/small engine repair/bluing service was heated by a large wood stove all hand loads and old shot shells were tossed in it. Every spring 20 to 30 pounds of the lead were recovered at the bottom.

Hint make sure the shot shells and others are smokeless. A BP 10 ga was very excitable and you do not want that :bigsmyl2:

[Andy]

44man, do you have experience with a ricochet out of a wood block? Please let me know if you do, as I'm planning to do this method. All I saw from my limited test were all rounds going 2-6" into the block, and whenever they impacted each other they just made a mush into one another. I would be thoroughly surprised if a lead bullet could come back at me out of the end grain of a pine log but stranger things have happened to people so I am curious what you have experienced with it.

[44man]

44man, do you have experience with a ricochet out of a wood block? Please let me know if you do, as I'm planning to do this method. All I saw from my limited test were all rounds going 2-6" into the block, and whenever they impacted each other they just made a mush into one another. I would be thoroughly surprised if a lead bullet could come back at me out of the end grain of a pine log but stranger things have happened to people so I am curious what you have experienced with it.
I had the same idea long ago at a friends yard. I set a log up at 100 and shot my 30-30 TC into it. I think I saved one boolit and I found turning boolits that came out all kinds of angles, even out the top. Those boolits turned 90*. The stump was 13-14" in diameter.
Long ago I read of a man that set a can on a fence post to shoot with his revolver, the boolit hit a knot and came back to kill him.
You don't know what is inside a stump but there should not be any danger shooting 2X4's in half.
Once when deer hunting I was leading a fast moving deer with my .44 SBH and just as the shot broke I seen what looked like brush. It was dim and hazy out. The deer jumped back and I shot him. I found it was not brush, it was an osage orange tree with a double trunk. My boolit went through a 10" trunk and into the next very deep. You know how tough osage is? Penetration is amazing. If a boolit turns, there is a lot of energy left.
Long ago a friend could not hit paper with his .270 Weatherby since he had the scope off. So he set a target on a RR bank at 50 yards. There must have been steel in the ground. At his shot, he yelled and fell back. He had a 1" hole to the bone in his thigh, just missed the artery.
I got him to the hospital and the sheriff showed up. I explained and he hung around until the piece was removed. It was a piece of jacket that weighed 12 gr.
Watch what you shoot at. All it would take is a knot or grain reversal. If you ever caught a pine knot with your table saw, you know how hard they are.
We shot a stump on my range long ago and most boolits went through but not from the small calibers. I found bullets on the ground halfway back to the bench. I picked up a whole coffee can of them. Nines and ACP bullets the most common.
Long ago Whitworth was out to practice. We took turns from my ladder stand shooting plastic bottles of water, off hand to 100 yards. He got down and I pointed to a box elder tree, told him to shoot through it. The tree was 16" in diameter. He looked at me funny and told me to do it. I had my .45 Colt Vaquero. The boolit not only went through but also cut a 2" grape vine in half and went so deep in the hill I never dug it up. He could not believe it and his .475 went through like a hot knife in butter.

[Rizzo]

My vote is for a 2'x2'x8" box filled with sand mounted on vertical 2x4s.
The front is plywood or OSB screwed to the box.
When the front gets shot up, put a wheelbarrow in between the vert. 2x4s, remove screws and let the sand pour out into the wheelbarrow.
I use 1/4" mesh welded wire screen to separate the lead for re-use (casting).
Then a new front gets screwed on and re-fill with the sand and your good to go.

[44man]

Sand is best. So is clay or mud.

[kweidner]

I too use the rubber mulch method. 55 gallon drum. I shoot most everyday and it is bout time to replace it. been there 3 years IIRC. Should be hundreds of lbs in it.

[Jim..47]

I've always used sand or soft dirt as a backstop. My first back stop was a bunch of half rotten rail road ties stacked up with the middle hollow. This worked Ok but was kind of messy and time consuming to recover the lead.

I have also used metal 5 gallon pails filled with sand, and or card board boxes filled with sand. They are about the easiest to recover from but wouldn't work for your range application.

My most recent stop is an old rotted out dumpster, the very same kind you will see at a small business, about 5' square and 4' deep. I covered the sides with more metal so I could hold even more sand and also drove 4x4's in the ground at each front corner. Then on the 4X4's I screwed on womanized 2'x8's. Ended up with a back stop about 5 foot wide and a usable 4 height. With a safety above of at least another foot, and I never shoot at the top foot or so as an extra safety. Inside I put old carpet next to the womanized lumber so that when the lumber gets shot up the carpet will help keep the sand from leaking out.

It works really well but you need to have a tractor at least a small one to tip the whole thing
over to recover your lead. I always refill with new sand which is a lot easier to recover the lead from then plain dirt.

Now this is my private home range but my son also uses it and occasionally someone else. I can easily get 3 years out of it before having to start over.

For me this is a really nice back stop, but I recently thought of an even better one. I have acquired a couple old washers and dryers with the cabinet still good. This spring I'm going to do the same thing with them and appliy wood to the front as a safe backstop then fill with sand. Will be much easier to tip over and recover the lead from and it will probably last for as long as I live because all you have to do is keep rebuilding the front. This could even work for your range. Too heavy to for someone to tote off but still easy enough for you to recover the lead from, but be sure to get a few friends at the club who will make sure that others aren't stealing your lead. I guess thats a possibility with what ever you use? Maybe you could even chain and lock it to something to keep someone from tip it over.

[snuffy]

I would avoid this method. The boiling point/ vaporization temperature of lead is 1750 degrees. The coals in a hot wood stove with the draft open will get to that temperature. A non airtight stove may leak lead vapors into the house.

The open air method would be okay, although I wouldn't toast marshmallows over the fire :wink:.

The boiling point of pure lead is 3180 degrees. The vapor point is around 1200 degrees. Some lead could vaporize burning wood in an open fire, but today's airtight/controlled draft stoves won't be a problem.


There is one thing you need to watch for if you burn the logs with out taken as much of the lead out is that the logs in time will start to burn too hot and you will have lost some of your lead.But if you do like was stated about cutting it up in small scrap then you have a better chance of getting it .I built a box and fill with sand and shoot into that and have boards and chip board in the front and 2x8 in the back and need to re do it from the 308 but for hand gun no problem.

Where will the lead go??¿ Do you believe that the lead will burn? No it won't. Whatever lead was imbedded in the wood will be found at the bottom of the fire. Ash will not be included in it once the lead is melted in your pot, any contaminant in lead will either burn off, or float to the surface of the lead in your casting pot. Nearly everything is lighter than lead and will float up so you can skim it off.

[tazman]

20 years ago when my wrists were still young enough I could stand the recoil of a 44 magnum, I was allowed to shoot on a local farmer's back pasture. There was a nice big log lying on the ground which I used for a backstop. No idea how long it had been there but there was no bark on it and the outside was soft. I shot into the side of it for several days and finally looked to see if any bullets were visible in it.
Turns out the log was old, hardened osage orange. The outside inch was whitewood. The inside was pure yellow color and really hard. None of the boolits I shot at it(handguns) penetrated that log more than 1 inch. Many of then had dropped on the ground right in front of the log. I even found some of them that had bounced back a distance about 10 yards from the log.

I think that live wood, recently cut wood, or almost any soft wood would make a better backstop than old, seasoned hardwood that isn't shredded. I know that you can shoot through osage orange when it is green but not that old dry log. The bounce outs I saw verified the ricochets 44man spoke of.

[RayinNH]

[QUOTE=snuffy;3119809]The boiling point of pure lead is 3180 degrees. The vapor point is around 1200 degrees. Some lead could vaporize burning wood in an open fire, but today's airtight/controlled draft stoves won't be a problem.] QUOTE


Sorry Snuffy, it's that Fahrenheit, Celsius thing rearing it's ugly head :oops:.

[groovy mike]

I've been tacking targets to trees for a couple decades. When the tree falls down move to the next one back. I now have a nice 200 yard shooting lane. Took a fallen soggy old log, cut it in 2 foot lengths and stacked them into a pyramid at 100 yards to shoot at the ends. In a few years I'll split the chunks and collect what lead has stayed in them.

[danthman114]

wont it be easier to dig it out of a earthen berm? with a strainer and a shovel? plus it doubles as range maintenance.

[tazman]

My vote is for a 2'x2'x8" box filled with sand mounted on vertical 2x4s.
The front is plywood or OSB screwed to the box.
When the front gets shot up, put a wheelbarrow in between the vert. 2x4s, remove screws and let the sand pour out into the wheelbarrow.
I use 1/4" mesh welded wire screen to separate the lead for re-use (casting). Then a new front gets screwed on and re-fill with the sand and your good to go.

I use something very similar to this. Very easy. If you have some scrap lumber around it is also very cheap.

[Eddie2002]

Been using a 16 inch pine log for a .22 backstop and 100 grain plinkers for about one year now. The center is about shot out and I'm nailing two pieces of 2x6 over the center. Even some of my plinkers are going all the way through the backstop now and some of my "hotter" .380 ACP loads are blowing all the way through to the second 2x6. It's about time to split the log up into kindling and see what drops out. Bet there is a good 10 lbs of lead in it.
Had a couple ricochets when shooting a black powder .50 caliber round ball with a light load into the log. The ball would dent a hole into the pine and then bounce straight back at me. Put a some nice dents in the side of the shop before I got wise. Had the same thing happen with a B B gun when I was a kid and got hit in the leg.

[1bluehorse]

Least ya' didn't shoot yer eye out kid..............:groner:

[Rusty W]

I've been shooting into wood logs for about 5-6 years. These are Hickory stumps from a tree that was blown over from a storm. I've used Oak, Cottonwood, Elm, Sycamore, Cedar, whatever else I could cut up for stumps. I've shot 22's, 30cal, 32mag, 327 mag, 9mm, 38, 357mag, 40cal, 44spl, 44mag, 45acp, 45colt from 700fps-1200fps lead & jacketed, 45/70 from mild to wild, wild being about 1900fps w/a 405jsp from a Ruger #1. I haven't had a bullet or boolit go completely through on any of them until they get about 1/2 rotten. I have found that some boolits will bounce back when there's a pile built up & another is sent in there hauling the mail. When I'm ready to collect I just use a small hatchet & split them or a wedge & hammer, I get about 75-80% back.

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj51/RWoolever/02-06-11_1513-1.jpg (http://s269.photobucket.com/user/RWoolever/media/02-06-11_1513-1.jpg.html)

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[Andy]

Thanks for all the replies everyone, nice to hear everyone's experience on it. Today was a range day again and the only firewood round I could get at that was large enough was a 16" long piece of beech. It was cut a few years ago and has been off the ground, so it is reasonably dry. Would have rather got something lighter/more rotten but this is all I had.

Made up a quick x-brace cradle to get the block ~24" off the ground and took it to the range. Shooting 9mm and .45 cast bullets at low-moderate velocities at 15 yards, WW+2% tin, combo of air cooled and water dropped, and with a piece of medium weight cardboard over the face of it to keep the targets nice. By the looks of the cardboard and sides of the fresh wood I didn't have any ricochets but the wood does splinter/fragment where the bullets impact and it wears the cardboard out somewhat quickly. I am shooting into end grain here so that is one aspect that might be different from other situations people have encountered with ricochets.

Interesting to hear about the ricochets people have experienced, it is a good reminder to approach anything new like this carefully.

I'll shoot into the log over the winter and see what I can melt out of it come summer.

[Jim..47]

I have bad wrists too. They are permanently swollen and stiff as as dry oak, but something that helps me alot when I want to shoot my Contender 44 Mag and my 45/70 same weapon is I wear full grain leather gloves. In fact I wear these gloves most of the even if I shoot a rifle, especially my muzzleloader. It improved your grip vastly and cuts down on the shock a lot.

[Andy]

Just a little extra data: I've been shooting into that beech round the last week and shot 100-150 9mm and another 100-150 .45 acp into a vertical area in the center of it (two vertical targets per printed sheet). After about those 250 rounds the log finally split right down the middle. There was a heck of a ball of lead right behind each main impact point which wasn't possible to remove (going to melt it this summer), and about a pound of lead in individual bullets was able to be picked out by hand right from the split easily.

For what it is worth, I'm shooting with undisturbed snow all around the block and so I can say for sure I haven't experienced any bullets exiting the wood in any direction, whether out the sides, bottom or back toward the shooter. Once it split I shot a few through it without knowing and they made very obvious trails in the snow. Nothing else to be seen for at least 50 yards in any direction. I sometimes have to look for brass by the hole it melts in the snow so it is pretty easy to notice if anything has penetrated the snow anywhere.

If I were to be cutting a round of wood just for this purpose I would make it 24" long and at least 16" in diameter. It doesn't seem like the hardwood holds up any better than the pine so I would go with softwood to keep the weight low if you are carrying it. That size would let you staple a printed 8.5x11 target to it (with multiple targets anywhere on the page) and let you shoot at least 500-1000 rounds into it I am guessing. I'm using whatever I can break free from the unsplit firewood pile right now in the middle of winter, which is wood that is too small in diameter and length, but this summer I'll set aside some proper logs and have a stash of wood to do it right from then on.

[BrianL]

I had a few very large poplars blown down in a windstorm. The larger ones were about 20" diameter. I cut them in 18" slugs and used them all summer for group muzzleloader shoots. When the faces got a little ragged we just turned them around. Nothing sucks up water and lead like poplar. At the end of the fall, I split several up and burned several. Re-smelted the lead after letting it dry out for several days due to the wood fibers mushed into the lead.

[JSnover]

Instead of sand, rubber, or logs, has anyone tried sawdust? The boolits could be recovered using a piece of screen or mesh, the media would be reusable and if some of it got into the pot it wouldn't be a problem.