Motherload stories

[Super Sneaky Steve]

I want to hear about your big score. The time you found a huge supply of lead for free or a very good price.

I'm sure I can't be the only one that gets a tingly feeling from finding grey gold.:cbpour:

[David2011]

A buddy was at a PPC pistol match recently. After the match someone hollered out "does anybody want this?" He snagged it and brought me a 5 gallon bucket of linotype, still in printable form. Scooooooooooore!

David

[Hardcast416taylor]

About every 8 months or so I stop by a car dealership that a buddy owns. I get my oil changed and ask if there are any scrap weights to be had by the tire changer? I usually get about 3/4 of a 5 gal. pail of weights for no charge. Even with the new non lead weights accounting for a part of the pail I still am getting a decent amount of lead weights.Robert

[bangerjim]

How about 450# of Sn for a buck a pound?

Or 500# of hardball for $0.85/#?

Scoreeeee enough for ya? :lovebooli

[BACKTOSHOOTING]

450 # of raw WW at a garage sale for $25 Dose that qualify fscooooreore :lol:

[rintinglen]

In 1976 I was working at a Montgomery Wards Store in Escondido, CA. I mentioned to a friend in Automotive that I would sure like some wheel weights for casting boolits. That Friday at closing for a Six Pack of Bud and a Pizza, which I shared, I got a 33 gallon trashcan full of whee l weights. You should have seen me gingerly piloting my poor old Pinto Wagon home with something like 1100 pounds of wheel weights! I shot for years off that score, finally selling the last couple of buckets to a friend when I moved up to LA.

[mart]

Twenty some years ago I stopped into a small town print shop on the spur of the moment. They had quite a bit of linotype and were a few days from hauling it to the dump. I asked if they wanted to sell it to me and I'd save them the trip to the dump. Lead was 10 cents a pound at the time. Hauled home 996 pounds of linotype for $100. Still using that linotype.

[varmint243]

Lead was free and readily available when I started casting
All you had to do was ask around or go to some tire shops and get all you want

[bullet maker 57]

Went to pick up what was supposed to be 1000lbs of lead. Ended up with 2800lb of ingots,sheet,ww,big chunks, and cast boolits. All for $.30 a pound.
I think that qualifies as a score.

[Trapperscott]

Bought a sail boat for $400.00. Had to pay the dump $50.00 to dump it. The keel weighed 2600 lbs. Sweet!!!

[44man]

Lucky fellas! I once got a huge pile of cable sheathing with wire in it, sold the wire too.
Thought I hit a gold mine once at the scrap dealers. 55 gal drums of WW's that they were paying 10 cents a pound for. I asked and was told they do not sell to the public anymore. :killingpc

[Went2kck]

A lady the wife works with had a bunch of old reloading from her Dad that passed away. Their was about 30 lbs of powder, 8 lyman molds, a lyman 310 set with dies for 45, 30-06, 300 win mag, 45 colt, and a couple others. A trimmer with holders in the different calibers. savage press, 450 luberi seizer. 5 30 carbine magazines, shell holders. 200 45 colt and 40 300 win mag 150 38 brass cases most are new. about 800 30 cal gas checks. A new box of 25 cal gas checks. And some other stuff I cant remember off the top of my head. All this for 200.00 dollars. Unfortunately their was no seizer dies for the 450 lubber. This was a good deal from stuff from the 70s. I did get about 15 lbs of lead to that was cast into bullets that I melted down as I could not use any of them. wrong caliber for my use. Dangit any way.

[1johnlb]

650 #s of raw range lead for $80. I processed 200 # of it and got $35 worth of copper and bimetal from it which I quickly turned back in for 70# of ww. It's about time to process another 200#.

[websterz]

We're currently mining out a berm that has seen half a century of use. I have no way of knowing for sure but I believe that there is at least 20 tons of range scrap there and we have exclusive rights to mine the whole hill. All it's costing is time and effort.

[Went2kck]

We're currently mining out a berm that has seen half a century of use. I have no way of knowing for sure but I believe that there is at least 20 tons of range scrap there and we have exclusive rights to mine the whole hill. All it's costing is time and effort. That would be a great deal right their

[Guesser]

I got 800# of dirty lino out of an old print plant back in 2012 got 80$

[Walter Laich]

I found a lead WW on the street one time

[Blackwater]

Back when I first started casting seriously in the early 70's, I was working to put my wife through college to finish her degree. Then when she completed it and got a job, I went back to finish mine. We were always pretty well "broke" but eked out a living for ourselves and our son, and though funds were low, powder and primers were cheap and even we could afford that. Learning to cast was a great boon, because I was getting all the WW's I could cast for free from a service station I patronized because I liked and trusted their owner/mechanic. Free WW's was a boon to a poor working couple, and allowed me to shoot in the volume I wanted to, or at least had the TIME to do. After going back to school again, I worked as many as 3 part time jobs in addition to my studies, and we eked our way through those times rather happily, if frugally.

Nowadays, it's awfully easy to forget is was once like that, and that it was REAL. Many here aren't old enough to have known those times, or what they were like, but it WAS, and it was good, too. It's not impossible that times like that could return, but it sure looks unlikely with the way we're going now, and the bents we seem to have, but us ol' pharts DO relish those grand memories of another day and another time when a sudden big score wasn't necessary, or even really desirable because of the necessity of moving a large amount of solid weight.

More recently, I found a largish container of lino, and was VERY proud to get it here, where it's really rare to come across.

[dondiego]

They were repairing the road in town and one of the workers that I knew asked me if I wanted any lead since they were replacing the lead water main. I said sure! He brought over about 200 feet of soft lead 1 inch pipe. Useful stuff!

[45-70 Chevroner]

We ( my wife and I ) were going through Hawthorne Nevada last September and we had tire tread separation on our fifth wheel. I ended up buying two new tires. I happened to notice a bucket of wheel weights "daah". I ask one of the guys, what's the chance of getting some tire weights? he said how much do you want? I said what ever you can spair. He put the bucket in the bed of my truck. He said because of the distance Hawthorn is from any large city they can't get rid of them except to give them away or take them to the dump. Unfortunately I live about 700 miles from Hawthorn. He also said that thier were a couple of cast boolit shooters in Hawthorn. This was at a Firestone dealership.

[45-70 Chevroner]

Another little story. I worked for the Standard Oil Co. ( Chevron USA ) from 1968 to 1997. I got into casting in 1970, I was able to get all the WW I wanted. I think there were about 30 or 40 dealers in the Phoenix district. I got weights from all of them. I financed all of my needs from those weights, ie. Reloading equipment, dies, presses, lubersizers, tumblers, powder, primers, molds, smelters, shell cases, you name it. I sold WW for .05 to .20 cents a pound that was a lot of WW. When I moved to north east Arizona I still had a 1000 pounds or more. I am way down from from that now.

[white eagle]

when I first started my search for ww
I walked into a tire shop(small chain) and asked the main man 'if he had any
ww he wanted to get rid of,he pointed to a full bucket of ww
I asked how much he wanted he said 10 bucks
I took them
he also said to the guy (kid) working with him "you know what you call a guy
who carries a full bucket of ww" the kid said what "sir" he replied.
that was the only bucket I got from him
his boss was selling to the scrap yard and he hadn't known about it

[45-70 Chevroner]

How about 450# of Sn for a buck a pound?

Or 500# of hardball for $0.85/#?

Scoreeeee enough for ya? :lovebooli

I think this was the best one so far.

[GoBig]

Last year a friend of mine contacted me to see if I was willing to clean out the water trap at the indoor range he shoots at. I got a 55 gallon drum full of range scrap for the price of scooping it out and carrying it upstairs from the basement. I've got 600 pounds in ingots out of it, with about 15 gallons left to melt down.

[jonp]

I have 2. I stopped at a tire place where my former company got it's work done for an alignment. While shooting the bull with the head guy I asked like I always do about wheel weights. He said some guy usually came around once in a while for some to make either weights for go carts or sinkers but there were some out in the shop lying around and I was welcome to them. Filled 2 5gallon buckets with 4 and 6oz wheelweights. He then told me they had several barrels of them out back and to come by anytime for the ones in the shop and he would push over the barrels out back and let me sort out the lead if I wanted.

Got some tires done a few days ago near the house and asked the guy about the weights. No dice, he said, some guy stopped to get them for sinkers but he had a chunk at home if I wanted lead and to stop by in a few days. Turns out it was a weight for a telephone guy wire and weighed about 100lbs.

[pls1911]

55 gallon drum of Linotype, Monotype, B-type, advertising logos, spacers, and letter type...
$50, and it HAD TO WEIGH 800-1000. Pounds
been 10 years and I can't bring myself to melt some of this artwork.. .

Also, at least 700 pounds of roofing lead... Half still on rolls still smelting and cleaning the other half as needed.

Also an ammo box full of 50/50 bar solder from a friend who simply didn't need it... About 40 pounds free

Also 12 x 12 pound sticks of Dallas babbit material ( Linotype but higher antimony and a bit of copper...
from the smelter just before shutdown, about 60 cents a pound I think.
Over 30 year plus span, you're bound to stumble over a few good deals ...

[dragon813gt]

35 gallon drum of wheel weights for free from a shop that takes care of a lot of heavier vehicles. This was right around the change so there was only a few inches of non lead at the top. Cleaning that all up was a pain and I don't wish to ever repeat it. I can still get free weights from them but I pass most of the time.

I know most people will flinch at the cost. But paying $1.36 a pound shipped for 96/2/2 is a score in my mind. Time is a premium for me since having a child so not having to process the lead is a big plus.

[Baja_Traveler]

My Motherload story:

Back in the early 90's I was working at a biotech where we developed a drug to fight cancer by binding radioactive cobalt to a cancer specific antibody. An engineer bought a whole 2000 # pallet of isotope cups to ship the stuff to research sites, but he ordered the wrong size - too small. The cost of freight back was not worth it, so the company gave me the whole pallet. You should have seen my poor Toyota truck running those loads home! So for the past 20 or so years I have been feeding off of those water glass size isotope cups - which turn out to be a very nice 20:1. I also ended up with 100# of .45 hardball from a relative who passed away - nearly as hard as linotype - and I've been using that to spike the pot for the higher velocity rifles where needed...

As to that drug - it worked like a miracle, and literally brought a few people back from the dead. Only problem was it had to be made for that particular patient, had a very short shelf life, and ended up costing more to make than could be had in return. Bummer really...

[lightman]

A while ago my favorite telephone man dropped off a truck load of phone cable sheathing in my driveway, about 800#. Cost me a case of Sam Adams Octoberfest. I posted some pics of that stuff when I smelted it. Several years ago I scored three 5 gallon buckets of type metal, mostly Mono and Foundry, and about a dozen bars of Lino, all for free. Its still out there, but its getting harder to find.

[Mytmousemalibu]

Got 500lbs or so of aircraft ballast lead for absolutely free! About another 50lb of roofing lead....free. And about 100lb of lead plumbing free. I also used to work in an automotive shop and am still good friends with the owner and he saves me the WW's they get, its not a ton and there's a fair mix of steel and some zinc weights in there but still a good amount of lead, about a 5gal bucket full so far, I need to give him a visit again actually! I need to find me an old sailboat! I know of one more piece I would love to have, an aircraft nose ballast fixture for engine changes, its about 2000lbs of good hard lead and I salivate thinking about it! It pays to have lots of friends in many places and putting the word out you want grey gold! Wait.....did I say gold? I mean't that nasty hazardous waste. I'll be a pal and haul it off for you so you won't have to look at it again!

[Jayhawkhuntclub]

I found a lead WW on the street one time
That sounds like the makings of a pretty good day!:mrgreen:

I had a buddy bring me 95 lbs of free lead about a year ago! That was my best single lead score to date. My dad has probably given about that much over the last couple years. The rest I had to scrounge for.

[imashooter2]

5 buckets of indoor range scrap for free. Well over 1000 pounds. It was a 75 miles up a toll road from home and take it now or leave it.

FWIW, a 93 Mustang makes a poor pickup truck. It was steering a little easy on the trip home…

[Mytmousemalibu]

I hate to ponder the coulda, shoulda, woulda's but it happens. Before I got into casting and reloading, boy, I missed out on 5gal bucket after bucket of mostly all lead WW's. And now, shop to shop here, you are hard pressed to get anything. Lot of other casters around here and many shops won't even sell you weights. Gotta be creative and ask/know people or get your wallet out and pay. We have 1 scrap yard that sells lead, i was quoted $1.09 per lb. I've been lucky to get most of my lead free, gotta be close to a 1000lbs now. I would like to increase that number though! I need to get the rest processed into ingots.

[Catshooter]

The best score I ever found was one I had to pass up as I was moving.

Eleven (11!) fifty five gallon drums full of all lead take-off wheel weights.

For free, you just had to haul them.

*sigh*


Cat

[Mytmousemalibu]

The best score I ever found was one I had to pass up as I was moving.

Eleven (11!) fifty five gallon drums full of all lead take-off wheel weights.

For free, you just had to haul them.

*sigh*


Cat

I think I would have cried! Well, I still might! Wow, you'd probably be set for life with that much and could trade for other alloys if needs be....Just wow!

[quack1]

I don't have a motherload story, but since I started casting in the late 60's, when there were a lot of gas stations that had a couple of repair bays, wheel weights were always plentiful and free for the hauling away. I have been shooting all those years and probably have enough lead to last me until I die or get too old to shoot, whichever comes first. Funny thing, I still can't turn down any free lead that turns up.

[lightman]

Me too, Quack! I have had a few good scores over the years, but Man what I could have stashed away if I had scrounged and hoarded back then. Free lead was so easy to get that you did not have to store it. Still sitting ok though!

[leadman]

I met a guy at the range that wanted to try cast boolits so had him come to my house and fixed him up with some. He called me later and said the car dealer he worked for had some weights I could have just for moving them. Turns out they had a very large Rubbermaid container behind a support pole that was splitting and their normal scrap metal guy would not touch it. Took me about a half hour to move what turned out later to be over #600 of smelted ingots.
Also met a medical tech at the shotgun range that worked in radiology. His boss was paying to have the isotope cores shipped off. got several thousand pounds of those for free.

[Catshooter]

Oh I cried then and I still cry now, don't worry. How could you not?


Cat

[imashooter2]

If we are moving on to tragedies...

My father was a Bell Telephone lineman in the late 50's and early 60's. He was shooting competitive bullseye at the time and casting his own H&G 50's for both his own use and to sell to cover his costs. Every guy in the line gang knew it and they would drop off all the cable sheath they came across, and they came across a LOT. So much that my Father had to eventually tell them to stop.

Time marches on and by the middle to end of the 60's, priorities had changed. The needs of a young family caused Dad to give up the competition and curtail his shooting in a big way. All that unused cable sheath lay under the back porch for years until he decided to build an addition onto the house.

I took 600 pounds or so and the contractors carried the rest into a dumpster and hauled it off. 2 tons? More? There was a whole lot of it.

I had no real need for that 600 pounds that I took. Free lead was widely available and WW were a much better choice for my shooting. You could stop in to any gas station in town and they were more than happy to have Bob carry that bucket of trash out to your car for you.

I weep about it now, but it was a different time.

[montanamike]

I got a quarter of a 55 gallon drum of scrap 63/37 solder for $20 awhile back (it was about half dirt from sweeping it off the shop floor). Then couple weeks ago found a half of a 5 gallon bucket of linotype at the scrap yard for 75 cents a pound.

[shootinfox2]

Sitting in a training class during a break. Instructor started talking about shooting.I mentioned that I was a bullet caster.He gave me around 800 pounds of sheet lead from a bathroom remodel. All I had to do was haul it away.

[mold maker]

I remember when I used to cull through the free weights and only take the big ones. I'd only take what I could carry in a cardboard box. I could always go back the next day, and do the same.
Of course there's lots of things I did 50 years ago, that aint gonna happen anymore.

[454PB]

About 30 years ago, a friend had the job of cleaning out an old print shop, I told him I'd take all the linotype. It took me a couple of years of reminding him, but one day he called to say he was on his way to deliver it (the print shop was 45 miles from my house. I was stunned when he arrived, he had the entire box of his 3/4 ton pickup loaded with foundrytype, monotype, linotype, and linotype ingots. The truck was so heavy it flattened the rear springs. It took us an hour to shovel the loose type into large metal garbage cans. I'd estimate 2500 pounds of loose type and another 300 pounds of ingots. I shared a lot of it with fellow casters, sold 600 pounds, and still have enough left to last my lifetime.

[kmk1012]

Oh the perks of running a tire shop for the past 16 years. You would be surprised at the amount of lead ww still being removed to this day. I have enough for me and any coworker or friend who wants to cast, for a couple lifetimes. The plus side of it is that I get paid while collecting them!

[Seeker]

Not a score for me but I have to tell about what I seen today. I was at our local recycling center today inquiring about wheel weights. The guy said "right back in that corner, in that 55 gal. drum". So I walked back and about soiled my britches. That drum was about 2" from being full to the brim! He quoted me 75 Cents a pound and I said "I'll take them all!"...he gave me a funny look, then I told him I was kidding. I talked him down to 50 cents and walked out with my meager 25#. But I'm going back when My wife gives me my allowance...☺

[wistlepig1]

I have a friend that owns 2 tire stores and I get 2, 5 gal. pales about every 6weeks. Free, can you say sweet!

[MtGun44]

Does anyboy know that would actually be "mother lode"?

Picking a nit.

Bill

[Super Sneaky Steve]

Does anyboy know that would actually be "mother lode"?

Picking a nit.

Bill

You can keep your lodes! I want a load of lead!;-)

I may have a story to tell, but it's still in progress.

[lightman]

Does anyboy know that would actually be "mother lode"?

Picking a nit.

Bill
I think it a mining term, maybe from the gold rush days in California.

[blackthorn]

About a month ago I got a call from a friend who spotted some lead at a yard sale. I went over and wound up with over 300 lbs. of ingoted WW (no zinc) for just over 50 cents a lb. I took a little bottle of muriatic acid and put a drop on each 12 lb. ingot to check for zinc.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

I worked for the phone company for over 37 years so lead was never a problem. I saw to it that when I retired I would have a life time supply. When we decided to move about 100 miles to our present location I had to give away several hundred pounds it but I still have a life time supply.

[Doggonekid]

I had a buddy whose mother was a realtor and she sold a house and ask me if I would haul the lead out of the basement. There were approx 800 LBS of 1 LB ingots and probably 1000 LBS of 25 to 35 LB ingots. I knew the Guy was a caster because the ingots all had RCBS or SAECO on them. I thought I had a life time supply and I left probably 8 - 5 gallon buckets of wheel weights. Now I wish I would of grabbed the buckets too. This was probably 30 years ago.

[BLTsandwedge]

Not what I scored, but what I gave away. My wife got a great job in PA (turns out it was short-lived) and we lived in CA. My wife got a relocation package that we were awe-struck by (as in they'd buy our house, move us, pay closing costs on the next house yada yada). We didn't argue too much.

Moving companies will not transport live ammo or primers/powder. I gave away, at my local club, at least 15 pounds of powder, many thousands of loaded rounds (mostly factory shotgun, rifle and pistol rounds- lots of 9mm and misc. rifle calibers) and many, many thousands of primers. We just couldn't carry it with us and there's no one who will ship opened boxes of flammables.

It felt great to give that stuff away- the reloaded rounds went to folks who knew me and my integrity. But the giving was awesome- just like the moulds and such that I've given away on this forum when it was the 'old' cast bullet forum. It's cool to pay it forward.

BTW- we're moving again. Does anyone want 50 or 60# of zinc? PM me!

[BenW]

My parents remodeled their bathroom. I got about 130lb of dead soft sheet lead from the lining for free.

[Land Owner]

I would not be a caster today had I not been given, free, 900#'s of radio-isotope shielding. Each syringe must be shielded, for transportation from pharmaceutical lab to Nuclear Medicine facility, in a cylindrical, pure-lead, ingot insert, of twin, 3.25# halves. A pair of "loaded" syringe ingots are inserted in their companion 37# pure-lead molded block. The 50# lead "stack" is placed in an ammo-can steel case.

I got 83 steel ammo-can cases with 18 each holding a 50# pure-lead stack. SWEET!

Since then I have "lucked into" free WW's and more than enough < $5/# tin at yard sales and flea markets.

I am set for life-plus!

[PULSARNC]

the mother load would be a sailboat keel off of a 40 boat for free.

[casterofboolits]

Mother load? Three thousand pounds of machine weights in sixty pound ingots. Free!

A thousand pounds of monotype at $.25/pound and a $20.00 surcharge for delivering to my shop door. :lol::bigsmyl2:

[lightman]

Wow, some of you Guys have made some good scores!

[257]

i went to a school surplus auction a few years back and bought 3 30 gal barrels of mono type

[Frank46]

Where I worked the company dump was only a short walk away. The splicer trucks and flush trucks would just dump their old lead, short pieces of solder bars and anything else when they cleaned out the trucks. So the little old bullet maker would take a gallon can and a flashlight (did my best work at night) and start scrounging. Easy to fill the can up with short sections of old solder bars. Even better was when I found a whole one. Lead sheathing from insulated cables was sometimes in huge chunks. And became friends with the instructor who ran the splicing school. He used to save the old solder in the post at the end of each class which lasted about a week. Still have some of the bars and hockey pucks from the pots. Even found bars of pure tin in the dumps. Been retired almost 20 years and still occasionally find stuff like that I squirreled away from the good old days. Don't know how many gallon cans of fishing sinkers we made. Yep them were the good old days. Frank

[USSRSNPR]

I'm lucky enough to work for a car dealer and few weeks I sift through the WW buckets, taking only the lead ones. Not a huge score but it keeps me going, I certainly cant cast and shoot them as fast as I can collect the weights so far.

[ahhbach]

How about 15-1600 lbs of Antimonial Cable lead? Free?