range scrap shovel?

[SeabeeMan]

I have access to a few areas where people have been shooting for years and would like to try and skim up some of the lead near the surface. The owners don't want me excavating the hill side or anything, but sifting through what is already loose is fine. I was wondering about a shovel with the center area of the spade cut out and some sort of sifter welding in its place. This way I could just scoop up the loose stuff, shake it out a bit, and dump it in a bucket.

What is an effective material and hole size to catch most of the lead?

[GoodOlBoy]

Or you could use a drill or drill press and just pop holes all through the shovel blade. Kinda like a strainer. 1/4" get's you .25 so you'll lose some 22s, BUT I would think it will sift pretty well on dry material. Any smaller and I don't know how much sifting you will do before the thing is clogged.

Anyway it's just an idea. Otherwise Just making a frame with a square top and a mesh bottom to shovel into might work better.

GoodOlBoy

[Czech_too]

What your proposing, seems to me to be time consuming and labor intensive.
If I may suggest, go out and just pick up what is laying on the surface of the ground, especially after a decent rain. The place that I go to does not allow mining, so I go out on a fairly regular basis and do the above. On average, I'd get and easy 100+ pounds, after smelting, per year.
Depending on the type of soil, you might want to look into getting say a 3 gallon bucket, cutting out most of the bottom and replacing it with a double layer of 1/4" hardware cloth. This would act as a sieve and if there's a water source nearby you could also wash it off some.

[Sasquatch-1]

Check these shovels out.

http://www.amazon.com/Toolite-Easy-Dig-Sifting-Shovel/dp/B00PM8866U

[mongoose33]

This may not be exactly what you have in mind, but this brings to my mind the method a lead recovery company used to recover shot from my trap club's range. In short, they dug it up, pulverized it just a bit to break down the clumps, and then dropped the resulting "soil" in a sort of wind tunnel that would blow away the soil and organic matter, leaving the heavier shot to drop down near the fan. Sort of like winnowing wheat.

Anyway, you'll have to address getting the soil to be small enough in dimension so it doesn't clog your "shovel".

Don't know if you have access to something like this, but if it were me, I'd try using a barn fan off a small generator, creating a wind in front of which I'd slowly drop pulverized shovels of reclaimed dirt. The lead would fall straight down, the dirt would be blown away. Literally. :)

Just a thought, maybe it might cause some other idea to spring to mind.

[Mk42gunner]

I think it would be easier and cheaper to just make a wooden frame with ¼" hardware cloth on the bottom, instead of trying to make a sifting shovel.

I do like the idea of a barn fan blowing the loose dirt away though.

Robert

[butch2570]

What your proposing, seems to me to be time consuming and labor intensive.
If I may suggest, go out and just pick up what is laying on the surface of the ground, especially after a decent rain. The place that I go to does not allow mining, so I go out on a fairly regular basis and do the above. On average, I'd get and easy 100+ pounds, after smelting, per year.
Depending on the type of soil, you might want to look into getting say a 3 gallon bucket, cutting out most of the bottom and replacing it with a double layer of 1/4" hardware cloth. This would act as a sieve and if there's a water source nearby you could also wash it off some. Knee pads and a bucket work great, take a rake and just move the very surface of dirt around and pick up more lead. The sifting thing I tried was a pain, was continually picking out rocks and clods ,handling and throwing things back down of no use. Getting on my knees and just picking up what I knew was lead worked far better for me. It doesn't take long to pick up 25 - 40 pounds of lead with your fingers, if you are at a good range.

[LUCKYDAWG13]

this is what i use http://www.cabelas.com/catalog/search.cmd?form_state=searchForm&N=0&fsch=true&Ntk=AllProducts&Ntt=trapping+sifter&x=10&y=6&WTz_l=Header%3BSearch-All+Products

[jmsj]

http://i961.photobucket.com/albums/ae97/jmsj515/detonicsframecomanderslide002-1.jpg (http://s961.photobucket.com/user/jmsj515/media/detonicsframecomanderslide002-1.jpg.html)

I cut out a portion of this shovel and welded in some flat expanded metal. The holes are 1/4".
Works pretty well in sandy soils.
Good Luck, jmsj

[SeabeeMan]

http://i961.photobucket.com/albums/ae97/jmsj515/detonicsframecomanderslide002-1.jpg (http://s961.photobucket.com/user/jmsj515/media/detonicsframecomanderslide002-1.jpg.html)

I cut out a portion of this shovel and welded in some flat expanded metal. The holes are 1/4".
Works pretty well in sandy soils.
Good Luck, jmsj

That's exactly what I was thinking. As far as just building a whole table, it more the amount of excavating and equipment the land owners feel comfortable with. A little sifting with hand tools is no problem as long as I'm not digging. It's when we start talking about tables, fans, generators, etc, that I lose my source.

[Sasquatch-1]

I got one of these baskets and a short handle digging shovel. The larger holes in the grilling basket let a lot of the garbage fall out. The smallest bullets I end up with are usually .35 cal. and bigger. It takes me about 1/2 an hour to gather a half of a 5 gallon bucket. I take it home, spread it out on the driveway and wash out as much of the dirt as possible. Let it dry for a few days and only melt from an empty pot do to the possibility of trapped water.

I have used home made sifting frames and other devices, but this little basket seems to work for me. If you are planning to go big with this project you may want to try building a motorized shaker table.



145879

[borg]

It depends on the soil/sand/rock.
If rock, pick it by hand, if soil that's clumped, by hand, if sand, go whole hog with a 24x 24 frame, or smaller with 1/4 hardware cloth .

[Walter Laich]

hire a neighborhood kid to do the grunt work

[shooter93]

I used a shovel cut out like that...a spade type shovel so it had a point......for years when they used to let us collect lead here and it worked very well. Those days are gone here now though.

[RoGrrr]

I remembered a sifter my Father had built for my Mother and her flower beds. It was a 15" frame made of 6" wide boards, 1/2" thick. He nailed some 1/4" screen on it.
I took it to the range and it worked.
or SEEMED to work - bulky, cumbersome bcuz of no handles.

I now mine the berm and sift with a basket I made out of quarter inch machine screen on non-structural (decorative) angle iron.
146757

My basket is about 8" x 8" x 15" with 1\4" machine screen and weighs under 10 Lbs yet is strong enough that I can use it as a step to climb up into the bed of my lifted 4WD truck.

I rake the scrap down the slope with a bamboo leaf rake and put it into my sifter basket. Then I shake it and dump into 5 gallon buckets.With my gathering procedure I can collect a bucket (about 150 Lbs) in under an hour.


The other day I was at the range and was pressed for time since others were coming to use that range so I decided not to sift but just put what I had raked down into my bucket and sift it when I got home. I filled the bucket, which I should not have been able to lift but since there was so much more DIRT than ORE, I decided that wasn't the way to go so I sifted while raking. It didn't take much longer and I got plenty of ore.