Question of range scrap worth?

[Freightman]

OK went to the range yesterday evening, no one there except the 22 prone shooters the wind was not to bad 20/25 (not bad in the Texas Panhandle) finished shooting at the rifle HP range, went to the Bulls eye pistol range and noticed the 4" rain had washed a lot of sand to the bottom, so took my GI entrenching tool screen and a 2 gal bucket down and sifted the dry sand at the bottom of the berm. Took three screen fulls to fill the 2 gal bucket to the first rim ( didn't fill up as I am not suppose to lift that much because of my back (that is another story) so we are talking 10 min max loaded up and threw the washed down dirt back up on the berm. This was only at one station and there are 24 so there is a lot of lead there (yes the range master knows).
Well this morning I went to coffee (and roll) schuss do not tell my wife. Got back at 10:30AM set up the smelter and smelted the 1 3/4 gal down, finished at 12:45PM one hour and fifteen min and no more than 15 min at the range and I got aprox 35# out of the bucket for 1.5 hours work and 1/2 gal of gasoline in my Colman camp stove.
Not to bad for high quality lead that is 80% cast anyhow.So is it worth it? yes to me it is, but do ask the range first and leave it better than you found it.

[beagle]

Range scrap's good but messy to work with. I seperate the jacketed from the cast and the cast usually gives me pretty hard alloy. The jacketed gives fairly pure lead.

Yes, it's well worth messing with.

I went shooting one Sunday morning and came home and was well into a nap. Got a call from a shooting friend and wanted to know if I wanted some lead. He was moving. A few minutes later, I was over there. He had four 105mm wooden ammo crates and about 5 five gallon buckets of cast .38 wadcutters that he's picked off the police range over the years when they were using reloads.

Had to empty the 105 containers as we couldn't lift them so I ended up with a pile of .38 wadcutters in the back of my Toyota about 2 feet high and 5 feet in diameter. The rear bumper drug on my drive and his and the front wheels were really light on the way home.

At home, I scooped them into 5 gallon buckets about half full. Took 6 wheelbarrow loads to get them under the back deck.

Man, that was some good casting lead.

So, keep minning./beagle

[targetshootr]

I'm with you guys, if it's free it's a good deal. I try to pick them up off the berms every trip and try to get as much as I put downrange so my net loss is zip. Haven't smelted any yet so the stash is huge.

[hydraulic]

I have an acreage in the country with a good hill for a backstop. I have a little more than 100 yds. for my range, and all my shooting is done there. I have shot a hole in the hill about 3 feet deep and five feet across, during the last 20 years, and all my lead is in there, somewhere. I still have about 500 lbs of WW's to shoot up before I start mining my backstop, but I'm coming up on 71 years old next year, so I had better arrange for some of you guys to salvage my old bullets after I have gone to where the woodbine twineth.

[Bigjohn]

If the metal that ends up in the berm is suitable for boolits/bullets in the first place; it's good enough to be salvaged for reuse as boolits.

Many rifle/pistol ranges have to clean out their berms ocassionaly to prevent the likelyhood of riccohets from metal already in them. This could be very profitable on military ranges. Copper and lead.

I had best get myself down to the claims office and stake my claim to a section of my local club. [smilie=1:

John.

[Fatman]

My two car repair shops called me last night and said cmon down buddy got some Wheel weights for ya. When I got there I was expecting maybe a 1/2 pail but apparently he has other friends who have shops and I had to go home and get the blazer. I had to make 2 trips six buckets each trip and they're all lead, no stick on's or tin through the first 5 buckets I've sorted.

Apparently two of the guys went to the junk yard of another friend and started pulling them. It's gonna take a while to smelt this all down, and it's supposed to rain here all weekend :mad::mad:

Man I love free lead, I'll probably sell it to a buddy of mine when I switch over to bismuth/tin for casting sinkers and jigs but it's free for me and will make me some money later!!!!!!!!!

Fatman

[Tom Herman]

Lead is lead is lead.... And if it's FREE and all you have to do is put some elbow grease into it, by all means get all you can!
I scrounge as much wheel weights and any other type of lead as I can.
Unless it's horribly contaminated with something undesireable, it can all be cast or alloyed to make something useful.
I would dearly love to find a local place to mine out...

Happy Shootin'! -Tom