lead composition

[sdakotadoug]

I have a 5 gallon bucket of lead that I recieved from a hospital radiology lab. These are small lead containers that house things like radioactive iodine and such substances. Its shipped in from Canada or England. You can easily scratch/dent it with a fingernail. Does anyone know if this is pure lead or does it come with some unwanted contaminant? Thanks Doug

[waksupi]

Welcome aboard, Doug. Treat it as pure lead.

[sqlbullet]

Treat it as pure lead.

Respectfully, this is not great advice.

I have now refined about 1 ton of radiology scrap, and have another 1,000 lbs in my shop to go. I say this to qualify my experience, though limited in casting, applies exclusively to radiology scrap.

This lead will range in hardness from about 15 down to pure lead. Out of the 3000 lbs I have dealt with so far, only 110 lbs was pure lead. All the pure lead I received came in 9lb purple and 5lb blue containers marked 'iodine'.

My son's recent science fair experiment was using this lead to demonstrate the effects of quenching as a heat treatment. Ingots were made by refining 100 lbs of this lead together. Air cooled BHN's were 10.5 (650° casting temp), 11.2 (700° casting temp) and 11.8 (750° casting temp). Water dropped were 25.8, 29.5 and 32.4 at the same casting temps. All values are averages from 10 bullets, 175 gr SWC TL, 172.5 gr average actual weight, with the hardness tested on the nose using a Lee hardness test.

If your samples are pure lead, they will thud when dropped on concrete with no ring at all. If they are an alloy, they will ring.

[sdakotadoug]

Thanks for the replies, Doug

[xsquidgator]

You have good stuff there! I work in a hospital radiation oncology department and have been kindly disposing of the little vials that the I-125 (radioactive iodine seeds for prostate seed implants) seeds were shipped in. :)

It may depend on the company providing the little "pigs" as they're called, but if they say "Anazao Health", "Theragenics", or "Core/Mentor Oncology" they are not pure lead, they are something like wheelweights. I have been casting and shooting these for over a year and they're great. Aircooled they come out about BHN 9, water-quenched about BHN 14.
To use them, just take a hammer and chisel and break off the plastic covering over the little pigs, the plastic comes right off and you have a nice bit of lead in the pig and the little cap that sits on top of it.


I just a week or two ago got some lead bricks that used to be part of a radiation shield that seem to be pure lead (BHN around 4, my Lee hardness tester doesn't go down as low or soft as these things are). If you have sheet lead that is used to line the walls of x-ray rooms, that might well be pure lead, you just have to try it and see.