Weekend Smelting

[Jon]

I finally broke down and bought a fish fryer and a Dutch Oven. I spent the afternoon on Saturday cleaning up the yard and smelting. A mostly full pot of range lead yields about 25lbs of ingots.

Is this stuff usually soft enough for my BP revolver? I don't have a hardness gauge.

[docone31]

It outa work ok.
I use wheel weights in my cap and balls. I like the tighter fit. No chain fires so far.
Most of the range scrap will be pure lead, unless you are on the pistol range. Even then, few people cast their own at most ranges.

[Jon]

It's mostly from jacketed bullets. There's quite a bit of stuff to pull out to get to the silver goodness on the bottom.

Someone mentioned that the black sandy stuff is lead oxide? Is that true? Should I save that for a later melt? I've been just dumping it in with the other sand and jackets that float on the top.