A visit from the Tinsel Fairy

[evan price]

Was melting down a pot of about 75 pounds of range scrap last week.
Once things were nice and liquid I started scooping out the jackets and stuff with my mesh scoop. I always shake and tap the scoop on the pot to get the last lead dribble out of the jackets before they go in the metal bucket to cool and get sorted.

This one scoop, I pulled it out of the pot, and it started spraying fine, hair-thin lead in a stream. After a minute it finally stopped. It shot about a foot and a half out! Was left with a big wad of lead hair on the table.

Turns out what it was was a large caliber (guessing .500 smith or something) jacketed, totally-enclosed bullet, which had what looked like a factory made pinhole in the middle of the base. The lead inside had cooked and expanded and was pushing out the hole. Kinda neat, glad I was wearing long sleeves and gloves.

Anyone else seen this?

[EMC45]

That would have tore up my flip flops......

[qajaq59]

I haven't had that happen, but you can get some weird effects when melting range lead. The safety gloves and glasses can save a lot of bad burns. Hopefully everyone wears them?

[44fanatic]

Had it happen to me the very first time I melted lead. Through some J bullets in the pot that I had pulled from some bad loads I made. Had around 3 of them shoot off like that.

After that, members here reccomended smashing J bullets with a hammer/sledge to break the jacket.

[sturf]

Had a guy I knew that ran a gun shop give me a box of pulled military bullets some years ago. started to melt the lead out of them and something caught my eye. they didn't look right. I dropped three or four into my empty pot to see what would happen. Well. it happened. They went off and shot out an overhead light and a window before I could cover the pot. Turned out they were tracers. This was 35 years ago and I know better now. New shooters: be careful and check before you melt. It would have bad had I dropped them into a pot of melted lead.

[ghh3rd]

Look out for live rounds in range scrap. I was at an outdoor range last week that's shared by local police departments. Laying right there on top of the berm was a live rifle round. Someone said they run up close to the targets shooting, may have been a jam they cleared. Imagine that thing in your melt :holysheep

[Shiloh]

Anyone else seen this?

No, but I have seen them burst rather spontaneously and somewhat violently

SHiloh

[Buckshot]

Look out for live rounds in range scrap. I was at an outdoor range last week that's shared by local police departments. Laying right there on top of the berm was a live rifle round. Someone said they run up close to the targets shooting, may have been a jam they cleared. Imagine that thing in your melt :holysheep

..............That's what I was going to say, watch out for live rounds! Replenishing a partial pot and having a 22 LR get pushed under and a milli second later you have the potential for a real tragedy.

.............Buckshot

[Jon]

Always melt range scrap from a cold pot. There tends to be alot of moisture in there. I've seen the squirting bullets before. It's typically the copper encased pistol bullets, but even hollow points will sometimes squirt at you if they are sitting just right.

A turkey fryer burner and a HF cast iron Dutch Oven work great for range scrap. It takes forever to get anything with an electric pot.