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Fill the pot, skim, leave it to cool. Drill and tap for an eye bolt....viola!!! Instant target. Shoot it till it croaks, pick up the pieces, remelt, possibly adding a little more as needed.
This is an 8" x 3" thick chunk, should hold up to light loads and pistol pretty well. Even if it don't, it's perfectly rebuildable. LOL!!!
Attachment 205321
It will be interesting to see how it holds up
Please keep us informed
As long as it doesn't fragment after a handful of shots it'll be good. The beauty part is, 30 minutes on a turkey fryer and you got a new one.
Most of our collection buckets are zinc now. Gotta put that garbage to use!
I got a bunch of lead sheeting from a redo of hospital XRay room. I was cutting it up about 2x2'
to roll up to melt. Got the bright idea to used it fore bullet stops for 22s in basement. Hang sheets
of it in trap about 1" apart. Bullets shoot through 2-3 of them and stick into the next one. Gathers
up the bullets automatically. You just have to rotate 1st few that get holed and you are in business.
one minor flaw, how do you seperate the boolit chunks from the zinc chuncks when you reclaim the lead:confused:
@ rancher1013
That is easy.
You melt some known lead, then add the Range scrap to it.
The Lead should melt fairly quickly If you have the pot at 700 degrees.
Then skim off anything that doesnt melt right away.
But dont wait too long, or the Zinc will start to Disolve rather than Melt, similar to Adding antimony to lead.
That should be a Standard Practice for melting range scrap.
But most guys that I have seen that save range scrap, just stick it all in a pot, turn up the heat as high as it will go and let it sit for hours, trying to milk out anything that will melt.
Then they add that stuff to their Good Lead pot, and contaminate the whole bunch.
I prefer to keep the range scrap seperate, and add tin or antimony as needed to get a good alloy for bullets.
But basicly start off treating it as Pure lead for my alloys.
signing up to follow the results of shooting at it
with that much zinc id be making dry pile batteries.. zinc is great for battery anode plates. if you can get the zinc to thin as a foil and using copper foil you can make a battery the length of a paper towel tube using typewriter paper disks saturated with electrolyte between the zinc and copper foils with potentials of 2Kvdc-3Kvdc.. rather like the Clarendon Dry Pile or a zamboni dry pile except using zinc and copper rather than zinc and silver foils and that has been running the Oxford Bell for over 170 years. in theory with modern high quality dielectric construction you could make a battery with potentials in the 100Kvdc range or more...
I gotta get some pictures but 9mm, 40 & 45 barely make a dent.
223 with a 55g fmj stopped about 3/4" deep. This should hold up very well.
Hi NoAngel,
Seems like great idea and a nice way to set up a bunch of cheap plates for a backyard range.
Please post some pics when you get a chance. Also maybe some progress reports of how it holds up over time.
I will be doing some smelting over the weekend and while I have things set up may cast something similar. Great use for the zinc from wheel weight buckets that would otherwise be scrap.
Also wondering if maybe alloying the zinc with another metal might serve to increase hardness and durability.
Will do a little research.
yeah, but then you couldn't sell to the scrapyard as pure zinc,if you ever wanted to. I thought about that earlier. but it seems to be doing ok by itself!
Aluminum (despite its very high melting point) will dissolve in molten zinc.
You end up with what we call pot metal.
Problem with that is it makes it more brittle and more difficult to remelt and recast when the target gets damaged.
Zinc alloy (Kirksite?) boolits are as tough as FMJ and only 2/3 the weight of a lead boolit thrown by the same mold. This can alloy very high velocity light recoil loads for a large bore firearm. US Army Ordnance once used zinc alloy Boolits to test light vehicle armor plating and gunshields.
Several years ago, zinc-alloy "Zee" bullets were marketed here in the U.S...... as I recall, 9mm, .357 and .45Quote:
Originally Posted by Multigunner