cutting lead ingots

[kennyb]

I cut em' with a saw-all and borrowed a friends 50 pound pot. BTW thanks Richard and thanks guys for your input and advice.

[grumman581]

I had a round "ingot" of the pure lead wheelweights that I let smelted down and then let cool down in my smelting pot after I had finished doing the regular wheel weights. It probably sat around the garage for nearly a year and then I decided to cast some bullets out of it. Didn't want to put it back in the smelting pot and recast it into normal size ingots, so I decided that I could just take a brick layer's chisel and a small sledge hammer and cut the round "ingot" into 2-3" wide strips that I could put in my casting pot. The brick layer chisel is about 4" wide and it just barely makes a mark on it with the hand sledge. I tried the normal size sledge hammer and I broke the handle on it somehow -- no, I did not hit the chisel with the handle. The circular "ingot" was about 1.5" thick. It took a lot of work to finally chisel through it. All in all, I would not recommend doing it this way...

[a.squibload]

A narrow chisel about 3/4" cuts better but it's still a lot of work.
When it gets close to through you can bend the lead & break it off.
At the salvage yard in Englewood they have a hydraulic shear,
like scissors with short jaws, cut a 3" thick ingot in half for me,
took about 2 seconds!

[grumman581]

A narrow chisel about 3/4" cuts better but it's still a lot of work.
When it gets close to through you can bend the lead & break it off.
At the salvage yard in Englewood they have a hydraulic shear,
like scissors with short jaws, cut a 3" thick ingot in half for me,
took about 2 seconds!

If I had to do this more often, I might come up with a design utilizing a hydraulic jack and a shear blade to cut through it... As it is, it's enough of a pain that I should remember NOT to do this again... I guess I *could* go place it on a train track and let it shear the ingot in half for me... Nawh, that would mean that I would have to carry the lead there, pick up all the pieces, and carry it back... Too much effort...

[Lloyd Smale]

ive got an old chain saw i bought at a garage sale that i keep just for cutting lead. I havent found an easier way.

[rbertalotto]

I sure hope you folks using power saws to cut lead are doing something to contain the "lead dust"..........Hope there are no children or pregnant woman within a country mile! ............Hope it doesn't get on your lawn and kids or pets get into it.........Hope you are wearing respirators........Making lead dust is about the best way there is for ingesting lead...........Just Saying.............

Happy New Year!

[grumman581]

I sure hope you folks using power saws to cut lead are doing something to contain the "lead dust"..........Hope there are no children or pregnant woman within a country mile! ............Hope it doesn't get on your lawn and kids or pets get into it.........Hope you are wearing respirators........Making lead dust is about the best way there is for ingesting lead...........Just Saying.............

From what I've gathered, you should be using a slow speed saw for cutting lead, not a high speed saw. A high speed saw is more likely to heat up the metal and seize the saw blade. As long as you are cutting slow with a course cut blade, you should be getting chips of lead, not dust.

[bigjason6]

The cheapest and safest way would be just a hack saw

[grumman581]

The cheapest and safest way would be just a hack saw

I read in one post (either on this thread or elsewhere) that with a high speed saw, there's a chance of heating up the lead to the melting point and then if it solidifies you end up with an ingot of lead being thrown somewhere you probably would not like for it to be. I've never tried it nor to I want to experience it. Personally, I would prefer a low speed cut so that any lead cuttings could be more easily reclaimed.

[badbob454]

Instead of cutting it just find a larger pot ! A 100 pound lead block is not very big.

Jerry

no.... but it sure is heavy

[leadchunker]

100 lbs of molten lead would be difficult for me to pour. I would cut it into smaller pieces.

[Dale53]

A power saw of most any description can bind, break, and hurt the operator. I have done it this way but found a better way. MUCH better!:





That was a 92 lb ingot. That day, with my brother helping, we made small ingots out of 650 lbs of large ingots (running from 64 lbs to 92 lbs) in about three hours.

This is what we had after working on the early large ingots:



Dale53

[Bullet Caster]

I had an inch piece of lead that was about 1 1/2 feet in diameter. I used a chisel and hammer to make the large chunk of lead into smaller pieces that would fit into my pot. A lot of work but I did it! After you get nearly through you can bend it until it breaks. I would have used a saw but thinking it through I decided that a saw would leave too much Lead dust and I didn't want to waste any lead so I went with the hammer and chisel method. BC

[grumman581]

no.... but it sure is heavy

For many of us old farts, it's a lot heavier these days than it was a few decades ago...

Must be some sort of Einsteinian gravity inflation factor...

[Revolver]

I bet the jaws of life would cut lead nicely!

Also, I learned on the interwebs that Osmium is twice as dense as lead... that's got to be hefty!

[grumman581]

Also, I learned on the interwebs that Osmium is twice as dense as lead... that's got to be hefty!

22.59 grams per cu-cm for Os...
11.34 grams per cu-cm for Pb...
10.49 grams per cu-cm for Ag...

At $400 per troy ounce, that's going to be some expensive bullets...

Also, with a melting point of 5491F, I don't think any of our melting pots are going to be able to handle it...

With a BHN of about 3920 MPa, I don't think you are going to get much expansion...

[Chicken Thief]

Log splitter!

[Revolver]

At $400 per troy ounce, that's going to be some expensive bullets...
Also, with a melting point of 5491F, I don't think any of our melting pots are going to be able to handle it. With a BHN of about 3920 MPa, I don't think you are going to get much expansion.

I wasn't implying to make boolits out of osmium... was just sharing some interesting information regarding its impressive weight. But looks like you did some neat research.

As far as cutting big lead goes, I agree with other posts here that a log splitter would probably work well. If anyone is interested I'll try it and post up a video.

[a.squibload]

100 lbs of molten lead would be difficult for me to pour. I would cut it into smaller pieces.

High slosh factor, shouldn't try pouring out of the pot!
Make a ladle.
Not too big, my 4oz mushroom can with a handle is fairly heavy.
For a big job I would keep it around 10 fluid oz, not too heavy
but won't take forever to dip out the pot.

[grumman581]

High slosh factor, shouldn't try pouring out of the pot!
Make a ladle.
Not too big, my 4oz mushroom can with a handle is fairly heavy.
For a big job I would keep it around 10 fluid oz, not too heavy
but won't take forever to dip out the pot.

I made a ladle for my smelting out of a 3 ft long piece of 1/2" square solid rod for the handle and then a weld-on type pipe cap (a half sphere) welded to the handle. The handle goes across the entire pipe cap, so there are two support points. You can find these pipe caps at steel fitting supply shops. For casting ingots, it works acceptably... When you get towards the bottom of the smelting pot, it gets a bit more difficult to fill the ladle, but that just means that it's time to start putting more wheelweights in it, right?

I'm not a good enough welder on the light stuff to be able to weld the thin metal in a soup can... I prefer welding metal that is at least 16-gauge -- 1/8" is even better... Just a crude AC stick welder type of guy, I guess...