A buddy of mine gave me over 50lbs of lead in the form of wire casings from the phone company. These were units that had been used near the junction of phone and pre-optical cable lines.

Each section was about 3 feet long and all I had to do was rip out the copper phone lines that were left inside and then clean off the labels and insulation. That was a small afternoon chore.

A few passes with my saws-all and I had it cut into strips that would easily fit into my Lee pot.

After fluxing and cleaning the lead, I poured it into ingots (Lee) and used those for making some Lyman #2.

I already had several pounds of left over 50/50 certified bar solder, so, I had to pay for some Linotype.

After everything said and done, and using up all my Linotype, I now have 80lbs of pure clean Lyman #2 alloy in a 50cal ammo box. A couple of tests casting some boolits showed it works just fine and drops right at the listed weight for the Lyman molds... maybe 1grain heavy.

The rest of the lead was alloyed with the bar solder to make 20:1 lead ingots for black powder loads.

I figure I paid around $.75/lb considering the lead was free.