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Thread: Tips on Salvaging Range Lead

  1. #21
    Boolit Buddy cohutt's Avatar
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    I played a little yesterday evening at berm mining. Modest success. made a filter screen out of 1/4" hardware cloth on 2x4s built like a stretcher.

    will i do it again? I dunno- perhaps i got it out of my system.

    here is some of the report i posted in another reloading forum ealrier, hope it helps anyone who wants to try it. if your soil is sandy vs the georgia clay this might work pretty well-
    __________________________________________________ __________
    Ok here are the pics i took before my camera died

    first, view from truck back to the berm destination. hardware cloth stretcher in bed




    the contraption- note that I was too cheap to cut off the hardware cloth roll; i figure i'd leave it a 10 foot roll for future use of some sort.
    it is 1/4", screwed down to the fram with lathing and sheetrock screws



    first load- i tried to balance the rack on the recycling bin but it didn't work well. also broke the recycling bin (sorry, City of R, GA)



    i think i did about 4 shovelfulls, spread out a bit and somewhat filtered. see them thar boolits on the ground too?



    same lot, filtered more and ready to dump.



    modest success, same lot in a bucket - pretty heavy, so i didn't quit at this point



    little more to follow....

  2. #22
    Boolit Buddy cohutt's Avatar
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    continued from above

    eventually i couldn't tell rock from dirtclod from bullet as the dust got finer and covered everything. i started thinking i was getting more rocks than anything else, but then the weight of the handfuls tossed into the buckets suggested otherwise.

    the rack worked ok, but i maybe would 2-stage it next time. i'd use 1/2" over the 1/4 to pull the bigger stuff out maybe.

    found out less is better and to dump the shovel over a larger area of the rack to save sweeping and bouncing.

    the bouncing/shaking worked pretty well- basically picked up one end of the stretcher and shook the contents down towards the other side, then i'd go to other end and do same.

    after the shots above i backed truck up so i could balance the stretcher level between the tailagte and the berm hill. no bending over = ++

    next pics show how i spread and used shovel to mush the dirtclods through

    ok, a couple or 3 of these:



    spaced apart a little



    shake it out into a pile of rocks bullets and dirtclods. i picked the bigger rocks out here so i could do the final step in filtering



    at this point i took the shovel and pressed it flatside over the pile with some downward pressure like i was spreading out a pile of sand or cement. this was pretty effective in busting up the clods and having the pieces fall through.

    end product, ready for the bucket, complete with fluxing material for the smelt. some of what appears to be rocks are actually bullets- the deformed remains were pretty deceiving so i quit trying to pick the rocks out when i got to this stage. (The blood loss from the horseflies and finger lacerations was taking its toll and i wanted to get done before it rained. )




    (camera died here. )

  3. #23
    Banned BluesBear's Avatar
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    As Arte Johnson, wearing a German helmet, used to say at the end of every episode of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In...

    Veelllllly intelesting.


    I hope you get enough useable lead to make the effort worthwhile.
    Even though soil isn't the best test medium, it's interesting to see how some of them expanded.

  4. #24
    Boolit Buddy cohutt's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BluesBear View Post
    As Arte Johnson, wearing a German helmet, used to say at the end of every episode of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In...

    Veelllllly intelesting.


    I hope you get enough useable lead to make the effort worthwhile.
    Even though soil isn't the best test medium, it's interesting to see how some of them expanded.
    funny how the lead pitol boolits stayed pretty much in shape. The jacketed bullets were the same. the HP jackets bullets were in all sorts of contorted shapes.
    found a couple of hollow based minis that were huge in comparison and somewhere in between the pistol lead boolits and the HP remains in deformation.

  5. #25
    Banned BluesBear's Avatar
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    Ahh your update wasn't there when I started my post. Wow, I type slow


    Looks like a very good way to do it. I do think your idea of doing it in two stages might work better also.

    If it were me when I got the buckets home I'd pour them back out on the rack and hit it with the hose. Seems like an easy way to not only get the dirt jacketing off the boolits but it'd also wash away most of the remaing non-smeltable materials.

  6. #26
    Boolit Buddy Goatlips's Avatar
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    Cohutt, your post and pictures ought to be put somewhere that we can find them again.

    Now where did I put that roll of hardware cloth....

    Goatlips

  7. #27
    Boolit Buddy
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    Hi Guys, here in florida we have sandy berms. So my recovered buckets of bullets have sand all over them. What I decided to do was to drill a bunch of holes in my buckets. When I get home and unload my truck I put the water hose in them, most but no all the sand flushes out the holes. Do not use these recovered bullets until they are completely dry. Oh yes, I have basically the same process for recovering bullets as cohutt. Its a lot of work, but lead is getting harder to get.

  8. #28
    Boolit Master
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    When I was mining the berms. Welded up a small tray set up with two handles. One on the end, the other 10" or so from that. Just a metal tray 2" deep, 10" wide and 16" long. End opposite from the handle has a 4" 16ga lip for the digging. Bottom is open and covered with 1/4" hardware cloth.

    Just dig it in and scoop up a bit, shake, dump in the buckets. Wouldnt' take five minute's on our older much used berms to put 4-6" in a bucket. That's all I want to carry, when I need several hundred pounds. I'll take a bunch of buckets and drive down the range to close to the berm to save carrying very far.

    Thing is with all the rocks and crap. For melting. Two ways, dump it all in a kettle and melt. Rocks and dirt clods float, everything else either melts, or burns off.

    Then I got into major quantities and welded up that monster copy of Lee's ProPot, seen elsewhere some place on this site.

    Didn't take long to discover it was easier to keep things seperated by laying a sand screen over the pot. Fire under the pot with a weed burner, and a second weedburner with a lever valve shut off on the handle so it's not burning full time. When needed, point at the other fire and squeeze the lever and it's going.

    Couple handsful, or light scoop of scrap on the screen. Fire it up til it's all burned and melted. Some fines' will fall thru, that's insulation to keep the melt hot. What melts goes thru into the pot, trash burns off, whats left is jackets, rocks or other materials and goes into the recycle pile/bucket. Don't take long to melt 500 lbs.

    Didn't take long to discover I needed both a helper, and a BUNCH of ingot molds. Once the pot is half or more full, on mine, just trip the lever and the lead flies out the drain pipe into a 10lb ladle as it bounces right out of a mold. I can cast ingots fast enough to over work a helper that's dumping solidified ingots from ten molds til he's crying for a slower pace.

    Level full five gallon bucket will generally produce 110-125lbs of ingots and half a bucket of jackets from the indoor pistol range. From the dirt/rocky outside berm there's rocks to sort, haven't come up with an easy way to do that.

    Far as the FMJs, IF you want to mess with them and get the lead out. any kind of small bolt cutter to cut thru the jacket and toss it in the melt, or fire and the lead flows out easy once it's hot. There's enough hard stuff in the scrap I get those softer filled FMJ's are not noticed.

    Recyclers have tied up ALL the WW's in this area. They even buy it from the scrap yards. Our range don't care long as we don't leave big holes in the berms. I try to put the dirt into the blown out areas. Heavy rains wash the berm down and exposes all the bullets you'd care to pick, dig, or rake up from the surface. It's heavy all over the area of the berms. On top, on the back side even. They are 20' high and the surface looks much like a gravel driveway for all the bullets showing on it.
    Last edited by georgeld; 08-27-2007 at 04:39 AM.
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  9. #29
    Boolit Buddy
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    HAd szom spare time this afternoon and decided to check out the mining posibilities on some old/shutdown ranges nearby. One is an old rifle range, it was used for close to 100 years, the other is/was a trap field.
    The trapfield is promissing, around 200meters from the stand you can see lots and lots of no 7 leadshot lying on the ground, scooped up some in a bucket I had in the truck. Guess I collected like 5kgs in 15minutes. I will go back there bringing a small shovel (I guess I have to steal some kids toy). Anyone got an idea on how to separate the lead shot from gravel and sand?? Will the brine-trix do it?

    The riflerange migth also provide a good source of lead, the soil is quite dry even after a couple of days of rain. Guess I have to make some screen and do a test. Most of it will be 6,5mm FMJ bullets, migth make some trouble when melting down?

    WW is a dead source over here, checked out all tirestores and garages, only a couple of pounds to be found-the rest is zinc, so the shots will be a good source for antimony and arsen for my bullets.

  10. #30
    In Remembrance
    montana_charlie's Avatar
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    Having no ranges to mine, and no mind to mine ranges, I have ignored this thread from the outset. I dropped in by accident, but had to stay long enough to look at the pictures.

    Having looked...and read some...I see that bullet-sized rocks are the main problem.

    If I were to get into a project of this type (which I won't) I would immediately build a rocker box, hook up a water source, and 'float' the rock off of the lead just like the gold miners did.
    They even sell hi-tech 'rocker boxes' if you don't feel like building one...
    CM
    Retired...TWICE. Now just raisin' cows and livin' on borrowed time.

  11. #31
    Boolit Buddy
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    Maybee a big aluminium pot and a 3mm drill could be the trick to sort out the shot? Just dump the mix into the pot and leave the garden hose running over it?

  12. #32
    Boolit Master armoredman's Avatar
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    I cheat. I have a buddy who is an employee of a local indoor range, and he just brought over some range scrap. Not nearly what you guys get, that's for sure, but cool. Looks good until i get a smelter setp, and he'll bring more then.

  13. #33
    Boolit Master
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    Bly/others:
    Go to a gravel outfit and ask for a piece of fine sand screen. IF you don't have a torch, ask them to cut off a section a couple feet across. Then weld the edge's some so it'll stay together. OTherwise before long you'll end up with just a bunch of loose wires.

    THEN: lay it over a pot of some kind to catch the melt, get a propane weed burner torch or two. Set one up under it to keep it liquid. Use the second one to melt the lead on top the screen in small quantities.

    Trash will burn off,
    lead and such will melt and flow thru the screen into your pot,
    rocks, jackets, and crap will just lay there. Once it's all melted that you can, dump the leftovers in a pile to the side. and reload the screen. Works slick.

    IF there's a lot of jackets like from that range berm, or the indoor range, try to keep it seperated from the rocks and crap so it can be sold for scrap brass/copper. A bucket full around here will bring $40-80. Way more than enough to pay for the materials to build a system and the gas it uses.

    Shot will melt quickly, so get a bunch of it. What fine dirt falls thru into the melt will just float and help insulate the melt from cooling as fast. Once you're done, just dip it off to clear surface melt and pour your ingots from that. Throw some flux, or wax on it and stir it in to clear more crap out of the lead and you'll have some good boolet making lead. should be a real good hardness too.

    Hope this helps. Look in the months old thread here somewhere for 'George's melting pot'. should be on the smelting equipment if I recall right.

    Good luck, have fun, mine to your desire you're helping clean up the environment if anyone asks what you're doing.
    George so I can:

    Gun Control is NOT About Guns!
    It's about CONTROL!
    Join the NRA Today

    Lm: NRA, NAHC, NAFC, N***/WS

  14. #34
    Boolit Master testhop's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Andy_P View Post
    I've seen some good tips here and there, but little in the way of pics, and a number of questions unanswered.

    We have an outside berm that has been shot into for years and has never (to the best of my knowledge) had any lead salvaged from it. I dug around in it and came up with a few pounds of scrap, but I'd like to go with real gusto and not re-invent the wheel in refining a method. The berm is made of very sandy soil and at 100 yds. Here's few questions:

    - where will I find most of the bullets? What height and depth? Do they migrate downwards from gravity?
    - what's the best method to separate soil from scrap? Pics
    - any special tips onm the smelting of it?
    the way i do it is wait for a good heavy rain this washes the loose dirt away
    i take with me a leaf rake this cuts down on stooping down os much
    and a shouel to pick them up and i bring 4 5 gal buckets and a 2 gal bucket
    i use the small bucket carry it to the truck put the slugs in aone 5 gal till its 1/2 full
    then move on to the next bucket
    i take them home slift thedurt out pour them out on the concretslab to dry
    and make darn sure its dry or you will find out in a hurry
    as alwaysmake sure to warelong sleevesshirt and long leg paints and most
    importantware glasses i use a full face sheild

  15. #35
    Boolit Master




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    We are absolutely forbidden to mine our club berm... which is too bad because it's been in constant use since 1934 or so.
    A Democrat that owns Guns is like a Vegan that owns Cats...
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  16. #36
    Boolit Buddy mag44uk's Avatar
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    COHUTT et al,
    This device you made is almost identical to a couple we made at my club.Here in the UK last year we had torrential rain which washed the back stop onto the range floor.We had to fix it quickly due to competitions coming up.About 25 of us got together one weekend and made up the sieves but we used a roller for the sieve to run backwards and forwards on. The roller we used is like you would have under a conveyor belt. The roller that you use with a bench saw for supporting long boards might also work. Man at each end,wheel barrow to put the lead in and a barrow to put the sand in. Over the weekend we recovered about 15 ton of lead.
    If you had an old barrow you could drill a load of holes in it and wash the lead down with a hose.
    God alone knows how much sand we moved!
    Regards,
    Tony

  17. #37
    Boolit Buddy
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    I also shoot BP and a friend from another Club asked if I needed any lead for Nitro , naturally I said yes and I followed him to their Clubhouse to collect the lead. There were 3 5gallon buckets full of wonderfull clean lead boolits and a few copper plated HP`s. When I asked how come they were so clean he showed me their bullet trap.
    It was filled with small rubber scrap pieces. There was no dirt whatever. We had a few beers and now I get all of their "scrap" lead. I call myself lucky having friends like that.Just an idea I introduced in my club. By the way .did I mention that I´ve just gotten 1530 KG of lead that we cleaned out of our range?lol
    Uwe

  18. #38
    Boolit Bub Stevejet's Avatar
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    You could just "mine" mall and shopping center parking lots with a pair of pliers and very good running shoes!

  19. #39
    Boolit Buddy
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    Its cold and winter here now, so outside mining is not ab option. So what to do? Offcourse-vounteer for cleaning of the indoor pistolrange. Things has been out of style there for some time so lots of empty brass floating around in the gravel.
    2 evenings picking leaves me with close to 40kgs (thats nore than 80pounds) of brass and some 20kgs of projectiles. The local scrapdealer is willing to trade me 2kg lead for 1kg brass. Win-win-situation, I get free lead and goodwill in the club and the club ends up with a clean range.
    And still there are severeal 100s of kilos of projectiles to pick. Most of it is copper-plated so i wil try melting some first to see if it is worth it. I do not know how they will react when melted.

  20. #40
    Boolit Buddy
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    The copper plated/semi-jacketed will do fine. The issue I have had is with the FMJ rounds. They will pop in the melt if your not careful. Reccomended to me was to take a pair of dyke pliers and nip each one so the lead could ooze out.

    That is ok for a small lot but smelting 3-6 hundred pounds it is a pain. I am contemplating putting a heavy lid on top and pour the hear to it till the popcorn sound starts or come up with some kind of mangler to run them through

    Steven

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check