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Thread: Tips on Salvaging Range Lead

  1. #41
    Boolit Master Baron von Trollwhack's Avatar
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    I now use a 60 pound capacity pot running on a propane turkey cooker. Whatever I have for scrap goes into the empty pot on melt day, filling it to the brim. Wet, dry, indifferent, except what I believe to be zinc. The water cooks off before the lead melts and eventually I can skim most of the floating, bits glowing, smoking crud off the top, leaving 1 inch floating with grease smoking for "flux" and then dipper off the liquid alloy at the bottom. As long as it's not dripping water, more of the same goes into the pot in top of the sargasso floating lead crud and the same process occurs. This allows steam to escape as the scrap heats. The crud insulates steam burps when heavy bits fall below. I borrow little ingot moulds from several bullet buddies and they do the same to make ingotting easier. I keep pot melts separate after they cook so I can roughly keep "melts" equal in quality by selecting equivalent weights when actually casting bullits and adding "secret" ingredients. I'm just a piker, only use a hundred pounds or so of the magic material a year, besides a little in stock, aside from pure lead for round ball or minies. P.S. do not store large drywall mud buckets full of scrap for excessive periods, even out of the sun and undercover. They get brittle and break very easily. BvT
    Every lawbreaker we allow into our nation, or tolerate in our citizen population leads to the further escalation of law breaking of all kinds and acceptance of evil.
    Since almost all aspects of our cultural existence are LIBERAL in most states, this means that the nation is on a trajectory to dissolution by the burden of toleration and acceptance of LAWBREAKING as a norm, a trajectory back to the dark ages of history.

    BvT

  2. #42
    Boolit Buddy
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    Quote Originally Posted by standles View Post
    Reccomended to me was to take a pair of dyke pliers and nip each one so the lead could ooze out.
    There no way I will sit for days with pliers cutting bullets so I think I will cut myself a lid out of some steel-plate.

  3. #43
    Boolit Buddy exblaster's Avatar
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    To remove jackets and other "stuff" from range lead easily use a long piece of large diameter black iron pipe. Make a long burner out of automotive brake tube drill proper size holes for propane or N.G. about every 1/2 inch along the brake tube and crimp one end. Insert tube burner into iron pipe and secure it .you will need an adapter to hook to a regulator and enough flexible hose to connect the regulator to the tube burner. Attach 12 inches of screening to the end of the iron pipe support the pipe on metal stands with about 2 inches of drop per foot to let the lead and jacket material flow down the pipe to the screened end. the melted lead will pass through the screening and the trash will drop off the end of the screen.
    I hope this makes scence to you all it will work . I have seen it in operation and it was handling several tons of material an 8 hour day.

    Exblaster

  4. #44
    Boolit Master mroliver77's Avatar
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    As the Baromn stated if you put the scrap in a cold cruciable the water steams off before the lead gets melted. I have never had any problems this way. I get my scrap from an indoor range that has a slanted steel backstop and a water trap to collect scrap. I quit at around 5 ton as I figured that should last me my lifetime. I get around 1/3 jackets by weight. Paying $.03 per lb for the scrap and getting 1/3 lb of scrap copper back I think is a good deal. I figured on just melting it as I need it but with the price of copper way up IA need to build a large melter. Gosh that means I have like 3 tons of scrap copper! I need to get a price on it. My shooting pal sugge3sted that since jackets are some pretty neat alloy mebbe the right place would give a premium for it? J
    "The .30-06 is never a mistake." Townsend Whelen

    "THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
    Thomas Paine

  5. #45
    Boolit Master
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    Hey all,

    For what it's worth, I did my own testing on a small batch of "Range Ore." I made up a sifter box -- about 18" x 8" x 4". 1/4" mesh hardware cloth.

    This was a sample taken from a "Medium volume" range.

    1. Raw ore = red clay backstop sifted back through 1/4" mesh. Ore = everything bigger than the mesh that I couldn't quickly pick out...... so it contained pea gravel, dirt, wood, plastic bits, etc.

    2. 30 lbs starting weight after sifting out most of the dirt and little stuff.

    3. 18.5 lbs actual lead into ingots. The remaining 11.5 lbs was a mix of pea gravel, mostly-burnt charcoal wood, bullet jackets, misc metal trash, sand/dirt, ash, and smoke. It was 3x a pain to dross this mess off -- as it was about 80% of the volume.... like 1/2" of liquid lead in the bottom of my pot, 3" of dusty, sandy, trashy swarf above the liquid.

    4. Energy used -- Most of a BBQ propane tank full. Not energy efficient at this rate.

    5. Analysis on the smelted lead batch -- almost exactly pure lead (I had it analyzed.) This will change quite a bit for others depending on the composition of your "Ore."

    Thanks

    John
    Last edited by truckjohn; 01-15-2008 at 01:23 AM. Reason: Spelling and other opinions

  6. #46
    Boolit Buddy Andy_P's Avatar
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    I no longer salvage range lead, except for what I shot into it myself. Our berms are sand, and it's easy to see where my shots have gone by the disturbed sand. Just shoot, and then dig them out. I find about 60% of them, so just doing that more than doubles my alloy life. You know what you're getting and it's interesting to see how the bullets behave on impact.

  7. #47
    Moderator Emeritus robertbank's Avatar
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    Andy P

    Noticed you are from Ottawa. Do you shoot at the Connaught Range? Was down for the CFSAC matchs last September as a RO.

    Take Care

    Bob
    Its been months since I bought the book, "How to scam people online". It still has not arrived yet!

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  8. #48
    Boolit Buddy Andy_P's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by robertbank View Post
    Noticed you are from Ottawa. Do you shoot at the Connaught Range? Was down for the CFSAC matchs last September as a RO.

    Take Care

    Bob
    Hi Bob. No, You can find me at the Eastern Ontario Handgun Club (EOHC) east of Ottawa, mostly at its Rifle Range. Connaught is a beauty, but only go there on rare occassions.

  9. #49
    Boolit Man
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    i shoot into a snowbank and pick up my boolits in the spring,almost 100% recovery

  10. #50
    Boolit Master




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    Quote Originally Posted by joejr View Post
    i shoot into a snowbank and pick up my boolits in the spring,almost 100% recovery
    I shot into a bank once...

    You won't believe how hard it is to get the FBI off your tuchis...
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  11. #51
    Boolit Grand Master

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    mold maker

    I reciently acquired some really old indoor range lead from a steel back stop and water trap. All the lead is splattered and seriously oxidized. The melted yield is not worth the energy. Is there a way to re-claim the oxides? There are several hundred lbs. involved, and I hate to scrap it.

  12. #52
    Boolit Grand Master

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    Lead, like gold moves down hill. It will be most concentrated at the original foot of the berm. As rain washes the disturbed earth away the lead is left behind. Thats why you find it on the surface of the hill. At the range where I mine, a shovel full at the right place, will be 14 -16 lbs. Of that 11-13 lbs are boolets. When cleaned I get 9-11 lbs of soft lead. Until reciently I didn't save the jacket material. That would be about 2.25 lbs of copper/bronze per shovel, with the rest being dry soil. I have thrown away a fortune over the last 25 years, in jackets.

  13. #53
    Boolit Buddy
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    With regards to range lead. I am a great believer in recycling. Here, winter comes early and stays late and we have lots of snow. We get a big F.E. Loader to clear a pathway which makes a nice berm. Bullets and boolits shot into snow are usually not damaged. In the spring as the snow melts I pick up everything I can. Lead boolits usually just need cleaning and re-lubing. Jacketed bullets just need cleaning. I usually roll them down a glass plate and by watching carefully can tell if they are damaged i.e. bent. The rifling marks don't seem to make any difference. I fired a box of 45 acp reclaimed today with excellent results. Some of them had so many rifling marks it was hard to tell one from the other. Any damaged lead boolits go into the pot. I make sure gas checked boolits go in when the pot is cold. Otherwise it may get you a visit from the the tinsel fairy and even then I don't stand too close. I know it takes a few months but it saves money and helps the environment. Besides, I dont have much else to do anyway.

  14. #54
    Boolit Master

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    I just bought 50 pounds of recycled range lead for $59 (shipping included) I will add some tin and some reclaimed antimony to made an alloy for hard casting.

    Right now lead is going to about $3.00 a pound on the open market. At Cabala's today, they had a sign up about the increase in price of ammo because of the increase in cost of metals.

    The area I live in, copper is stolen by the pickup truck load. People climb telephone poles at night and cut drown the phone trunk line for whole communities. We had some fool who cut a live 3 phase line, he didn't make it to the hospital and some body stole a big spool off of the back of an AT&T truck that was in a secured area with chain link and concertina wire. That generated an instant reward offer and a new more secure area for the trucks.

    Jerry
    Honor is a Way of Life

    NRA Benefactor Life Member

  15. #55
    Boolit Buddy azcoyhunter's Avatar
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    my 2 cents

    I get a christmas popcorn tin


    Fill it full of sand

    shoot it

    sift the sand

    I have to replace the lid but it works.

    sometime I get a flyer and have to replace the whole thing, but i love popcorn


    Clint
    FREEDOM IS NOT FREE
    SEMPER FI

    If I should depart this life while defending those who cannot defend themselves, then I have died the most honorable of deaths. Marc R. Murphy '2006'.

  16. #56
    Boolit Grand Master JIMinPHX's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by hunter64 View Post
    I was thinking more on the lines of building some kind of bullet trap that I could haul out to the range with me every time I go. Just has to stop handgun speed lead bullets so I would think a 1/2" of steel at 45deg. angle with another one angled at 45 deg back towards the front and both sides covered in would work. Bullet would hit the first plate then bounce (splat) forward and hit the second one and then end up in the bottom of the trap. Have a metal sliding tray that you just take out and dump in a bucket after an hour of shooting and you have it. That way you can just keep recycling the lead you already have.
    More on that here -
    http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=23551

    I've been having real good luck recovering whole boolits from a crumb rubber box trap. There's also good info on steel plate traps.

    About FMJs...
    You can dump them out on a cement floor, then whack them with a big lump hammer (baby sledge) to split the jackets. A crack is all you need, then they melt just fine. You can split about 10-20 in a single whack if you have them rolled out flat & tight on the floor.

  17. #57
    Boolit Buddy
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    Having a small problem here with copper-plated bullets, they just do not melt. Do I need more heat or am I better of selling/trading this to the local scrappy?

  18. #58
    Boolit Buddy
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    Also need good ideas for separating leadshot from soil. Have plenty shot and a small stream-need some hillbillyengineering!

  19. #59
    Boolit Buddy
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    blysmelter:

    Do a web search for "sluice box" and "placer mining". Originally used for gold mining.

  20. #60
    Boolit Buddy
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    Will do!

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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