Four screens fills a 2 1/2 gal. bucketa bit more than 2/3's full. Thats all I fill it for weight and to not tear the bottom out of it.
Four of these buckets fills a 5 gal. plastic bucket. Currently have four to smelt.
Shiloh
Four screens fills a 2 1/2 gal. bucketa bit more than 2/3's full. Thats all I fill it for weight and to not tear the bottom out of it.
Four of these buckets fills a 5 gal. plastic bucket. Currently have four to smelt.
Shiloh
Je suis Charlie
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At 40c/# for good lead coww, I am buying all I can stack. The lead ww is going bye, bye sooner than later. So 1000# would be a good investment. Out here, the lead ww is pretty much dead. I am down o berm mining at the couple of private ranges I go to.
Last edited by fredj338; 10-09-2014 at 06:17 PM.
EVERY GOOD SHOOTER NEEDS TO BE A HANDLOADER.
NRA Cert. Inst. Met. Reloading & Basic Pistol
I love finding slugs, wish there were more, they are just what I need more of. No digging of berms here means no tools on the berm and no climbing on the slope only ok to pick stuff up on level just behind the target stands. Access to the area is only during cold range while people check targets. I will not hold up shooting to collect lead so I head back to the benches before the last target checker. Last two trips to the range it was very busy and I did not pick up any lead. Twice the range was cold and I did not even go down range to check my targets because I still had plenty of clean targets and had spotted my shots using a spotting scope.
Tim
Words are weapons sharper than knives - INXS
The pen is mightier than the sword - Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The tongue is mightier than the blade - Euripides
Words are weapons sharper than knives - INXS
The pen is mightier than the sword - Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The tongue is mightier than the blade - Euripides
My club has multiple, independent pistol bays. With high berms between them I can have one to myself and spend plenty of time gathering spent bullets. I don't tie it up if others want to shoot but that is easy. I have a job where I am off one weekday each week, not many people shooting on Tues or Fri morning.
A good day is 40 pounds, 75 is great. A couple years back my daughter and I hit 151 pounds in a day.
Your comment about breaking even is the best thing to do. I figure if I always break even or run a surplus I can't ever run out!
You will learn far more at the casting, loading, and shooting bench than you ever will at a computer bench.
My club just covered the berms in fresh bark mulch making it near impossible to mine anymore. I'd just started mining this summer in Aug!
So what's the rest look like? Is it grass covered or exposed dirt. I won't say I'm lucky because it sucks for good portions of the year. But there is no ground cover at the main range I frequent. The best time to go is after it's rained hard for the first time in a week or two. It washes a good bit into the natural drainage ditches that have formed. Just start at the firing line and work my way forward. The rain will wash a lot directly underneath the backers. I don't spend a lot of time picking up lead. I figure as long as I'm close to what I shot that day it will take me a long time to shoot it all up.
Well I was off work today and went to the range for a while. After I got done shooting there was nobody else there so I went to the end of the 50 yd range. Once I got looking there were bullets laying everywhere. I ended up picking up 13lb of bullets in probably 20-30 minutes, enough for about 400 .45 boolits, not bad.
I've cast and shot lots of both, and both work well. Wheel weights are probably more consistent than random range lead, but they need to be sorted. Range lead may become easier to find than wheel weights. Its all going to become scarce, grab what you can when you can.
Exactly! I would rather smelt range lead, I know I will get no zinc there, but I will also have pretty soft alloy, on avg about 8-9bhn. Which is fine for 90% of mys shooting needs. I have enough ww alloy & lino to sweeten for the other 10% of my needs. Even water dropping range scrap gets me the bhn I want for higher vel/pressure loads.
EVERY GOOD SHOOTER NEEDS TO BE A HANDLOADER.
NRA Cert. Inst. Met. Reloading & Basic Pistol
No problem with my free range scrap pickups mixed 2-1 with COWW and powder coated in 9mm.
I haven't tried running straight range scrap at all...but figured the little bit of tin and antimony wouldn't hurt in the COWW.
Thought I would reply to this thread, specifically for people wondering what the lead is in jacketed bullets. This may not be the end all answer but since I was involved and can verify everything it is as solid info as I can come up with.
I got a sample of range lead from an indoor range of a government entity and can verify with certainty that they only shoot jacketed JHP ammo there along with some shotgun slugs and OO buck but the majority is from .40 cal JHP ammo made by Federal.
Took some scrap brass and fired primers up to be recycled and asked if they could hit my sample of lead with the tester gun. They did and here is what they said:
97.+% - Lead
2.+% - Tin
less than a percent of copper
The guy was puzzled by the copper but I wasn't. When I smelted this stuff down I got a layer of what looked like dirt but it was really heavy and if figured it was basically the copper jackets that had been pulverized when they hit the steel bullet traps. I figure that some of it was so small that it was incorporated into the lead when it was smelted? Not sure of that is how it works but it seemed like a reasonable explanation. I did ask to make sure that were no frangible rounds fired at the range and was told none.
So at least in this instance, the lead used in jacketed bullets is very pure.
Thanks for the data, I appreciate you sharing it with us. That lead is not pure at all. To be dead soft pure lead it needs to be more than 99% lead. Your data is close to mine not counting the copper. 2% tin is a nice amount of tin and is what is often recommended to be added to alloy to get it to cast nice full bullets. Playing with the alloy calculator 2% tin and half a percent copper get me a BHN of 9.2. My range scrap runs from 8 to 9 BHN. Pure runs from 5 to 6 BHN.
Tim
Last edited by dtknowles; 10-17-2014 at 02:44 PM.
Words are weapons sharper than knives - INXS
The pen is mightier than the sword - Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The tongue is mightier than the blade - Euripides
I've done XRF testing of both these alloys (COWW and range scrap).
the results have been surprisingly consistent.
COWW is about 2.5% SB and lead across the board. I don't even measure it anymore. a random sample from a 200lb smelt has always been the same. Very little tin in the mix. Occasionally, I find one that has higher tin content, but its never been over .5% and is the exception rather than the rule to the point that in a large smelt, it's so diluted that it is immeasurable with XRF.
Range scrap also has been very consistent at about 1% Sb and lead.
Hornady A-Max target bullets have a 100% pure lead core (for reasons that will be more obvious to some than others)
The upshot of it all is that strait coww is much too hard for 45ACP IMHO. I usually cut all my COWW 50/50 with SOWW (which have a Sb content of about .5% average) which gives me 1.5% SB 98.5%Pb across the board. Which is just about the same as range scrap.
Thus, I use 50/50 or range scrap interchangeably for everything from 45ACP to 30 caliber rifles. If I need a different alloy, I modify to suit, but that just about covers 99% of my shooting. (PS. I often spike the range scrap to get it up to the 1.5% Sb range like the 50/50 mix if I'm really pushing it. just an FYI)
Last edited by MBTcustom; 10-17-2014 at 04:34 PM.
Precision in the wrong place is only a placebo.
Well I've got over 2500 .45acp's cast to try in a new gun next year. After that I my jump over to 50/50 COWW with range scrap assuming I can collect enough scrap.
I have been looking into some of the new plated bullets and some are listing the lead as 13-18 bhn. I know that CCI is using Extreme plated for their aluminum cased ammo. So the rounds we have been finding in the last couple years that are completely jacketed are actually plated from Extreme. So it has to have something in it to get to 13-18bhn.
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 |