Careful Analysis of Segregated Range Scrap Smelt

[freebullet]

I was thinking shotgun slugs, but 45's and 44's would be great too.

[btroj]

But a shotgunner isn't gonna throw 400 rounds down range in a day. I'm just tired of 9s and 380s.
Anyone wanting to "dig up" bullets beneath the surface of a berm need to know that a 44 mag makes an excellent shovel.

[tygar]

Good info, thanks. Will look forward to more info.

[dikman]

Don't know if this little bit of info will be of any use, but the (pistol) range scrap that I've been collecting has tested out to 12-15 BHN. It's all non-jacketed, and as far as I know pretty well all commercial stuff, as I'm not aware that many (if any) members cast their own.

I know that I'm on the bottom side of the world to you chaps, but I think it's a reasonable assumption that commercial casters here are going to use the same "recipes" that have been proven to work in competitive shooting, and that means the US, as let's be honest that's where much of the development work has been done.

I would like to find bigger slugs too, but unfortunately our laws restrict us to .38/.357 as the maximum size we can shoot (except for black powder ). The only exception to this in cartridge guns is Single-action/Cowboy shooting - .45 cal - but the range has to be approved by the police for this and most don't meet their requirements.

[btroj]

That is useful info. Odd that you see pretty much all commercial cast. We see far more jacketed than cast. Is factory handgun ammo in OZ hard to get? Just curious, I suppose I assumed that people elsewhere shot similar "stuff" to what we shoot.
My scrap runs lower because the jacketed stuff tends to have a softer, lower Sb content, core.

[MBTcustom]

For the record, most jacketed target rifle bullets have a pure lead core. I have sectioned and tested quite a few of them.

[btroj]

Rifle ranges are a lousy place to collect range scrap anyways. Rifle bullets either dig deep or fragment too much to be useful. Handguns and shotgun slugs are where it is. Lots more lead per bullet and not much fragmenting.

I never even look at my clubs rifle range, just not worth the effort.

[runfiverun]

I do pretty well at our rifle range but we got a lot of lead flingers in this area.
I can walk the 300 yd berm in the spring and do pretty well on some big ol 45-70 type boolits.

and our 50yd berm is usually a good source for lead.
I usually hit the 1&200yd berms once-twice a year just to poke around and see what I can find.
it's usually my cast rifle stuff down there but sometimes I find other stuff [and can usually identify who the shooter was by the mold used]

our berms suck though it has a lot of rock in it..

[btroj]

Mine are heavy in clay. I like hot, dry weather. The bullets end up just below the surface layer of dust after being exposed by further shooting.

I will say that lots of winter and wet weather shooting is good. That is what brings old lead back to the surface. I really like high volume shooters too.

My enemy is steel plates. Every "tink" is another bullet that won't be recovered.

[Smoke4320]

I know. I hope lots of people got a 45 for Christmas.

not me I got a 358
and yes I defend my berm .. Its my range

[dikman]

Factory ammo is available, of course, but like most things here is going to be expensive. The only reason a private citizen can own a handgun is for competitive (club) shooting, and that sort of shooting means lots of practice and lots of ammo! I'm pretty sure that many reload their own stuff, but I get the feeling that not too many actually cast their projectiles (probably because of the time involved when guys have to work for a living). Plus a lot of the lead appears to be powder coated.

The other range where I do most of my shooting has rifle and pistol, with quite a few separate ranges. I've picked up a few rifle jacketed slugs, but they're too small to be worth the effort. We shoot mostly black powder, and on that range there are some big slugs to pick up (and no jackets). Unfortunately the berms there are clay so I can't use a sieve, unlike the pistol range, so it's a slow process gathering them. But I'll still do it, I can't help myself . In fact, we have a meeting scheduled with the police for a range inspection Thursday, so I reckon I'll go for a walk and see what I can pick up while I'm there (no-one shooting then).

[Bigslug]

Bump with more data added to the original post. As before, about 2 weeks between smelt and BHN test.

[lightman]

Thanks for the info, I know how much work goes into projects like this.

[Bigslug]

New data added to original post after receiving XRF scan results from BNE.

[dbosman]

Thanks for sharing the info.

[Bigslug]

No worries Bosman. I'm still pondering what it all means, but the direction I THINK I'm heading is that since it's safe to assume that jacketed and shot are NOT going to contain any tin, we can probably segregate them, smelt, hardness-test and fiddle with the numbers on our forum alloy calculator as binary PB/SB alloy to generate a fairly precise idea of what antimony percentages we're dealing with. That's probably the best way to make decent "cookie dough" with scrounged ingredients.

As I solicited with my O.P., please pick my thinking apart in the interests of advancing the craft.

[samari46]

Our old range I used to occasionally mine the berms for spent pistol bullets. A huge portion was from the hard cast 230 gr RN that I and a lot of other shooters sent down range. Used to spread out the range scrap and pick out all the 230gr hard cast and melt them separately.The rest got melted down separately. Still have one 5 gal bucket of range scrap. Frank

[Taterhead]

This is a great thread Bigslug. I'm not much of a berm miner, but can see the utility. Coincidentally, my 11 year old daughter can't help herself and picks up any bullets she finds when we're down range attending to targets. She sees value in the recyclable materieal with no prompting from me. A natural lead hound. Yes, we strictly adhere to hand cleaning hygiene.

I've started a little collection "for later".