Sorted lead score this weekend and have questions about a couple things I found

[dolfinwriter]

I scored several hundred pounds of lead in 15 coffee cans a couple of months ago from one guy, and over 100# of diver's weights of unknown alloy from another guy.

I spent part of yesterday and all of today in the shade of our back patio sorting the coffee cans full of wheel weights and other kinds of lead. After removing the steel and zinc weights, breaking the old-school long lead weights into 2 or 3 pieces, and sorting out the Stick on Weights, lead pipe, and even some copper that was buried in one of those cans, I ended up with eight full coffee cans of lead weights (fuller than before), plus two more cans full of very rusty lead weights, a pile of the very large weights that were used for trucks--all told, 300-400# of wheel weight lead. There is also a can full of SOWWs that weighs 20#. That will make some great bullets for a black powder pistol I just got on sale.

I have blisters on both hands from using dykes to pinch a corner of each weight, but I won't notice. I always have some kind of cuts or something on my hands from working with my hands. I just wanted to get the sorting done so that I can melt them down when I get a chance. The first can I went through was disheartening in that there were probably 1/3 steel weights and maybe half that in zinc, although they were mostly clearly stamped Fe or Zn. That must have been the most recent can the guy collected and didn't know that they come in steel or zinc now, because all the rest had only one or two steel or zinc weights among all the other cans. The vast majority were from years ago. Many were the very long weights you don't see anymore.


I had planned to actually start doing some melting this weekend, but I didn't get to it. It took longer to sort the weights than I'd planned.

First question--the very rusty weights--is it worth it to try to clean them up, maybe wire wheel on a drill or even scrub in water, or just throw them in the melt pot as-is and scrape off the rust when they melt? There are two cans full like this.



There were some metal blobs in the mix. They ring like a hard lead alloy, but I can cut off a piece with dykes fairly easily. Do these look like zinc/lead oatmeal?


These things--some kind of plumbing gasket? Old-School Pipe seals? Fairly pure lead?


These pieces of pipe and electrical conduit--I'm guessing fairly pure lead?


Some of that I-Rail lead track for stain glass windows:


I can assume these are fairly pure lead and just use it for bullets for my black powder shooters.

I don't know what to do with these diver's weights though. Suggestions?

Thank you!

[Scooby]

As far as the rusty wheel weights go, put them in the pot first so that if there happens to be any moisture left on/in them it will cook off long before the lead melts. the puddles of metal could be anything, the plumbing gaskets are from cast iron pipes usually near pure lead, when you melt them they may smell from the oakum left on them. the lead pipe is usually near pure but check for joints cut them off with a hatchet and keep separate they will have tin in them and be a good source of sweetener, same for the stained glass usually pure and joints contain tin. divers weights are usually a **** shoot as to what they are made of and are usually worth more to someone who is going to dive with them than for us to make bullet out of. you can sell them and recoup some of you cost for your lead. happy melting

[lightman]

Don't worry about those dirty weights, just melt them. Anything on them will float to the top and can be skimmed off. Start with a cold pot, load it up and light it off. Never add weights or anything to molten lead. The lead pipe/conduit will be soft, like 98%+, so treat it like pure. I expect the other lead you scored is also soft. Get a jug of acid and an eye dropper to use to test your scrap scores with for zinc. Lead will turn gray (grayer) and zinc will fizz or bubble a little. I use the stuff that you treat swimming pools with. All in all it looks like a good score and you did a good job sorting it all out.

[Pipefitter]

Probably dead soft lead, looks like the poured lead from cast iron DWV (Drain, Waste and Vent) pipe.

[rmark]

That's drain pipe lead, I picked some up a few years ago, should be soft.

[RogerDat]

Doubt if blobs were zinc they would cut easily. Blobs and diving weights are a mystery unless you can get them tested. True diving weights are probably worth more at a dive shop than the lead itself. As suggested could probably buy more lead with the money from selling them. One thing you can check is weight. Belt weights with a weight cast into them are in a mold that is probably intended for straight lead. If they are homemade using WW's or Printers lead or some other alloy of lead they won't weigh the stamped in weight. Lead is heavier than the alloys. Pure lead makes full weight, alloy makes less than that.

Need a scale that like a digital postal scale to weigh with that accuracy. Figure WW's would be a couple percent lighter weight than the cast in weight. Printers lead would be lighter still. But a couple percent of 5 pounds is not a lot of difference so I doubt you could see it on a bathroom scale.

Look for solder joints on the leaded glass framing which is called "came". It may be worth your time to cut those solder joints out and melt separate. The came tend to be pure lead except for the solder at the joints. Pipe and plumbing seals are good soft lead. 3 out of 4 front stuffing smoke poles like plumbing lead best

[John Boy]

Dolfinwriter ... With all the questions you have about the various types of lead obtained ... you better buy a hardness tester! The pictures are nice but in many of them no way to determine the hardness unless it's tested. So if you arbitrarily melt them together ... believe you will be sorry. And if you melt them separately, your still not going to know the hardness of each. This means when you go to cast a specific alloy - your still quessing

[RogerDat]

Hardness testing is a good place to start. Much of interest in alloy is a means to getting consistent and desired hardness. Sometimes this means soft enough to get expansion, sometimes hard enough to handle higher velocities. But essentially it is mixing an alloy to get a known hardness.

The only reason for mixing a "big batch-o-mystery" lead is if the lead is almost all the same. I have to totally agree with John Boy, you can't get the alloy back out of the lead or the lead out of the alloy so try and reserve the mixing for same stuff. All the COWW's as a batch, maybe the pipe as a batch, and maybe the lead plumbing seals and window came as a batch. My thinking is this. Pipe can have a bit of alloy in it to make it easier to form, Pipe seals and window came tend to be almost pure. That way you can work with larger batches for consistency but have the best chance of not finding yourself with regrets for making your "soft" a bit too hard for muzzle loading due to alloy in pipe and solder in came. I would totally cut the solder joints out and keep them on their own. Leaded glass tended to use good fairly high tin solder.

[dolfinwriter]

Dolfinwriter ... With all the questions you have about the various types of lead obtained ... you better buy a hardness tester!

I would love to get a hardness tester. Can you recommend one? I've only seen one for testing a single cast bullet, or some homemade rigs on YouTube that give a number on a dial that can be probably calibrated/cross referenced with the numbers for known hardness. And then there are very expensive units that cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[OS OK]

Lee makes a tester…it works like a charm…it's cheap…what are you waiting for?

Follow directions and soon you'll have a new tool that will make your results in casting much more rewarding.

Somewhere there is a program that you can download and figure 'exact' mixes. I think it is here...

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/arch.../t-105952.html

Have fun, that's what it's all about…right?

OS OK

[dolfinwriter]

Lee makes a tester…it works like a charm…it's cheap…what are you waiting for?

I know they make one for an already cast, single bullet. I need something to test big chunks of lead, 5 lb pucks of lead, 1 lb ingots of lead, etc., BEFORE I melt it down and cast a bullet with it.

[lightman]

I use a Cabine Tree. You can do a search and find lots of info. A member here used to make them and I think sold the rights to someone else. Its a nice tool and will do chunks and pieces.

I cast for years without one. Same thing with a lead thermometer. They are nice to have. Knowing the hardness only helps you guess about the alloy.

[OS OK]

I know they make one for an already cast, single bullet. I need something to test big chunks of lead, 5 lb pucks of lead, 1 lb ingots of lead, etc., BEFORE I melt it down and cast a bullet with it.

Nothing to stop you from chiseling a chunk from that, or old wood handsaw or even use a small propane torch to melt a soda pop lid full and test it.
The Lee reads out in BHN directly…some of the others don't. You Tube has pretty good demonstrations of several types.
I test pucks and oddball chunks by inserting one edge into the side of the Rock Chucker, propping the other side up…you can make excuses all day and never get nowhere or you can 'Geterdone!'
What's it going to be?

[leebuilder]

Nice haul. The blobs i am not sure, looks like solder to me, dive weights could be anything as discussed here before. Test with acid, froth means zinc. I have recieved loads of dive wieghts never seen any with zinc yet. I trade them for WW with a buddy that runs shot and likes pure lead. The rusty WW i just melt and flux, heat will seperate it just fine. I just finished smelting a pile of rusty WW, they sat in a field since the seventys, good alloy in the old ones.
be well

[dolfinwriter]

I test pucks and oddball chunks by inserting one edge into the side of the Rock Chucker, propping the other side up…you can make excuses all day and never get nowhere or you can 'Geterdone!'
What's it going to be?

You're a firecracker. You call it excuses; I call it being prudent and cautious, getting my feet wet in something I've never done before that is (1) $pendy and (2) inherently dangerous and must be done with caution. I don't want to spend money on something that's not going to meet my needs. And if there IS a tester that will work on chunks, then why would I spend the extra money on this Lee setup that is not what really need? I really appreciate all the advice, but don't judge me.

That said, I spent several hours today melting some of this haul. Those two coffee cans full of nasty, rusty wheel weights gave me 36 very nice lead ingots (not shown in the photos, so total of 55 ingots cast tonight + Pewter). Then it got dark, so I stopped and I will recommence tomorrow.

I can't refill this propane tank, and some guy wants to buy the burner and valve only, so I'm trying to use up the propane.

The pewter ingots don't look as good. I used an old Potter mold ("P" for Pewter). The first batch are shiny when the mold was cold, but the following batches are grainy, almost like I cast them in sand molds. I suspect I dumped them out too early. They seem to take a bit different procedure than with lead (at least wheel weights).

It brought out my next door neighbor who is in his high 90s, to say hi and observe. He still gets around like someone at least 20 years younger than he is. He used to cast and reload, and has been selling off his stuff and giving select firearms to his grandkids since his wife passed about a year ago. He sold me some of his ammo and also gave me some lead and brass. I think he wants me to buy his Potter (bought in 1954), and Saeco bullet casting rigs, but he wants me to try them when I'm ready to cast some bullets.

I still have seven coffee cans very full of wheel weights, and several coffee cans full of the various other things--lead pipe, lead conduit, lead battery terminal clamps, a whole can full of stick on wheel weights, and about 30 lbs of soft sheet lead... I'm hopeful that I'll get most or all of that melted tomorrow, or run out of propane in the tank.

The plan is to melt more tomorrow and go shooting Monday. If propane tank is empty, maybe we'll stand back aways and put some bullet holes in it. Wife is sick, so might be going by myself or just me and son.
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I forgot to ask before about the fishing weights and the lead battery terminal clamps. Seems a shame to melt down fishing weights, but a guy gots to have boolits... Anyone know if those terminal clamps are fairly pure lead?

[OS OK]

Sorry…No Judgement here…I didn't mean for you to 'feel' the 'sting' when I cracked the 'whip'…just an overzealous chromosome we Texans possess. Some of the 'newbies' in this lead business are quite timid and shy when it comes to the lead substance in itself. Stay out of the smoke…don't cast in an unventilated area…you've read or been advised of the 'dangers' so I won't be hammering that nail.
Some of the descriptions you have made sound like you were pouring at different temps..real hot and the surface of the ingot will look strange, grainey or whatever…won't hurt the Pb. (lead). Get a thermometer. (RotoMetals.com)
Main thing is to get in there…do it…gain experience…learn from mistakes.
You can pour ingots in a 12 hole muffin pan, makes 2.2# ingots…easy to stack…fit into the pot…etc.

[41mag]

With regard to your testing, you could call around to see if any of the local scrap yards have a RF tester (I think thats what their called) and have ingots or chunks tested that way and know a bit more than hardness. If you just wanted the hardness and don't want to spring for the Cabine Tree you could pick up the Lee tester and use a large bullet mold to pour up some samples which would be easier to test with the Lee.

When I was trying to find something that would work well with my cast HP's I used a 2 cavity Lee 452 255 mold to pour up several samples of each alloy. Then I put them in a baggie and dated them. I would test one boolit the day of casting, then another a week later, and so on until I could see how they were hardening up. I tested some up to 6 months later only to find they had not noticeably changed, before I dumped them back into the pot for reuse. Thing is at least I knew that it was within the range I needed it to be and was softer or harder than the last batch I brewed up that may not have worked out.

I have a similar collection of unknown type lead I got from donations by folks who knew I was pouring my own. Some of it I simply threw in the pot one weekend due to it was taking up far more space than I wanted it to. I use this for blasting ammo at the ranges where I won't be getting my recovered lead back. It works out good for this and I don't feel bad about shooting up the "good" stuff knowing it cannot be retrieved.

The real soft unknown stuff that I can only guess is near pure I use to blend in with some real hard stuff that I got as a huge pile of ingots. From the folks who gathered it up, and smelted it down, there is no telling what it came from or actually is. They used it for large 1# plus fishing weights so it didn't really matter as long as it melted and poured. This is what I use to pour up solid nose boolits my mid range loads for my 357 thru 45 Colt revolvers. No real need to know what it is just that it is hard enough to not lead the bores and it shoots well up to the mid range loads.

I know this probably doesn't help you out but at least you know there is someone else out here who has similar types of alloy sitting around with no knowledge of what it is, or originally was.

[dolfinwriter]

Some of the 'newbies' in this lead business are quite timid and shy when it comes to the lead substance in itself.

Some of the descriptions you have made sound like you were pouring at different temps..real hot and the surface of the ingot will look strange, grainey or whatever…won't hurt the Pb. (lead). Get a thermometer. (RotoMetals.com)

No timidity here. Just cautious, and from what I've read, that's prudent ("Tinsel Fairy", fumes, 700 degree molten metal, open burner flame, flames in the pot when fluxing, observers tripping over things and spilling molten metal all over, etc.)

I do need to get a thermometer, but with the plumber's furnace I've been using, there isn't much I could do about the temp anyway. I've been keeping the flame at the low end (almost throttled off) as it is. It's very old and it does have a tendency to spuriously just jump open a bit, but I've caught it whenever it did that. That thing is still like a blowtorch at that setting and would probably be like a V2 rocket engine wide open.

After another day of melting, another 70+ WW ingots. I didn't count them before I cleaned up. I did melt the battery terminal clamps and got six good ingots out of them. I don't know their composition though, so I'm keeping them separate for now. I have another 2-1/2 cans of WWs plus all the soft stuff left. That propane tank is feeling very light now, so I think it's getting close to empty. I'll need to find another good burner rig that I can use refillable tanks to fuel. I'm spoiled now, and I won't be happy with some turkey fryer that takes three hours to melt 20-30# of WWs.

[brassrat]

It is a gamble buying a turkey fryer setup. At least some are so safe they don't work. Look for used.

[John Boy]

Hardness tester? The Lee IMO is the lowest price and readings are 100% comparable to the expensive ones per this test ... http://www.lasc.us/Shay-BHN-Tester-Experiment.htm#Lee

The Lee tester appeared to produce the most readings that were both consistent and closest to the actual laboratory results.