What do I have here? How do turn it into shootable lead?

[RogerDat]

Yep muffin tins make little pucks, or my favorite for bulk is bread loaf pans, soup ladle about 4 scoops will give you a 12 lb. slab. that stacks and moves around well. The pucks are smaller at around a pound or pound and a half so easier to adjust to an accurate weight when mixing.

[Rizzo]

I got some lead roof jacks from my roofer neighbor and melted it all down to muffin ingots.
They were very shiny when cooled.
I suspect a high tin content from the joints that had been soldered.

In the future I will cut out the joints and melt them down by separately.
I hadn't thought of that before.

[Lloyd Smale]

I acquired about 2 tons of the same type of lead. I mix it 5050 with ww and use it in 38 spec 44 spec 45 colt loads. Its fine for velocitys under a 1000fps.

[Deezil]

Ran it all to the farm and Had a Big melt yesterday and this morning. 150lbs or so. I cut the soldered ends off and kept them separated. I found a turkey fryer for cheap on craigslist and bought it. I raided the local Goodwill and bought a huge dutch oven Iron pot , nice ladle and a assorted set of spoons with holes in them.

I just made a stand and kept the large pieces flat pieces upright and let them melt down. They went down rather Quick. Only got about 2.5lbs of crud out of it all. I tried wax for fluxing but sawdust worked better for me. Cheap muffin tins worked great.

After I did the pipe I melted the soldered pieces and got 8 muffin ingots out of it alone.

I'll try to get down there again and do the rest soon. I'll bring a Axe with me next time to cut it up in smaller pieces.

All the lead is super soft. I Can put a deep scratch in it with just a light fingernail scrape.

[725]

I'd smelt all the like lead into ingots and smelt all the WW's into ingots. The take x-number of soft lead and melt Y-number of WW ingots to make a repeatable alloy. You'll figure out how many of each makes the final alloy that works for your purpose.

[Deezil]

I Got a hold of a scanner through a Metallurgist buddy of mine. Tuesday I will have them zapped to see what I am really dealing with.

[Deezil]

Had scrap lead ingots X-ray'd. All pure lead was like %99.9999 something.

Had soldered end ingots done as well they are %98 pb and %2sn.

Probably just run those as pure lead as well.

[jimofaz]

Great Score. Great Friend. Been awhile, but I grew fond of using a one-sided hatchet or axe to score the lead cable sheathing or lead water pipe for easy folding over to fit into the 90 lb capacity dutch oven I still keep separate to use for scrap Pb rendering. Had an old stump back on the farm to lay the Pb-whatever on, held the hatchet where I wanted the cut or score, & whacked the flat top hammer side with a 2 lb. ball peen hammer. Had to strip a lot of lead cable sheathing for my Pap so he could burn & scrap the copper wire. Used the same one-sided Boy Scout hatchet & a hammer to split it open lengthwise. Dad got the wire. I got the lead!