Sore back and I just began going through the Lead

[pete501]

I figured I would clean off the patio deck of all the lead. Comprised of mostly plastic buckets and milk crates it was a mix of type metal, dive weights and tin/lead bar solder. The type went into 50 cal ammo cans. The Fairbanks Morse platform scale in the living room read 680 pounds, 85 of which were the dive weights. All this was relocated up to the barn. There was more buckets of type in the garage and I liked the idea of ammo can storage. The garage has lead stacked up in milk crates and buckets all on top of a wheeled industrial cart. 2 more buckets of type was transferred into ammo cans. I also came across 4 buckets of older clip on wheel weights. It seemed easier to bring the smelting pot to the garage. The wheel weights yielded nearly a milk crate of ingots and creating almost 5 gallons of waste clips. It may be time to stop acquiring lead. Seems more than a lifetime worth of the heavy stuff.. I have contemplated going through the rest and taking inventory to get a total weight but my back says no.

[lightman]

Sounds like a good days work. Love my wheeled industrial cart! Milk crates are my current choice of storing lead. A crate full of 1# Lyman style ingots weights around 700#. We've spent the last 2 weekends smelting wheel weights and my back is not real happy with me either. Seeing that stack of ingots grow and grow soothes the aches and pains at least a little! Stop acquiring lead??? Nah, surely not!

[pete501]

Stacking milk crates work if the bottom one is filled so the one on top crate's floor has support. I have a broken the bottoms of a few crates because I didn't do this.

[nannyhammer]

Although I don't have too much lead myself, I use 20MM ammo cans to store my ingots. I modified them by welding a piece of 3/8" rebar under both ends so you can move them with a hand truck. Saves some of the back strain.

[silly goose]

I just realized I have more than I'm ever gonna use. Started to sell it off.

[MaryB]

I have 3 3/4 full buckets of clip on wheel weights to sort and smelt... then store... Finally using up that monster stack of wood pellets in my garage so I can setup a powder coating booth with a blower and vent I can stick out that window by the pellets. Been doing some small powder coating jobs for electronic assembly front panels and more and more people want it done... thought I was retiring LOL! Under that stack of pellets is about 1k pounds of lead to be moved to another storage building...

[FredBuddy]

It's posts like this that have caused me to accumulate
a stash of wheel weights, and lately, sheet lead and tin.

I'm gonna have some big smelting sessions this spring !

I'm not sure why anymore, but I try to keep a friend
supplied with 30-30 and 32 Sp. stuff, but I swear, he and the kids shoot
maybe 5 rounds a year.

Guess I'll have to shoot more to compensate !

[dverna]

I have 3000 lbs and still would take more at the right price.

BTW, you will regret filling them with lead unless you support the grating on the bottom.

[Uncle Grinch]

I have 3000 lbs and still would take more at the right price.

BTW, you will regret filling them with lead unless you support the grating on the bottom.

Yeah... I found out the hard way. I now use plywood to distribute and support the bottom of my cola crates.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

I need to start asking around and scrounging.

[pete501]

Here are two more piles that I put on the scales in the barn. This is just a portion of my stash, I still have more buried behind stuff.
Each pile is 1000 pounds. One of the piles is now stacked around my bench grinder stand. No need to bolt it to the floor now.
There are 4 buckets of type, ammo cans with WW ingots, plumbers lead and other soft stuff, large ingots I got from a scraper that weren't fluxed, lots of lead anchors mostly large chunks of soft with an I-bolt cast into them.
I really need to get similar alloys smelted together and poured into manageable size ingots to fit in the bottom pour. Not today.

[lightman]

Right this minute all of my lead has been cast into ingots and stacked in milk crates! Except for the 2 weights that tried to escape and were found hiding under my burner. Guess you need to leave some for seed!

[D Crockett]

when my son was a kid he had one of those plastic toy boxes. as he grew out of the toy stage we put it into a different use we stored blankets in it till I got my wife a cedar chest then it turned into my lead storage chest right now it has close to a ton of lead in it enough for my life time and probably a lot of my sons life time to D Crockett

[mold maker]

I just realized that I still have 7 buckets of WW clips left from when the scrap value went south.

[DerekP Houston]

Lead is still on my list of belongings to move to the new house....my back is not looking forward to it. I estimate around 1k lbs, though I'll have a better number once it has all been restacked in the new garage. Wife will not be pleased with me I'm sure as it will consolidate a number of my stash spots into one location.

[shootinfox2]

Local scrap yard has a 55 gal drum pf sorted wheel weights for .50 a pound. Not sure I want to tackle that project alone.

Fox

[jsizemore]

You can do it. You'll learn a lot about what works and doesn't. You don't have to do it all in one weekend. Years down the road you'll appreciate all the work you did. $900-1000 is a bunch of money.

[lightman]

Local scrap yard has a 55 gal drum pf sorted wheel weights for .50 a pound. Not sure I want to tackle that project alone.

Fox

Another "you can do it" opinion. Me and Biggin just finished smelting over 30 buckets. Plus some other stuff. It does help to have a buddy. While basically a 2 man job, we did have another buddy or 2 drop by and lend a hand. .50cent a pound aint a terrible price either.

We worked parts of 6 days. One day was kind of a bummer because of technical problems and 3 of the days were short days.