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Thread: What screen for mining berms

  1. #21
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    Depends on the soil content in the berms and how much you like mud. Needs to be dry enough to sift easily.

  2. #22
    Boolit Master
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    Dirt/rock. I think I will give it the night to dry out a bit. Loads of clay pigeon chunks. Joy. Anyone know if clay pigeon chunks float?
    Stop being blinded by your own ignorance.

  3. #23
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    Rain washes away dirt and leaves the heavy stuff like rocks, clay pigeon chunks, and yes lead on top. So bad right after rain but shortly after you might find the "buried treasure" is closer to the surface.
    Scrap.... because all the really pithy and emphatic four letter words were taken and we had to describe this source of casting material somehow so we added an "S" to what non casters and wives call what we collect.

    Kind of hard to claim to love America while one is hating half the Americans that disagree with you. One nation indivisible requires work.

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  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Outer Rondacker View Post
    Dirt/rock. I think I will give it the night to dry out a bit. Loads of clay pigeon chunks. Joy. Anyone know if clay pigeon chunks float?
    They will float on molten lead I find range scrap smelting easier if I start with a few inches of lead from the last range scrap smelting. A french fry basket is also handy for removeing casings.

    I like to put a cove -w- weight when I smelt range lead in case I don't nip all the sealed bullets

  5. #25
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    Only problem i have had is lead trapped in the dirt. But i have colander handy to sift any extra dirt before adding to the pot.

    Only down side to those big sifters is loosing the shot gun shot from the range scraps. That would some good elements to the chemistry of the alloy. I luck out and get a lot of castbullets from my berms. Theu host cow boy action shoots at my range.

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  6. #26
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    I made my screen with transporting in mind. Everything fit on a hand truck so one trip in and a return was it. The hand truck carried 2-6gal buckets with 8 gal of lead, a shovel, trawel, screen w/legs, and water for thirst.
    Carrying the 400+ LBS of lead and equipment wasn't worth the 200yd trip until I got the wheels.
    Use a few bungee cords to secure everything.
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  7. #27
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    Found this one outlined as a garden sifter but wheeled sifter running in a bumper track designed to ride on top of wheel barrow. Sounds like one someone mentioned before. https://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/...-ze0z1503zcwil

    Goes with what mold maker was saying about having to transport the gear being a consideration. Wheel barrow allows transport and should make dumping dirt easier.

    Don't forget the copper jackets have some scrap value after the lead is melted off. How much depends on what grade your scrap yard calls the copper. But they will pay something for it which should at least help offset the cost of propane or gas to go out and get them. Sort of wondered if one could make a forced air powered charcoal or wood furnace and melt the copper into ingots. Clean ingots would have the highest value. Thought about the same thing for the worn out brass and primers I take back. Get low dollar for them as bullets, high dollar if ingot form.
    Scrap.... because all the really pithy and emphatic four letter words were taken and we had to describe this source of casting material somehow so we added an "S" to what non casters and wives call what we collect.

    Kind of hard to claim to love America while one is hating half the Americans that disagree with you. One nation indivisible requires work.

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  8. #28
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    Well I had a chance to give my screen a go. Two shovels per sift. Five sifts with a total of 10 heaping shovels gave me a full three gallon bucket. I think I will stick to one shovel per sift in the future. Not a bad way to spend the day since the power was out anyway. I also walked the grounds and picked up two big coffee cans full of shotgun slugs. Kept them to the side. For now I will be pulling the truck right up to the berm. I might have the chance to mine a berm that has been used for years. There is a catch. I will only have a few hours to do it before it is dozed down. I am tossing around the idea of making a vibrating table. Using a old law mower motor and out of balance wheel. I will have to search for such an item online. All and all I am happy with the small set up I made works well.
    Stop being blinded by your own ignorance.

  9. #29
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    might want to think about and get some help.

    Streamline your operation. Make a plywood chute that you dump the basket into to fill a 2-3 gallon bucket. only weight is the shovels full and the bucket when you fight them into the truck. I know a lot of guys with they had your "problem" LOL

    If you have limited time and that much lead, maybe some of the guys near you would help for a piece of the pie before it is gone forever

  10. #30
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    Now that it is daylight and I had a chance to brush around the bullets in my bucket. It looks like I got a good shovels full of dirt or two. Should I toss this back into the screen set up and run the hose on it to wash out most of the dirt? It was still really wet when I mined this stuff. I do not plan on smelting it down for a good month or so.

    When I do smelt I use a home made rocket mass stove. I use bricks this way it is stable and twigs from around the yard. This way the cost is free for melting the scrap and lead down. This is a link to what one is. https://youtu.be/kmDYUrVHPWc This is a simple one made from blocks. Very stable and if you make the stack one more block high it really gets ripping. I have made the other ones out of all the fancy stuff and for what I do the block one works fine.
    Stop being blinded by your own ignorance.

  11. #31
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    How do the cinder blocks hold up to the heat?

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  12. #32
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    i"d wait until the dirt dried then sift again.....my 2¢

  13. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rcmaveric View Post
    How do the cinder blocks hold up to the heat?

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    Not well cinder blocks will deteriorate fairly fast, but they are fairly cheap.

    I have also thought about smelting the copper and brass just for fun. Maybe make a charcoal smelting setup using a 20# lp cylinder and some refractory concrete.
    Last edited by Plate plinker; 04-06-2018 at 05:53 PM.

  14. #34
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    I have contrmplated a setup to turn my nasty jackets into ingots. They look horrid the way i do it and is a pita to seperate them from the rocks. I just throw them out unless its rock free. I like the set up for smeling lead. That would save me money in the long run.

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  15. #35
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    You can get fancy on the Rocket stove I just posted a simple one as most guys would use it four times a year. You can use Fire Brick to stack one as well. That stuff last a very long time but cost more money. Everyone has 3 to 5 blocks sitting around.
    Stop being blinded by your own ignorance.

  16. #36
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    So now you have all these 5 gallon buckets of sifted bullets, right? In our berms it's mixed with rocks and pebbles and it's really hard to tell if they are .22 bullets, a dirty .223 bullet, etc.
    I set up a sluice box when I had my irrigation pump turned on, and .....wow! You wouldn't believe how quickly you can sort out the wheat from the chaff in these buckets of screened material. I built it on sliders and hooked up a 100 rpm output gearbox/120V motor, installed a bellcrank, and a coffee can full of debris is cleaned in no time. I can sluice a 55 gallon barrel in about 4 hours, and come out with clean meltable lead and bullets. Then when you melt it, what's left are bullet jackets, which are then turned in to the local scrapper after a short trip through the cement mixer in a citric acid wash. Get a better price for it that way.
    I can't say I save any time doing this, but the resulting gravel goes on the driveway, the smelting is MUCH cleaner, and I reclaim clean bullet jackets.
    I guess it just depends on the lead you're starting with.

  17. #37
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    I got one bucket so far. 1/3 is turning out to be rocks and dirt. I have it spreed in a large tote front of my fireplace drying out. As it drys out I pull out the bullets. This would take forever but since its my first bucket and we have three inches of snow on the ground this will work for now. It was also only a three gallon bucket.

    Put it on the bathroom scale. Clean range scrap come in at 61 pounds. Should make around 35 pounds of ingots I am told. Not bad.
    Last edited by Outer Rondacker; 04-09-2018 at 10:26 PM.
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  18. #38
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    For those of you wanting to smelt the copper jackets into ingots, look up a 'flower pot smelter' or 'backyard foundry'. There are a lot of instructions on how to make a simple smelter that gets hot enough to melt copper/brass. You can then use cast iron/steel molds for ingots.

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BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
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