Range Lead sifter

[nate72]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum, but I have been casting my own bullets and reloading since I was a little kid. I am working on my mechanical engineering degree and for one of my classes we are designing a mechanical device that will sift the lead from all of the dirt and junk. I have seen a lot of different ideas on youtube and forums. I want to make a device that works better than these but is still cheap enough that an average person could afford it. So currently we are working on "defining your customers needs". So my questions to every one are:

1. Would a device like this be of interest?
2. What size would be best? i.e. weight and volume
3. How much dirt would it have to process to be worth your time to use?
4. Would shoveling dirt into it or having it pick up dirt itself be better?
5. What are the environmental concerns about something like this?

any other ideas or needs in a device like this are welcome, the more the merrier.

Thank you.

[Rcmaveric]

Its super easy and cheap to build ones owne. Cheap 8ft 1x4 from hardware store, some chicken wire and and two trunk handles. Screw and a staple gun. Less than 20 bucks and your off to the race.

Cut the 1x4 into two 3ft peices and two 1ft peices. Now assemby your rectangle. Now cut out your 1/4 mesh hardware cloth with about an inch of overlap up the sides. The staple it in place with the staples either touching or slightly over lapping all the way around. Now flip it over and attach the handles on the short ends.

Dont fill it more than you can lift. Leaving some space to sift it around helps alot. Fill it full and you will get tired quick.

I keep a tote in my truck and use a bucket to carry it drom the berm to the tote. That tote fills in about 7 trips and yields over 200lbs of good clean lead if full. Takes less than an hour to fill the tote.

[MyFlatline]

Only difference is I use 2x4"s ..yes it adds weight, but overbuild everything..

[lightman]

That sounds like an interesting project. Do a google search for archeology and look at the sifters that those guys use. You can go as simple as hardware cloth on a wooden frame to something motorized. I saw it posted someplace to look for the end cap from a large electric motor to use as a sifter.

[jdfoxinc]

I thought about something that would hold a bobcat's front loader worth of dirt. Then allow that scoop to sit under it to catch the falling dirt so it can be put back on the berm without having to be handled again. 0.25" max opening to catch the smaller bullets. .17cal expand or vaporize.

You might look at how lead shot is harvested from trap/skeet ranges.

[D Crockett]

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[brass410]

better idea would be magnetic lead, you know. the kind you cast for the asperly aimless.

[merlin101]

better idea would be magnetic lead, you know. the kind you cast for the asperly aimless.

I've had my eye out for a lead magnet for years, there almost as rare as brass magnets!

[Grmps]

The sifter box is basic and simple to make, what we need is a frame that will hold the sifter box either a TP type frame with support cables or a frame with sides that the sifter box can move back and forth in, it would be nice if you catch the dirt with the wheelbarrow and easily dump the sifted bullets into a 2 gallon bucket say some kind of trough or funnel device

[Mr_Sheesh]

D Crockett - That is called a Grizzly Feeder often enough. Not too hard to make tho next time I make one I'll try expanded or punched metal, instead of hardware cloth, probably.

[D Crockett]

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[MaryB]

Hmmm old washing machine inner drum with the holes enlarged... a back bearing, toss a flat belt around the drum to a 12 volt gear motor... make it in a stand that tips to empty the drum into buckets

[Pardini]

Or a cement mixer. The problem is that it is a size sorter. Results will vary depending on the range surface material.

[Mr_Sheesh]

Those 'gold wheels' would get you even the very fine lead bits, but take more processing time/effort

[WALLNUTT]

The problem I found was that the bullets (lead) are not intact and end up like heavy dirt. the dirt around here isn't very granular and doesn't sift very easily.

[Mr_Sheesh]

Some kind of sluice box or specific gravity separator would be far better for lead in small granules to powder size particles; fluidized bed (usually in water) is often used for that, if I was processing a lot of dirt I know how to do that, did some for gold mining. Maybe a way to downsize that, hmmm.

[jdfoxinc]

Im thinking that for my muzzle loading only range which is in a sand/gravel river bottom a trommel sifted would be good for removing the fine sand, then I would only have to hand sort the lead from the gravel which is about 30% of the volume. I have a 1.5 cuft harbor freight cement mixer to mount a 1/4" expanded metal mesh cylinder to. Use an inverter cliped to my diesel truck battery to run it.

[igolfat8]

Screens, sifters, sieves, etc... work fine when the berm is dry, sandy and lacks clay. Around here our berms are made of top soil and large amounts of clay which clumps up and doesn’t work well trying to force it through a screen.

[wmitty]

igolfat8 nailed it. The problem is in the variation in soil types encountered being used in the berm. Low plasticity index materials (sands) are easy to recover bullets from but the clays are tough. A scalping screen on top of one or two increasingly finer screens in a vibrating frame sloped to allow the larger materials to slide off and be discarded will work if the berm materials can be broken into small enough particles. Some of the high p.i. clays are so hard/tough when dry I'm guessing it would take a gyratory crusher to break them up.

[Stephen Cohen]

I think that a trammel the kind that gold miners use. the one that has a big round tube like thing that goes round and round. it does not have to be as big as the kind I have seen on tv but something with a hopper on it to dump the dirt into to feed it. and a catcher on the end to catch the lead. just my thoughts D Crockett

Why did I not think of that, I made a small portable one one years ago to get smokey quartz from creek sand. Regards Stephen