Why is free lead so exciting.

[tinsnips]

After 40 years of getting free lead on my job it is still exciting for me to drag lead home . I get free WW but now they are mostly Zinc,iron but still fun.

[Mr Peabody]

I don't find it exciting at all. Free wheel weights from the gas station were always drudgery, but affordable. It's gotten nicer to buy what alloy I want and run with it.

[camp]

I get free wheel weights, yes a lot of zinc but i still enjoy sorting and processing

[Dusty Bannister]

For me, free lead allows me to help newbies get going. A small box of free lead and a dab of tin or solder and a person who is just getting started finds the fun in casting. Then they are going to really get out and look to find lead to keep the casting monster fed. When I get that free lead from a plumber friend, I melt off the solder joints and cast that in smaller ingots marked to show the percentage of tin solder. When a person new to casting sees that 10 pounds of lead ruin a 10 dollar bill, it is hard to see the value of the 550 125 grain bullets that lead will make. But when you hold those same bullets after casting them, and see how they look and find out how well they shoot, it really does make it worth the effort.

[bangerjim]

I have always bought my Pb and alloys.....for years. Did not like the stink and mess sorting and re-melting COWW’s. Did it years ago but never liked it. Now 85% are Zn and carp. Thank your liberal tree-kissing owl-hugging buddies on the east and left coast for that.

I have purchased many hundreds of pound of COWW’s, pure, Sn, and hard alloy over the years. I love those little ~1# trapezoidal ingots!

If you enjoy “free”....go for it. But nothing is really free in this life.

Bangerjim

Banger

[Bazoo]

I like the connection to the old days, which was before my time, in scrounging lead. I also like the cost savings.

[glockfan]

i'm relatively new to casting,and for me lead has to be free lol. i realize that i could get as much 9262 as i want at the local foundry for a decent price ,and that my casts would be more consistent and all..........but free lead get me near free boolits to shoot!!

i'm always on the hunt for free lead and i'm getting quite good at finding it.......the WW smelting -sorting process is really annoying, but when i'm looking at the 600lbs of clean lead ingots i piled up in 6 months it push me to keep going with ''free'' lead. i also made a deal with my local range so i'm getting all the shots sleeping in the berms which is litterally tons of it.......and it's free,so that means almost free ammunition.

[red67]

For me, free lead allows me to help newbies get going. A small box of free lead and a dab of tin or solder and a person who is just getting started finds the fun in casting. Then they are going to really get out and look to find lead to keep the casting monster fed. When I get that free lead from a plumber friend, I melt off the solder joints and cast that in smaller ingots marked to show the percentage of tin solder. When a person new to casting sees that 10 pounds of lead ruin a 10 dollar bill, it is hard to see the value of the 550 125 grain bullets that lead will make. But when you hold those same bullets after casting them, and see how they look and find out how well they shoot, it really does make it worth the effort.

My hat is off to you Dusty. This is exactly what all of us should be doing when the opportunity presents itself.

We need to encourage the growth and continuation of our shooting hobbies for the next generation.

[solman]

I got spoiled by free lead in the form of COWW when I first started casting many years ago. Now the wheel weights are all zinc or coated metal and the free lead is pretty much gone. I hate paying for lead but find I have to if I want to keep casting. Occasionally I find some real cheap or free lead and it's a great day.

[lightman]

After 40 years of getting free lead on my job it is still exciting for me to drag lead home . I get free WW but now they are mostly Zinc,iron but still fun.

I guess we get excited because its kind of an addiction. I've been pretty successful at scrounging free lead over the years but the guys that say nothing is really free are sort of correct. You may still have to transport it and smelt it. You will have some investment in smelting equipment, ingot molds and propane. And time! I don't really even need more lead but I still watch for the free or cheap score and get excited about it!

[Hickok]

I get a big grin when I look down in a parking lot and find a nice big clip-on wheel weight!

[MrWolf]

^^^Bingo!^^^ me too.

[Retumbo]

Why????? Because if i think of my stash at approxametly 2500 lbs at, on average $0.65, i have $1600 dollars invested in my lead. Every free oz is a blessing.

[rmark]

'I get a big grin when I look down in a parking lot and find a nice big clip-on wheel weight!'

then I pull out my pliers to get it off the wheel

[Blue2]

I have been spoiled in that I had a lot of WW alloy ahead in ingot form plus a goodly amount of linotype . Then this week I started rendering down some pails of WW that I had set aside for a rainy day. What a miserable job compared to years ago. Lots of steel and zincs weights plus the normal garbage thrown in the pails. Valve stems ,shop rags, wheel nuts, cig. butts,etc. when I get these finished off I don't wish to do it again any time soon. If it wasn't for the antimony content I would leave these for some more ambitious fellow to have.
I scored a bunch of radiation isotope bottles awhile ago and these are close to the same alloy as WW . Lovely clean metal to cast with.

[bowfin]

Turning free lead into bullets is like turning a piece of the backyard into vegetable garden or a deer permit into sausage, at least for me. Some people would rather skip the reclamation, or even the casting and reloading part and just get to the shooting, which is fine. No wrong answers here.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

It would be a lot more exciting if there were such a thing as free powder to send it anywhere. To see spending money to save money so clearly, you would normally have to be female.

[MaryB]

'I get a big grin when I look down in a parking lot and find a nice big clip-on wheel weight!'

then I pull out my pliers to get it off the wheel

I have a mini Leatherman on my key chain

[kevin c]

I have bought almost all my lead. I pretty much have to.

Once I got a third of a bucket of never used lead ww through a friend, and then a couple handfuls in garage sales. Nothing but zinc ww otherwise (California resident here) I have also gratefully taken free lead from friends who know I am looking for it, along with other useful metals like tin.

The problem is that the total of what I've gotten free this way is less than a hundred pounds over the past couple years, but shooting action pistol I can put 30 to 40 K rounds of 147 grain boolits into my club's berms each year, about 840 pounds worth.

No way am I going to score that much free lead, apart from digging it back out of the berms (which I have done and still do some but it's hard dirty work that makes my back go on strike). I have to buy. S&S here, foundries, scrapyards and radio pharmacies are my sources for alloys or component metals.

It's what I gotta do, but I ain't complaining too much, 'cause I get to do what I like to do - shoot!

[LenH]

I buy most of my alloys from reliable sources, on the other hand my brother brings me range lead he mines from his gun club. I was out there visiting and we go
out to the range and you could see lead laying on top of the berms. The range is in an old river bottom and after a rain it is on top of the berm. We got about 300 pound
in about 20 minutes of sifting. We could have filled a dump truck if we had the time.

Although it is technically `free' it is mostly jacketed pistol ammo. I have changed my setup and can get approx. 80# of lead out of 100 to 110 pounds of the bullets.
The time and work involved rendering the stuff down it is far from free but it is still cheaper than buying ingots.