melting down salvaged lead.....

[jimb16]

I've just finished salvaging a small lot of lead, 71 pounds of range lead and 39 pounds of COWWs. Anyone have an idea of the typical composition of lead from an indoor shooting range? It is about 95% jacketed. I'd like to make up a batch of #2 out of this stuff and I have plenty of both tin and lino to add. If I need more COWW, I've got plenty of that too. Thanks.

[too many things]

most jacket core is near pure. heat it hot and most lead will just leave the jacket parts floating . try to get as much lead off as you can. save them and run a magnet to get any steel and sell the jacket for No2 copper. use the lead as pure and do the mix as Lyman says for No 2
should add a note here
if you see a bunch of foamy looking lead that is the new "green" stuff may be hard to get the jackets out of it , so will have to trash that part

[jimb16]

That's the info I was looking for. Thanks

[sutherpride59]

+1 on what too many things said. The range scrap I have collected came in at 7 bhn after 3 days.

[mdi]

Range lead will vary, some I've purchases ran about 10-12 BHN and others about 8-9 BHN. I figger between the jacketed cores and the 22 rimfire bullets Range lead runs pretty soft. One thing I do when I melt jacketed bullets is I clip the jacket with side cutters just in case the jackets pop when the core melts and mebbe expands. But, it ain't happened yet...

[Bigslug]

I just had a member here scan some of my range scroungings which I've been carefully segregating into batches of jacketed, shotgun slugs, and "other people's cast & mystery frags"

The jacketed seems to be running in the ballpark of about 1% antimony (a shade under, actually) and zero tin. It was useful to get the actual scan data on that because it was ACTING like 25-1/30-1 in terms of having identical hardness (9 BHN) and not having enough antimony to take a heat-treat.

The slugs came back at 0.1% antimony and 0.1% tin, which for all I know could have just been contamination from other sources, but it routinely hardness tests about 8 BHN.

Your variability will come from what kind of indoor range you're dealing with. Figure L.E. will be mostly jacketed and whatever factory cast (swaged) comes out of the backup .38's. Civvie ranges will depend on what kind of matches are being hosted and what the clientele are into. Thing is. . .it's a total box of chocolates. My dad & I melted down several boxes of factory cast that we had purchased back in the 80's or 90's - stuff turned out to be linotype! Unlikely to find that nowadays, but the stashes do surface and get into the scrap stream.

Before I started segregating and was just throwing it all together (which was not a very long period), I was getting about 10 BHN, but ya never really know.

[2011redrider]

I've processed about 2000 lbs of range scrap from a local PD range and it runs about 7 bhn. It works fine for 38, 45 and have run 357 up to 1250-1300 fps with no leading. Fit it way more important though. Again, save your copper jackets to sell, I'm up to 10 -5 gal buckets of it to sort thru for steel.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

If I were to want to mix a "specific" alloy, like 90-5-5, I would want to know precisely what is in my base alloy, otherwise it's just a pig in a poke.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

while some lead cores of jacketed bullets are pure lead, some are 2 or 3% antimony.