Separate Range scrap?

[WaterRat]

Does anyone pick through range scrap and separate jacketed bullets from cast bullets?
I was thinking it would be a good idea and that you could probably just use the cast bullet lead as is to poor new bullets.
That is until I started doing it, its a bit of a time eater LOL

[trails4u]

Copper won't melt until nearly 2000 degrees F. Just scoop the jackets out with your dross.

[DW475]

I just dump it all in my 100lb smelter and like trails4u said, scoop the jackets out with the dross. I sell the jackets to the local recycler when I get bucket full.

[psweigle]

Jacketed bullet lead SEEMS to be softer after melting than lead boolits do. But that deing said, i just melt them all together.

[kevin c]

I've read here of berm miners hitting "lodes" of cast boolits in their digs because the shooters at their range use a lot of them and/or shoot into a specific spot. I've read here that the cores of jacketed slugs tend to be a softer lead than cast, since the jacket provides the needed hardness, so that separating one from the other can give you alloys of different hardness.

Whether it's worth the time and effort must be a matter what gets shot into the berm (a great predominance of one or the other might make it easier) and where, and what it's worth to the miner. In my case, my club has too much of a mix for me to go to the trouble.

[daloper]

I don't separate mine. I do take a pair of side cutters and nip the nose off the jacketed ones so that they will melt and run out easier. Scoop the jackets off when they float up and make my ingots.

[Stephen Cohen]

I tried sorting the jacketed from cast and lost interest real quick, but I ended up with some 400 Kilograms of lead ingots that were fine for my use. I plan to mine the berms at my club again when it cools down some, I being an older member can remember where the old disused berms were which contain mostly high lino content lead and very little jacketed. Who said being old don't have its advantages. Regards Stephen

[LenH]

Most of the range lead I get is jacketed bullets of some sort. My brother on the OKC area is able to get lead fairly quick and easy. I see very little cast in the mix.
I do have to make sure the FMJ's are cut open or cracked open to get the lead out. I generally treat the stuff as almost pure. It usually test some where between
8 & 9 on a Cabine Tree tester. I still have 200 or 300# I haven't processed. I need to us up what I have already have in ingots.

[truckjohn]

I was hoping this was about an easier way to get all the rocks and trash out without having to pick it all out slowly....

Jacket from cast - I did that once..... It made a super slow process even slower - as melting down range scrap is super time consuming as it is....

[samari46]

Most of the 45 auto shooters used a 230 grain round nosed hard cast bullet and when mining the berm with a rake,shovel and screen loaded into 5 gallon buckets. Couldn't fill them full as it was a real pain to get them in the truck. Come smelting time would dump a bucket at a time and separate all those 45 auto bullets and do them separately. The ingots would go into a separate bucket and marked with a magic marker.
Frank

[Winger Ed.]

Who said being old don't have its advantages.

Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.


I just melt it all together. Stir it a few times and all the jackets float to the top.

[lightman]

I never separated mine, just smelted it all together. My range had a lot of bullseye shooters and the scrap contained a high % of cast with a small mix of jacketed and 22 rimfire. Smelted together, it made a decent alloy. A lot of it got caked into a mass where the bottom and backing plates came together in the trap and separating it would have been impossible.

[RoGrrr]

I mine a berm at a range where I volunteer to run it when the manager needs a day off. He knew of my arrangement with the previous proprietors of the range and allowed me to continue.
Since the range wasn't open 7 days I asked for a key so I could mine at my leisure. Previously, I had to listen for a car pulling into the lot and not be on the berm when paying customers came in.
He offered me a key with the proviso that I "pay" him back by volunteering some of my time IF he needed me.
For me, it was a GOOD DEAL !
I have about a ton of recovered slugs/ore which I have smelted into clean ingots to cast in my Bullet Master. Consequently, I load a box of centerfire for under $2. I consider that I get to shoot for "FREE!"
Cast is harder than the cores in jacketed boolits. Sort the lead ? NOPE. I figure no matter what the BHN is, it will shoot better than I can.
People rag on me for mining the berm, saying it's dirty, back breaking and time consuming. I tell them that I'm retired so I have all the time in the world. I'm an athlete so it's good exercize for me. And as far as dirty, there's this stuff called SOAP AND WATER !
Then I explain that with what I have I can cast 60,000 45 slugs or 120,000 9mm. If you have to buy that many, it will cost you about $7,000. That shuts them up.
I built a sifter basket from 1/4" machine screen. You will see it in the urls I've provided below.
I shake what I pick up and much of the dirt falls out the bottom. When I get home with it, I rinse it to remove the remainder of the dirt. Then I smelt it into clean ingots.
Not sure if I mentioned but I can fill a 5 gallon bucket in under half hour. That's about 175 Lbs. I get about 125 Lbs of lead, 25 Lbs of copper jackets (which get sold at the scrap yard). The rest is dross which I discard onto my gravel lane.

Here is some info if you care to read some:
SIFTING RANGE SCRAP

For those of you who want to mine and shoot for FREE, here are some threads which might prove invaluable.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...e-scrap-shovel

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...y-at-the-range!




More mining/sifting
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...ghlight=186lbs
Mine starts at post #21
This thread is over 70 posts but has MUCH good info for those of you who want to mine berms.

[Pete44mag]

Thanks for this thread! I'm new to casting my own boolits and just this weekend volunteered to help clean out the indoor range at the club I belong to. I got about 500# of scrap and was trying to figure out a fast way to separate the copper from the lead. Now I found it, just melt it, flux it and pour into ingots. With the help of this site hopefully I'll be able to learn how to get ingots cast into boolits then powder coated so can load them and go shooting. I already learned from reloading that you don't save money you just shoot more. Now I think I'll learn from casting the same lesson. Thanks again folks!!!

[Dragonheart]

My lead comes from an outdoor range where everything has hit a steel plate backstop. I guess you could separate, but my last smelt yielded over 500 pounds of clean ingots. That translates to buckets and buckets of sifted out shattered bullets, jackets, sand, wood, plastic, etc, etc that is rough, sharp and not what I would want to sort through. I just dump it all into my pot, bring it up to temp, throw in some flux and start skimming the debris off the top. I consider everything that doesn't come out of my bottom pour spout to be debris. I quit testing for lead hardness because by the time my full pot of 200+ pounds of alloy has mixed and ready to pour it comes out the be around a 10 bhn. Since I powder coat and 95% of my shooting is handgun the alloy mix is not important anyway.

[rmark]

My range scrap is about 40% cast pistol bullets, 40% jacketed pistol bullets, 10% jacketed rifle, its hardness is about BHN 10.

[higgins]

Since I'm retired and have too much time on my hands I sort range scrap into cast, jacketed, and other (including unidentifiable). I cast some .45 Colt bullets from jacketed bullet core metal and I believe they were too soft because they leaded with loads that didn't lead with COWW metal bullets. I then tried 50/50 jacketed bullet core metal/cast bullet metal and they were fine.

I've always cast rifle bullets from either COWW or cast bullet metal with good results.

I don't have a hardness tester, but years ago someone else tested some plated bullets for me, and they ranged from bnh 7-14. I haven't tried casting bullets from plated bullet metal, and may not as long as I've got plenty of "known" metal.

I suppose if you needed a larger volume of bullets you could just smelt it all together and come out OK as long as they bullets are not overwhelmingly jacketed bullets. Someone will probably be along later to tell me that they use jacketed bullet core metal and it works just fine for them; I don't doubt them, but the metal I had didn't work for me unless it was hardened a bit.

[RED BEAR]

Another vote for melting all at once.

[rcslotcar]

When I melt down large unknown lots into ingots I cast several slugs that I test the BH and mark the ingots.

[grullaguy]

Been separating for years. I separate jacketed, plated, cast and buckshot and known soft into separate containers.
I am a masochist I know.
Combined with periodic hardness testing, I can blend for almost any situation.