When is Enough Enough?

[DiverJay]

Over time, I have accumulated five 5-gallon buckets of lead ingots. I think I finally have enough. (Said no bullet caster ever)

[Mitch]

lol this is a realy great question.But the only one who knows it you. I am sure that i have enough lead to shoot for my lifetime.there are other things that come to mind.How many grand kids will want to shoot and maybe cast one day.Will i want to make some bullets and sell them for a few extra$.i ahvre onbly been casting for about 10 years or less than the price of lead tin and antimony have went up quite a bit in that time.So is lead a good investment.last but not least i love hunting down lead.so my answer is i need more lol.good luck lead hunting

[DiverJay]

The funny thing is, I have enough jacketed and plated bullets on hand for my lifetime. I probably would not have gotten into bullet casting if not for a friend who, years ago, had a restraining order put on him so he had to get rid of all his reloading stuff. In the process, he gave me a box with a bunch of molds, a Lee casting pot, and an old RCBS lubesizer. That box sat idle for a good 15 years before I took it out and finally started playing with it. And you know what? It's actually really fun. I really do enjoy it. Several times, I've offered to give everything back to my buddy but he always insists I keep it. Guess I'll be leaving all the jacketed stuff to my kids.

[David2011]

I just moved 2200-2300 pounds of raw COWW, Linotype, Monotype, babbit, SOWW and ingots almost 700 miles. At 65 that may be enough to get me to the end of my competitive shooting.

[Rcmaveric]

I just conned my wife into getting 400lbs of wheel weights while i am over sees. My neighbor moved it for me onto the back porch.... poor sucker.... i go through about 200 lbs a year. I havent found pewter or type metals or bearing. I would love to get my hands on some bearing metals. Still trying to get the indoor ranges to sell me their lead for cheap. I never have enough. I think if i had some caches like i see on Facebook i wouldnt stress and worry to much. But i dont. When i left i had maybe 300lbs totals. 200 in range scraps, 80 in wheel weights and 20 of pure. When you look at it isnt that much and I find it stress full. I dont have any tin or pewter and those prices are sky high at the moment. Even raw tin and antimony and new bearing metals are jaw droppingly expensive.

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[Crash_Corrigan]

I have about 1500 lbs of ingots in the bed of my Nissan Frontier PU. They decrease my MPG about 1 mpg and lengthen my stopping with the weight but they also smooth out the ride on my truck and make it a joy to ride in. This pile of ingots have been following me around since '95 when I glommed onto many buckets of radiator shop droppings and short pieces of solder. That stuff was very high in tin content and molded like a dream but the boolits were light in weight. I also have about 400 lbs of range scrap that I have yet to smelt.

[JBinMN]

At over a half ton of mixed alloys & pure, along with using about 5-6 traps to catch what goes down range, I think I am about done with accumulating.

Funny I say that though, I just bought 23 more pounds of Xray room strippings about 4 hours ago, even though I have about 400 lbs yet to smelt into ingots & was drooling over the rest of the stack I saw( I did not have enough $$ or it would have gone home with me..), that was prolly about 500 pounds more...

It IS an addiction, IMO...

G'Luck to those who feel the same way!

[Tom W.]

I just conned my wife into getting 400lbs of wheel weights while i am over sees. My neighbor moved it for me onto the back porch.... poor sucker.... i go through about 200 lbs a year. I havent found pewter or type metals or bearing. I would love to get my hands on some bearing metals. Still trying to get the indoor ranges to sell me their lead for cheap. I never have enough. I think if i had some caches like i see on Facebook i wouldnt stress and worry to much. But i dont. When i left i had maybe 300lbs totals. 200 in range scraps, 80 in wheel weights and 20 of pure. When you look at it isnt that much and I find it stress full. I dont have any tin or pewter and those prices are sky high at the moment. Even raw tin and antimony and new bearing metals are jaw droppingly expensive.

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If you can locate a sawmill check and see who they get their nickel Babbitt from. That stuff is 96 or more % tin. One ingot may last you a long time. I used to get it from the supplier when I worked at the sawmill. I even made boolits from straight nickel Babbitt. They were very hard and a bit on the light side. I even got 60 lb. pure lead ingots from Sanders Lead in Troy , Alabama. It was hard to melt into usable sizes, and I learned to save my Babbitt to mix with the lead.

[Land Owner]

DiverJay - it is "enough" when you KNOW you are not getting any younger and the quantity of "stuff" you have accumulated will outlast your needs. Then, it becomes a personal decision to stop hording. Some cannot find the OFF switch and need to be reminded that you cannot take it with you when you leave this place.

[NyFirefighter357]

I've never cast a usable bullet or shot a cast boolit but I've read the handwriting on the walls here in NY. They don't want people to be able to have ammo or guns for that matter. They want background checks on ammo sales, registries of ammo purchases and keep introducing bills that would limit ammo sales to 20 bullets every 3 months. This is the reason I joined this forum, to learn about casting my own. We have very little use for lead here and it all gets scrapped, but in this area most of the houses weren't built with lead except the shower pans. WW are mostly steel or zinc. I lucked into an estate of an old plumber and was able to get NOS lead traps, pipe solder and ingots, about 1,200lbs. Not realizing how much it really weighed I offered $145 for it all. In total I have probably 1,500lbs & less than $300 into it all as I do find the occasional lead bend, solder, plumbing ingot or old water line for free. I also hit up my B-I-L who is a plumber for some. Last fall I found a CL ad selling a used one time 10lb dipping pot, new can of casting sand & what was billed as 20lb pewter for $25 it turned out to be an art project the guy did for a plumbing supply display & he refused to use lead so they gave him 95/5 solder. I've purchased certified Lino & antimony and a few 5lb rolls of solder at $1lb. I don't actively hunt for lead or alloy but if I come by some for cheap or free I don't pass it up as it's not easy to get/find here. I have met some great people here and have also traded lead/alloy for bullets. (Thanks Mitch) Lead should only go up in price over time as it will be harder to find & laws will limit sales. You can't even buy a lead sinker in stores here. Cast lead bank sinkers sell for $0.25-$0.30 an oz in this area. I could sell my stash for scrap and double my money. (I would never!) It will eventually all be converted to bullets as my plan is to make sure there is enough components to supply every gun with 1K or more rounds after I'm gone, plus what I will shoot before then.
BTW- If you guys hear of a house sinking in Ohio it's because Mitch (Bob) has accumulated all the lead in his basement! He's eyeing a 2,200 lb ingot right now!
Most of my stash:




Bob's 1 ton+ ingot he's eyeing:

[Rcmaveric]

I dont know what makes me jealous. The fact you have a basement or such a lead wealth. Lol

Cant have basements in Florida.

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[NyFirefighter357]

I dont know what makes me jealous. The fact you have a basement or such a lead wealth. Lol

Cant have basements in Florida.

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You could but you'd be swimming in it. If you got it dry and filled it with lead you'd sink the house for sure! lol

[45workhorse]

They can make a swimming pool and keep water IN it, but they can't make a basement and keep water OUT!

[Eddie Southgate]

Never enough , never too late to get some more for the stash .

[lightman]

I'm well beyond having "enough" but I still enjoy a good score. The thrill of the chase, or something like that! Me and a buddy probably picked up 50 weights of various sizes off of street corners last week while just knocking around.

[dbosman]

I make sure to label tin and antimony alloys so my heirs won't sell it as lead scrap and lose out.

[Hossfly]

You don’t have enough unless it cracks the slab in your shop area.

[Walks]

Never.

[Drm50]

It is addictive. I've got two 105mm ammo cases full of ingots of common lead. Pipe, flashing and sheeting. I have 7 drywall buckets of common lead to be smelted into ingots. When I get that done no more common lead. I have commercial ingots to big to handle with a spud bar. I would sell them but the effort and fuel to get them to the junk yard aren't worth it.

[OS OK]

When I built my lead recycling backstop, I sorta felt better about how much lead I had collected by then and that it'd last my lifetime too.



Then a friend calls a couple weeks ago and ask if I was still casting...if so he had a bunch of lead I can have. Assorted chilled shot & fish weights. I couldn't get over there fast enough...I got the 'hoarding sickness'.



I made ingots from 433 pounds of it and gave a friend who is new into shotgun reloading 200 pounds...



"You can never have enough...heheee!"