What happens when no lead????

[garbler]

Despite those who profess otherwise there is quite a bit of salvageable lead out there. It may not be in your backyard or where you can get your hands on it without much effort but for those who are willing to work for it it’s there. I laid this out once before but it doesn’t hurt to go through it again

It’s ballast keels from recreational sailboats and trim ballast from some commercial craft. Okay one person has already told us that lead of this type and foundries that handle it are outlawed or gone but this is not true. Do a search online for Marskeel or Broomfield & Sons, Nautech metals etc etc. These firms do not, repeat, do not use contaminated junk lead and they are in business.

These companies handle, design, and make large single pour lead keels for recreational sailboats. As a rule of thumb a 20K# sailing hull (38-42’) will need approx 8-9K# of ballast to keep it from capsizing. These are rough numbers but close enough. Anyway chunks of lead of this size are by no means rare. In fact I was hired by Lloyds of London to inspect the largest lead keel to date which was around 75 tons, product of Mars Keels. Heavy lead ballast keels are literally hanging below the hull from big keel bolts. These are very very dynamic loads that must remain secure to the hull in rough 30-40° encounters and remain watertight. To cast these huge keels the alloy must be correct to control shrinkage since bolt pattern and alignment is critical. This usually means around 1.5 -2.5 % antimony. This lead is pretty nice stuff if it comes from the real players.

After big storms and hurricanes the marine underwriters go into what is called ‘ Cat Loss ‘ mode which means clean up the mess and scrap, salvage and sell ASAP. Lead ballast keels are cumbersome and difficult to move and can be very difficult to sell. Hurricanes still happen and sailboat keels still exist. A single or a few smaller keels will keep a whole lot of casters supplied for a long time. Ballast keels on any hull larger than 25’ or so, ( very small ) aren’t going to listen to your torch or Sawsall. This is internet fantasy I’m afraid. This is chainsaw work with low rakers and turps. I’ve worked enough salvor crews to know that cutting up big keels is a job. Years ago I fed more than few shooters and a couple of New England cast bullet makers with tons of salvage lead but I’m out of the business now so good luck. But be prepared.

[Gobeyond]

You can buy range scrap on eBay if you’re careful and add monotype! Yah how would that work!? They can still send it in from out of state. Even Rotometals does that.

[kevin c]

Action pistol sports consumes huge amounts of ammunition (a couple thousand rounds fired a month in practice and matches is common). That's 500 pounds of lead a year using my 147 grain loads. The ammo also has to meet a power factor based on momentum that basically trades bullet weight for speed.

The small amounts of lead that might be sufficient for a few rounds a year in a rifle won't cut it in my sport. Substituting an expensive alloy like copper or bismuth is a bank buster. Zinc might work, but the power factor requirement means that a bullet two thirds the weight of a lead one needs to be loaded to a velocity half again faster to be equivalent. There's also the fact that zinc has a Brinell hardness an order of magnitude higher than lead, which may be problematic for barrel wear.

If abunaitoo shoots as much as I do, I'd Be concerned about securing an adequate lead supply too.