Not what I had planned, range scrap

[facetious]

I had three cat litter buckets under my work bench that I would put range scrap in, one was about 3/4 full the others were about 1/2 full. After reading about melting plated boolits I started to pick through one to see how many there were. It didn't take long to figure out that I wasn't going to sort them them all out so I got the old Coleman cook stove out and thought I would do a test melt to see what a random mix would look like. Well I melted a fry pan full and poured a few ingots , this is all scrap I picked up over about three years and about 90% jacketed . It went well so I did another and another and before long the two 1/2 buckets were all cooked down and had 96 lb's . So I thought what the heck and started on the fuller one and it didn't take as long as I thought and I had another 73 lb's for 169 lb's total . I didn't have much gas for the stove but did have enough for three tanks and used two and a half to melt it all. I ended up with 64 lb's of jackets and stuff, not all the plated melted and are in there somewhere but didn't see any squirters.

So now I have 169 lb's of ingots that are all different. As I went through I saw that the stuff picked up the last years had more jacketed then the stuff I had picked up earlier so at some point I still need to get a turkey cooker so I can melt it into one big batch that is all the same and then see what I have. But it should keep me in 38's and 357's for a few years.

I think I had read that you can wash the jackets in dish soap and citric acid to clean them to sell for scrap, may have to pick out the rocks and the plated boolits and stuff but that can wait for later.

But any way I never started out to do this but if any one cares this is what I ended up with.

[Markopolo]

well done.. see what happens once you get started!!!

[Winger Ed.]

Cool.

I'd ask the scrap yard guys about the jackets before I spent much time on them.

[kevin c]

I don't know about your range, of course, but at mine it's getting more and more common to find non lead projectiles that, fortunately, declare themselves by floating on the melt. They seem to be made of a sintered metal (copper?). They don't deform like lead, either burying themselves intact in the sand, maybe chipping if they hit another slug or small rock in the berm, and will shatter on steel. At first, I mistook them for plated, but they never melt at temperatures for lead. They will break if tapped with a hammer on a hard surface (NOT right after being skimmed out of the melt: you do not want to mistakenly smack an intact plated lead bullet with a molten core!).

[Winger Ed.]

They seem to be made of a sintered metal (copper?).

That's probably what they are.
One of the big ammo companies was advertising those awhile back to use on the indoor Lead free ranges.

[facetious]

The plated boolits that didn't melt were 9 mm and .45's. There were not a lot of them and I tried to find them as I put them in but missed a lot of them. When skimming off the jackets I would find them and try to pic them out to cut them and try again. One thing I did find was that when I would find .45's thy would be puffed up. It was kind of hard to do anything with them with gloves and face mask and so on so by the time I got to them I found thy weren't puffed up as much and and were harder to cut then 9mm's. I didn't have a lot of fuel so wanted to keep moving so I am sure I missed a bunch. There were more 9mm's then 45's but 45's stood out more and were easier to find. I may try and wash some of the jackets to see what I can find for later but even if I don't get much more or can't sell them for scrap I'm still happy with what I got, from what I read I should be able to add some tin maybe add some bird shot so thy can be WD'ed and have a good supply of stuff for .357's and .38's letting me save my WW's and type metal for rifles and and other stuff.

[kevin c]

Having notoriously wimpy grip strength, I gave up the dykes and use a waffle faced framing hammer to whack plated slugs lying on a steel plate or concrete. Faster, easier, and allows me to imagine crushing my enemies as I do it ;^D.

I just read that, for at least one brand of sintered copper slug, the metal powder is a mix of copper and tin. I don't know how much of the latter is used, but maybe I'll just leave them in the melt a while, hoping the tin will melt out.

[LenH]

facetious, I get a bunch of range scrap from my brother. The club his is a member of is down in an old river bottom and the berms are sandy soil and very easy to mine. We filled up
3 gallon buckets in about 15 minutes. Easy enough.

The mistake I made was trying to melt all of it at once. The stuff on top never melted. I started early in the morning and 2 hours later the top layer was not melted.
I dug down a found that the bottom 2 layers had melted and the jackets had floated and formed a layer of insulation. That was trying to do 150# at a time. I can get
100 pounds easy enough and learned to put a lid on the pot. I use a fry pot strainer to sift out the jackets and shake out the remaining lead. I have 2 5 gallon buckets of
left over jackets. Trouble is the scrap yards around here wont take them.

[downzero]

I'd enjoy every bit of that in my handguns without a second thought.

[remy3424]

My local scrap yard will take them at brass price (less than copper), need to get all the lead out, run a magnet through them, the first time I took them in, the fella sticks a magnet in and a bunch of jackets come out...I was quite surprised. I thought all jackets were copper, they want nothing to do with them if anything comes out attached to the magnet. Save those with all discarded shell cases.

[kevin c]

Need to run the cases past that magnet, too.

[ulav8r]

So now I have 169 lb's of ingots that are all different. As I went through I saw that the stuff picked up the last years had more jacketed then the stuff I had picked up earlier so at some point I still need to get a turkey cooker so I can melt it into one big batch that is all the same and then see what I have. But it should keep me in 38's and 357's for a few years.

Do you know which ones came out of the same melt? -Keep each melt together, then remelt using the same number of ingots from each melt, this will make them all the same. IOW, mark all from the first batch as 1, the second batch as 2, etc. Then remelt, using equal number of ingots from all batches to get a consistent batch. Assuming about 30 pounds to the skillet, you would have about 6 batches. 5 1 pound ingots from each batch would be the same alloy as the next melt using 5 from each batch. One that was done you could have a sample tested if you needed to know what you had, or you could use as is, only adding tin as needed to get good fillout. Knowing the exact alloy should only matter for hunting bullets that need to be soft but tough or for extreme accuracy requirements.

[facetious]

ulav8r

That was kind of thinking but in a 9" fry pan on the cook stove can get to be a lot of mixing, I know I'v tried it in the past.

But as luck would have it I was texting with a guy I worked with before I retired and told him what I was doing and he said that he had a turkey fryer burner some where in his shed and that he would look for it and that I could use it. I have a dutch oven that should hold a third of it so starting with three batch's should speed things up. I haven't checked but it may hold close to half of it, I will half to see how many ingots will fit in it first.

Now for some brain games is figuring out what I am going to do with it. After going back and finding what I could on range scrap with a lot of jacked it would seem that 1.9 % comes up for antimony and no tin. If you figure in 10% was cast (note: i'm just guessing on that, but you can see the box of jackets. Cast could be more, but 20% would be about it.) I was thinking I could round up and say 2% antimony , If I added 2% pewter/tin how hard would it be? I have enough pewter to add more but 2% seems to be what everyone seem to say to add. The odds are that this will be a handgun alloy and my molds for full power have gas checks. 358156's and LBT 150 OWC's. Plane base for .38's and lower power .357's. So do you think this would be hard enough for .357?

So I'm open for any thoughts on if I'm close about how much antimony there mite be in there and and the pewter. Just thinking that if i am going to have his cooker to make it all the same this would be the time to add the pewter.

[kevin c]

I don't know that you can count on your range scrap having an Sb content the same as somebody else's, given that what gets shot into different berms is so variable. True that mine averaged 2% Sb and no tin, but I've bought commercial reclaimed that was only 1.5% Sb and no Sn, after it was advertised as much higher in both metals. The company is reputable; it turns out they XRF'd a sample that turned out not to be representative, in other words, their lots were not consistent in content.

After consolidating your scrap into three lots, you could get each analyzed. Alternatively you can test hardness and work from that, the way most folks did prior to having XRF available..

[Rich/WIS]

I have used run of the mine range lead for years in 9mm, 38/357, 40, 45 ACP & Colt, and 44 Mag. All my loads were low end in terms of velocity and RL cast and shot fine even without tin. Many years ago a vendor on here said that RL ran +or- 2% Sb and very little to no Sn. When alloying using RL I figure it as 2% Sb for a rough estimate of my alloy content, and mixed 10 to 1 with foundry type is approximately 3+% Sb and 1+% Sn, an alloy I have found works for 90% of what my friends and I shoot in handguns. For my rifle shooting have found that mixing 4 or 5 to 1 foundry type casts a nice bullet for my 243, 06 and 30/40 for my use, 1500-1600 fps w/gas check. Many will consider this too soft for rifle use but my targets tell me otherwise.

[facetious]

After looking it look's like it may fit in two pots full and the pic he sent of the cooker looks like it will hold it so I think I 'll try adding the pewter and mixing it to have one big batch. I can always adjust it later if I have to.

What I think I will do is cast some of the LBT's , do a 10lb pot full and air cool half and water drop the other half give them some time to age and squash them in the vice with some that are cast from WW+tin and see how much softer thy are. May try and load some and see how thy shoot.

I can see this turning in to a all summer project . There are other thing that I should be getting done.

[fredj338]

I just smash the plated bullets & they melt fine. I don't bother with small jacketed, just not enough lead core to bother. Scrap goes oin the trash, no one local wants anything that has lead attached so why bother.

[facetious]

In a "for what it is worth" up date I got the cooker and the dutch oven held half with ease and I got it all mixed and the same. I added 2% pewter and a ingot's worth of birdshot in hopes that I can WD them if I have to.

In the what have I learned category is that this turned in to a lot of work. After finishing I was worn out for two days, I had moved it all into my shed then get the use of the cooker and have to move it back to the garage melt and mix and put it back in the shed. I didn't think I'd get this old so fast after retiring!

The scrap place didn't want the old jackets unless thy were perfectly clean so they went to the recycle bin.

As to the lead I wish I would have took a pic. of it before I remixed it and added the pewter. The ingots were shiny but the crystals looked large. After mixing and recasting the ingots I saw the crystals were 1/3rd to 1/4th the size. When putting them away I tapped two ingots of soft lead together , two ingots of stereotype and two ingots of this mix together. The soft had a dull low key "ting" , the stereotype much higher and this mix was in between but closer to the stereotype . So I know it must be harder than soft lead. I think the next thing is to cast some and see how much they weigh and compare them to the same boolit in a known
alloy.

Well so much for this instalment of "constructive procrastination" to distract from the stuff I "should" be doing.

[Gobeyond]

In a "for what it is worth" up date I got the cooker and the dutch oven held half with ease and I got it all mixed and the same. I added 2% pewter and a ingot's worth of birdshot in hopes that I can WD them if I have to.

In the what have I learned category is that this turned in to a lot of work. After finishing I was worn out for two days, I had moved it all into my shed then get the use of the cooker and have to move it back to the garage melt and mix and put it back in the shed. I didn't think I'd get this old so fast after retiring!

The scrap place didn't want the old jackets unless thy were perfectly clean so they went to the recycle bin.

As to the lead I wish I would have took a pic. of it before I remixed it and added the pewter. The ingots were shiny but the crystals looked large. After mixing and recasting the ingots I saw the crystals were 1/3rd to 1/4th the size. When putting them away I tapped two ingots of soft lead together , two ingots of stereotype and two ingots of this mix together. The soft had a dull low key "ting" , the stereotype much higher and this mix was in between but closer to the stereotype . So I know it must be harder than soft lead. I think the next thing is to cast some and see how much they weigh and compare them to the same boolit in a known
alloy.

Well so much for this instalment of "constructive procrastination" to distract from the stuff I "should" be doing.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. You’ll get back to it when you feel like it

[dverna]

As I started reading your thread my first thought was..."Is it worth all the work?" 170 lbs of "mystery" alloy. I have been purchasing alloy on the site for about $1.10 delivered. So less than $200 for your efforts.

I am cheap, but not that cheap...or maybe a lot lazier...LOL.

I built a sand bullet trap last year. The bullets will be from 92-2-6 alloy, .22 LR and a few jacketed rounds so the alloy will be "good". I will not try to salvage lead from jacketed bullets as I shoot so few and it seems to be too much work. I have not reclaimed any yet so no idea how much effort will be needed. I expect it should take about an hour to sift the bullets out and put the sand back into the trap; and another 2 hours to melt/ingot 100 lbs. That I can live with. The alloy I use cost me $1.67/lb seven years ago.

I fear that range lead will get more and more "iffy" as time marches on. For a lot of uses it will not matter much. Almost anything will work for .38 plinking bullets. But alloy will matter in other applications.

Once I have evaluated my sand trap reclaim system, I will decide what to do with the rest of my commercial alloy. I may have 600 lbs of WW; and a ton of linotype and 92-2-6 for sale.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It was valuable.