pure lead?

[barnabus]

im needing some pure lead for making minnies for a 1861 Springfield.However i know many people who sell lead and claim its pure and am leary of buying because it could be from a boat keel or something other than pure.Can yall point me to someone or place that it will be pure and what is a fair price per lb?

[rancher1913]

any of the vendor sponsors would be a good start. you can get away with range lead for your minies, its not pure but your gun wont notice the difference.

[centershot]

I believe that you'll get better performance from your Minie's if you use pure lead. At the top of this page you'll see an add for Rotometals, one of the sponsors of this site. They'll have pure lead, a little over $2 per pound, shipping included. Buy it!

https://www.rotometals.com/cut-in-ha...ight-included/

[MOA]

I'd find a roofing company who would sell me all the lead roofing jacks they replace with the plastic ones when they put on a new roof for their customers. I got about 2000 pounds over 6 years. As far as I know they are pure lead.







I bought three of these galvanized trash cans at Wal-Mart and just put the flattened jacks in them with the lids on tight for storage. Three full cans will keep you busy all day smelting them down into ingots. 😆 😆

[gbrown]

I would agree with MOA. I was fortunate enough to find some that way. Got 3 piles of them. Took a while to smelt.

[Mitch]

in general sheet and pipe is pure lead.If you can find a scrap yard that will sell you lead i am sure there will be some sheet and pipe there at some point
seems dependingon where you are or who you are dealing with the price is btewwn 40 to 80 cents per lb.

[dtknowles]

I would get roof jacks if you can, they are very soft, almost pure. You don't say where you live but roofing season is over up north so get jacks while the getting is good.

Tim

[Budzilla 19]

Just remelted 50+ pounds of roof jacks yesterday!!! Good Lord, that stuff is soft! When you mark it with letter stamps, gotta be careful to not drive the stamp WAY deep in the muffins of lead!!! With all the hurricanes damages around here, I’m in scrounging mode again! Got some Linotype, so y’all know where that’s going! Be safe, and good luck to all!

[samari46]

Roof jacks or stack vents as we used to call them and roofing lead are just about almost pure lead. Only part that isn't really pure is where they are soldered together. Same thing goes for cable sheathing. Frank

[fredj338]

I have 500-600# of pure lead if you have some lino or #2 to trade. It is all from lead sheathing, vey soft. Lino must be in type form, I have gotten screwed before with so called ingots. Seriously, who melt lino into 10# ingots? Lyman #2 can be ingots but nothing over 2# each.

[lightman]

Like the others have said, roof jacks, sheet lead and most pipe are nearly pure except for the soldered seams. Cable sheathing is soft lead but it most likely runs to about 98.5% pure. It also has soldered seams in places. Stick-on wheel weights are also very soft except for one type of them thats more like clip-on weights.

Roto-Metals is also a good source.

[Teddy (punchie)]

Easy enough to tell drop a 1 pound ingot. If you hold it up a few inches and can hear. Drop it, drop some range lead. Try and drop some wheel weights. All have a ring sound but the pure lead, has a dead thud. Harder it is the more it rings.

Other way is to get some about 3/8 to 1/2 round or square. Bend it, if hard to bend, it's going to be hard mix of something. Pure lead or almost pure easy enough to bend and if it breaks in a drawn bend. Harder the lead/mix the harder the it is to bend and it snaps.

[Winger Ed.]

Not a big source, but at the Home Depot, Lowes type stores, their departments have a clean up schedule.

You can often scrounge free torn bags of cement (for example) from the dept. manager---
and new roof jacks that are too smashed for them to sell.

You won't need overload springs on the truck to take them all home, but getting 2-3 on occasion is pretty good when they're free.