How much in a 5 gallon bucket?

[Outpost75]

$25 per 5 gallon bucket is a great price.

We are paying $0.35 per pound run across the scales, with $100 minimum purchase here and are really glad to get them.

Here's what $500 worth looks like from our last run.

Attachment 78088

Attachment 78087

[Old Ranger]

Just finished cleaning up (casted into ingots) a 5 gal pail of WW which was about 2/3rds full. 60 lbs of COWW, a couple lbs of Stick on's, about 5 lbs of Fe's and a lb or so of Zn. I didn't weight the clips and other assorted junk. Cost was $ 30.00. Yield was pretty typical of what is available in rual Ontario.
I probably have a half ton in my stash but only 400 lbs has been cleaned up. Today's bucket was only picked up last week so represents what is out there right now in my part of the world.

[1bilmr59]

I Think .20 a pound is good.

[Clay M]

I pay about .28 a pound for WW.I can sort the bucket and take the zinc and steel back and get it replaced with lead.

[louism]

The last 2 full 5 gallon buckets I picked up were 18 wheeler weights and yeided 370lbs of ingots. I would estimate they weighed in at 200lbs each.

[catman81056]

The last 2 full 5 gallon buckets I picked up were 18 wheeler weights and yeided 370lbs of ingots. I would estimate they weighed in at 200lbs each.

I just payed .20/lb last week. 5 gal bucket weighed 180lbs. I got about 152lbs of good material after sorting zinc/steel and clips.

[fastfire]

You got it good! Here we pay in the .80 lb.

[catman81056]

The local scrap yard pays .20 lb and then sells them for .40 lb . I got lucky and found an older service station that had that bucket, I was happy to give him .20.

[georgerkahn]

In northern New York State, the local metal place buys WW at >.25/lb and sells it for .35/lb. I just bought a full 5 gallon bucket which weighed in at 140 pounds. The questionable part is the lowest 12" or so had water which I obviously paid for, and lots of mud, too. But, I went through a few pounds and found but a couple of steel WW's, no Zinc (I think), and nothing obviously gross... The challenge has been that lead WW's have been illegal in NYS for three years or so; hence, as these were presented as "having been in the corner here for years" I'm hoping others passed on it due to the mud -- but, overall I got a "deal". (I hope...) geo

[hardwood34]

Couple days ago just finished WW melting. Got 2/3 full 150 gal drum for free! from local Tire service center. Medium weight of 5 gal bucket 170 lb and output is 68/72 lb per bucket - a lot of steel, zinc add other garbage. So, in reality output is 50/50 or even less.

[Rfieldbuilds]

Oh ****. California sucks. I just sorted a 4 gallon buck 2/3 full got 38 lbs steel ww, 30 lbs zinc, 18 lbs lead! No longer worth my time. May as well work an extra hour or two a day and go pick up soft lead roof flashing for $1/lb at my scrapyard. Yeah, it has a bit of tar on it, but, hey- I won't have to flux!LOL

[KingAirNeal]

I looked on CL, found a guy trading WW for ??? and did a deal. Traded a 410 breech single shot shot gun for 600 pounds of mixed WW.
I got a heck of a deal!
It was in 7 buckets, about 3.5-4 gallon capacity I think. (actually 6 of those and 1 normal 5 gallon)
I weighed them all before the sort, and they averaged 85 pounds each.

Here is the breakdown after the sort.

495 pounds total lead. 450 clip on, 45 stick on.
65 pounds steel (Fe)
28 pounds Zinc
rest was trash... valve stems cigarette butts etc.
I expect to loose some more when we smelt to ingots in clip weight, and mis-sort. I am sure I missed some unmarked Zinc.

Took about 6 man hours to sort. My back is NOT happy with me right now!

Looking forward to getting these WW's into ingots, and sometime in the next month or so, casting into usable boolits! Still doing my research on here for what molds to buy, boolit shape, lube, etc.

I'll keep y'all posted how much we get from the smelt in finished ingots.

Still very hard to find reasonable WW in my area. There is someone locking up the market. I had to go almost 2 hours away from my area to secure my source. There is a local guy willing to sell all lead WW in FULL 5 gallon buckets for 75 bucks a pop. If I had only known years ago what would happen with the lead supply...

[boog]

I just found a 120lb bucket for $70 ~$.59 a pound. Still cheaper than the $.80 at the scrap yard. Still sorting, but it is looking good, very little fe and Zn.

Even if I lose 20lbs in scrap it will still be cheap boolits!

[tmc-okc]

Just last week I was able to purchase a 5 gallon bucket that was overflowing with ww's at a local tire shop. I divided it into 3 buckets to make it easier to pickup and place in the trunk of my car. Weighed all 3 buckets on my "Legal For Trade" scale and the total came to 210 Lbs. Will start the separating process tonight and smelting as soon as everything is separated properly. I paid $ 20 for the overflowing bucket. Even had to pickup several Lbs of stuff off the floor that didn't make it into the bucket.

Ron

[KuunLB]

i'm one of the lucky ones that works at a semi tire shop. get the big uns for free all day and i can get paid to sort em. right now lead WW's seem to go for .15/lb and pure lead is .30/lb. alot less than what it was early in this threads life hehe

[Alexn20]

Prices here have gone up a bit and they seem to be getting harder to find.

Locally I am able to get them for 70 cents /pound at my local scrap yard. (they buy them for ~50 cents a pound I assume)

Going through a bucket it looks to be about 10%-20% zinc/steel/etc...

If you guys know of a better source in Utah please let me know!

[bdecker9]

The last ones I got were from a semi shop, and they were nice, more lead, less clips, I don't remember for sure, but there was only s few zn and no iron.

[khmer6]

Just picked up 2 buckets yesterday in Az. 156# and 168# sorted thru and still same yield as 2 years ago. Roughly 82% are lead weights. Cost was $8 in jack in the box

[Top]

up here in the greath north woods (upper NH) i have had access to the 5 gal pail full weighted in at 150# +/- , sorted out ended up with about 10% steel 20% zink from one shop ( depends on if they deal with alot of new car's most have the zink or steel weights now( trying to be CA compliant) so as an average so far its about 48% in cast ingots after all is said and done last batch was 54% an older shop dealing with off the street cars, i was curious to the price of them, looked it up and US average is 28 cents per # but all in all i water quench the ingots and cast b and ending up with a 14.5 -19 BHN not bad stuff for little money cause we can not count our time in a hobby

Top

[Tenbender]

I can't say about one 5 gall bucket but I just melted down 1 1/2 buckets. After taking out the zink and steel I had 179 one lb. ingots and about 30-40 lb's of stick-ons. Good morning I thought. I poured 20 ingots at a time. Kept me busy filling my pot.