A blessing and a curse, what do I do with it?

[dhaid-06]

I am looking for suggestions to speed up my operation. The picture below shows what I picked up from a guy at the local gun shop a little while back. The story goes that he moved into a different house, and the person that lived there before must have shot a lot. These were piled up in the yard when the new guy moved in and his wife wanted it out of here.

He asked if anyone wanted it, and of course I did. He wouldn't take any money for all of it.

Now I need to figure out a quicker way of getting the bullets pulled. The inertia puller I have is taking a long time.

Most of the cartridges are loaded with lead bullets (45 ACP, 38 sp., 357 mag mainly), and everyone of them has something wrong with them (must have been the discard pile. Primers in backward, no primers at all, bullets in backward, etc. A good portion of the .38 specials are nickel cases that looks good when they are tumbled, the brass ones are all stained up. Most have a full charge of powder in them. ( powder still burns after being out in the rain all these years, I lit some of it up).

I need some suggestions.

[finishman2000]

dig a hole and......
I wouldn't mess with them. not enough juice to justify the squeeze. brass, powder and primers are no good. alot of work just fro the lead. just IMHO anyway.

[Marlin Hunter]

Grab 3 buckets and 2 pliers. Sit in a chair with one bucket in front of you and one on each side. Take a cartridge, grab the boolit with one plier and the brass with the other. Separate the two and pour the powder in the center bucket, put the lead in one bucket and the brass in the other. When finished sell the brass to the scrap dealer and buy new stuff. Melt down the lead for boolits, and make fireworks out of the powder.

[Frank46]

I'm with Marlin Hunter, too good just to throw away. Save the lead, decap primers then bury them, burn the powder and if the brass is no good at least will get a few gallons of gas after a trip to the scrap yard. Frank

[dhaid-06]

I tried pulling with pliers and the lead just scraped off, leaving the bullet in place. What do you think, try again and pinch harder?

[2ndAmendmentNut]

Brilliant idea #1) Throw them into your lead melting pot (outside) crank the heat up as high as it will go and run away for a few hours. Then just scoop the brass out and put it in a tumbler.

Brilliant idea #2) Load them in a friends gun, shoot them into a pool, and fish the lead out.

Okay a real idea) When I have stubborn cast boolits to pull I put them on my press with no die in the threads. Then I raise them up so they poke out the top and clamp onto the lead with a pair of vise grip pliers. Then just back the shell out and “pop.” Just be sure you have some leather or wood in-between the pliers and press or else you might damage the threads. Good luck.

Personally with that tremendous mountain of components I might be tempted to try brilliant idea #1.

[Firebricker]

What about getting a set of bolt cutters and clamping bottom handle in a vise. Then set a bucket under neath and cut em off as close to the base of boolit as possable and melt it and skim the brass pieces out ? It's to much to waste so if nothing else go back to pulling em and just do 40 or 50 every time you reload. If you try bolt cutters I'd go with a face shield just to be extra safe. If it was free it has to be TREASURE lol. FB

[Jaybird62]

Wow. This would drive me crazy. I like press-and-vice-grip idea the best. I think I would spend an hour and see how much progress I made and how much brass was salvagable before going through both buckets.

[selmerfan]

I would honestly fill a dutch oven with cartridges, put the lid on, turn the heat up and wait for things to happen. There won't be enough oomph to take out the dutch oven, remember Newton's laws! It should salvage the lead, but with lots of crap to clean out, including cases that may be full of molten lead when trying to dip them out.

[Firebricker]

2ndAmendmentNut, Option #3 is a great idea I would never have thought of. Sounds a lot better than my idea. But I have to go with Brilliant idea #2 Using friends and their personal firearms for guennie pigs is always a good time ! LOL FB

[HeavyMetal]

I see some lead in there that's for sure!

However I belive Kenny Rogers says it best: Ya got to know when to hold and know when to fold'em!

A lot of our hobby is a labor of love but that's just to darn much labor for me!

[jdgabbard]

Pipe cutter, melt and skim... Simple, yet effective...

[briang]

If it was me, I'd throw them in my burn barrel. Light it up and come back in a day or two (so I know it was cold and one wasn't gonna go off on me) and clean the mess up. Might cover the top with a couple layers of hardware cloth to contain any flying bits.

I'm not advising you to do this, only telling you what I would do. You are responsible for your own actions.

[Lloyd Smale]

dont believe that cooking off ammo is a safe thing to do. When my pole barn burned one wall by where i stored live ammo looked like swiss cheese! Ammo blew threw the steal walls and i found cases as far as a 100 yards from the building. Even found some on the roof of my house and the siding on the house had a couple cases imbedded in it. If they made it through steal walls theyd make it through someones body. most of the cases found a distance from the barn were handgun cases so that tells me that the faster burning pistol powders are even more dangerous that magnum rilfe rounds. Only rifle rounds i can recall finding away from the building were 762x39 which again use a reletively fast powder. If it were me id just bury them.

[EMC45]

I am cheap. I mean cheap! I would pick a day when you had absolutely nothing else to do and go at the bucket with the pipe cutter like jdgabbard said. once you get past the base of the bullet it will pop off and the you can drop the brass case mouth portion and lead into pot and it will melt, the brass will float and you will have a bunch of alloy. Like I said I am cheap.

[Ricochet]

Heating them to popoff temperature in a loosely confined container is what I thought of, too.

[Whitespider]

Personally, I’d salvage both lead and brass.

I wouldn’t try melting the lead from loaded rounds. What if one of the cartridges ended up sitting with the base flat against the bottom or side of the pot? I’ve pulled a lot of bullets by running them up through the top of the press and grabbing the bullet with a side cutter (instead of a vise grip); the side cutter “bites” into the lead and the amount of “bite” applied can be adjusted by the squeeze as needed.

Brass is surprisingly resilient; it can sit in the weather for years without undo damage. As you’re pulling bullets toss any brass that’s obviously beyond salvage, but I’m betting most can be saved. Dump the powder and knock out the primers, soak in a solution of 2 tablespoons salt to one quart of white vinegar (vinegar is acetic acid, won’t weaken brass) shaking and stirring occasionally. After draining off the salt/vinegar solution (save it, it can be used seemingly forever) rinse thoroughly with clean water, you can use a bit of Ivory dish soap (plain soap, no smelly stuff) in the first rinse if you like. Allow them to dry completely and tumble as you normally would to finish. The acid solution will remove the tarnish, or turn it into pinkish stuff that will polish right off, and loosens the carbon residue on the inside and in the primer pockets. Often the insides of the cases end up looking like new. Of course, you’ll need to inspect them a final time, looking for damage such as heavy pitting, cracks, etc.

[mrbill2]

"Ammo blew threw the steal walls and i found cases as far as a 100 yards from the building."
Lloyd, just curious. How thick were the steel walls ?
Mr. Bill2

[44man]

Brilliant idea #1) Throw them into your lead melting pot (outside) crank the heat up as high as it will go and run away for a few hours. Then just scoop the brass out and put it in a tumbler.

Brilliant idea #2) Load them in a friends gun, shoot them into a pool, and fish the lead out.

Okay a real idea) When I have stubborn cast boolits to pull I put them on my press with no die in the threads. Then I raise them up so they poke out the top and clamp onto the lead with a pair of vise grip pliers. Then just back the shell out and “pop.” Just be sure you have some leather or wood in-between the pliers and press or else you might damage the threads. Good luck.

Personally with that tremendous mountain of components I might be tempted to try brilliant idea #1.

I like no. 1, silver grass never needs cut!

[bedwards]

I wouldn't burn anything loaded. I had a neighbors truck catch fire and he had just bought some 30/30 ammo still in the seat. Needless to say, it went off and blew hot ripped cases out of the windows and 30 yards or more away. We never found the boolits.


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