Ship lead ballast

[Hot Lead]

I have the opportunity to buy some ship lead ballast. The fellow I can buy this lead from has no idea what the exact metal composition of this ballast is. It is from an old ship. Logically, my guess would be "who knows". There probably is a hundred compositions depending on the company, date, etc. If anyone has any info on composition of ship lead ballast , please share your ideas with me. I am a small time bullet caster, so I have no tools/methods of determining what types of metals lies deep within the ballast. Thanks abunch.

[runfiverun]

he's right if it was heavy it got poured in.
if it was a big manufacturer they may have bought from a refinery and i'd imagine scrap that hadn't been cleaned up yet was the cheapest they had.
if they bought it in bulk it was most likely plain lead.

[Bloodman14]

Buy it as cheap as you can, and then offer it up for sale or trade here.

[cajun shooter]

I have purchased lead that was used as fill for sailboats. It always tested at 5 to 10 BHN, never more and made wonderful bullets.

[OnceFired]

Does anyone know if waverunners have lead ballast in them?

I see a lot of info talking about how it uses water as ballast, which doesn't help. I see hull-only waverunners and seadoo's on CraigsList pretty frequently in my area.

OF

[GhostHawk]

Doubt it.

Sailboats use a lead keel because they have a honking big mast and big chunk of sail up there.
Throw in a 24mph gust of wind without a lead keel and it could turn turtle = ship lost.

So they put a carefully calculated amount of lead in the keel, get it as low as possible, but it is a measured amount, ship still needs to float.

Jet Ski's run off a gasoline powered motor which drives a high capacity high speed water pump.
Water comes in at the front (through a grate) in a 5-6" pipe, and exits out the rear in a 3" swiveled pipe for steering.

No lead needed, Engine and pump are plenty heavy.

[Yodogsandman]

I had some ships ballast given to me, in about 10 lb rectangular blocks. It kept buggering up the spout of my bottom pour pot. No amount of fluxing helped. I still have some that I only use for big saltwater fishing weights, now. I use my smelting pot and a ladle to fill those molds. It wasn't worth all that aggrevation, having the spout clog up all the time. At the time I was trying to use it to make muzzle loading maxi-balls. I think it was very close to pure lead but, with a lot of crud and other metals mixed in.

Bring a piece to a metals recycling center that has an x ray analyzer and have it tested. Then you won't be disappointed.

[Steve Steven]

The Navy uses a lot of lead to balance ships, they keep addings topside and have to balance down low with lead. The Navy uses lead to a mil-std, don't remember the number its like 799. I do remember the lead was in several grades, worst was 95% lead, the highest was 99.5% lead.

I have a chunk, and its dead soft!

Steve

[OnceFired]

Bummer on the waverunner. Would have been nice to get a bunch of lead for free. :(

OF