There's no such thing as bad lead alloy anymore

[Trapaddict]

Well, at least not since I got a downrigger cannonball mold. :grin:

Just an idea for those of you living around the great lakes or perhaps the ocean bordering states. I used to sometimes end up with alloys of unknown origin. Sometimes for free and sometimes not. Every once in a while you just get a batch of something that is bound and determined to ruin your day. Enter the cannonball mold. Every time I get a bad batch of alloy now, I just break out the mold and cast up as many 10 pounders as I can and sell them to the salmon and steelhead fishermen on Lakes Michigan and Huron during my own Spring and Fall fishing trips. Check out the cost of one of these things at your local tackle shop. Cabelas is getting about $25 plus tax for a 10 pounder around here. I get between $15 and $20 with no trouble. The mold pays for itself after the first few cannonballs. A small price to pay when you're staring at a couple hundred pounds of scrap alloy in the corner of the garage!

Jeff

[2wheelDuke]

I feel the same way about egg sinkers. I had a batch driving me nuts trying to cast boolits, but it makes great sinkers.

I haven't had time to fish in a while, but sinkers make for good currency, since tons of people fish down here.

[10 ga]

Dittos, here in VA fishing sinkers are a good swap item. I have molds for sinkers from 1/4 oz to 20 oz and for net weights at 1, 1 1/2, 2 oz and a 600' net takes from 12 to 25#. I have 10 nets and a couple are 1200' so that's a lot of lead. No such thing as bad alloy or throwing away or selling zinc. Best to all and good scrounging. 10

[Trapaddict]

Funny story about Zinc 10 ga.... I also drip my own shot for trap shoooting and straight wheelweights is what I use for that. My partner in crime and I went to the local scrap yard and bought all the wheelweights they had a few years ago for 15 cents a pound. Well, I guess it's been more than a few. We ended up with over 5 tons of weights before smelting with an average loss of 13-15% for the steel clips, tire stems, lug nuts and zinc and iron weights. We ended up with a full 55 gal drum of brand new zinc weights in the deal that we thought were new lead at time of purchase. My buddy was real po'd about the zinc and having to take it back since we had already unloaded it off of the trailer. Well, being the procrastinators we are, it sat is his barn for about a year or so. Then came 2006 and the price of zinc shot up by about 100% so we put it back on the trailer and sold it back to the scrap yard for somewhere around 40 cents a pound for the whole drum. Not a bad deal! So in the long run we got almost 2 tons of our wheelweight lead for free by selling the zinc back. Sometimes things go your way.

Jeff