Good trip to the PO

[selmerfan]

I dropped off a few packages in the mail today, and the clerk, whom I've conversed with at length before about my casting, looks at me when I walk in and says "I have something for you." He brought out a solid brick of lead, through it on the scale, 26 lbs. Marked with the radioactive symbol and stamped "Tracer Labs" Not sure of the composition on it, but his brother has some plumber's lead left in his garage he wants to get rid of, about 50 lbs, all for the price of getting it out of his way. :grin:

[jnovotny]

Free lead ahh the good old days. Was a time everyone in town knew that I collected lead for casting. So I would come home and find roof flashing or lead pipe laid out in front of my garage, most of the time I had no idea who had left it. Haven't had any for awhile so either they figured I had enough or somebody beat me to it. Any way good score.

[Crash_Corrigan]

I was walking my dog one day and I saw a guy working on a large RC Airplane in his driveway. I walked over and we started to talk about the RC thing.

Eventually I went with him the local RC club airfield and watched him fly this thing. It was a lot of fun. During the conversation I got to talking about my reloading and smelting and how I was always looking for lead for boolits.

When we got back to his place I helped him to unload all his stuff into his garage and he took me into the back yard. Again a garden wall he had a large pile of bricks. He told me I could have them. I went over to examine them and found them all to be pure lead. He told me that he had worked at the Nevada Test Site and these bricks of lead were used to line a tall chimney for some procedure and when they scrapped the chimmney he snagged a bunch of these bricks.

He never could find a use for them so he had stashed them in the backyard for over 15 years and he was happy to get rid of them

When I got home I ended up with a solid pile of solid lead bricks. Each one weighed over 50 lbs and made up a neat pile 4' x 2' x 2'. I never bothered to count them but when smelted they are super clean and make dandy boolits.

They are a mite soft for rifle boolits but when mixed with ww's at about 50% they worked fine for 9 MM's and .45 ACP. The pure boolits cast great for my 50-90 Sharps but they needed a smidgen of tin to fill out the molds cleanly.

Now I need to make a boolit trap to recycle this stuff as it is getting scarce around here.

[nanuk]

Crash, according to my calculations, you should have 11344 lbs of lead/alloy.

I reall doubt you NEED to recycle due to scarcity.

lets see, that's 79,408,000 grains.... you say it is clean so let's lose the 480k grains and go with 79,000,000 grains.... if you are making boolits at 500gr each...

that is 158,816 boolits.... WOW!

it would take almost 1600 lbs of BP to shoot them all off!

I think the EPA would come knocking and demand you set up a scrubber of some sort for the smog you'd make......

[Crash_Corrigan]

I don't know if your estimate is correct but I will tell you that using my 85 Ford F 150 PU I could only load about 20 of those chunks of lead into the PU bed and trundle home with them. As I only lived about 2 blocks away I made many trips of the next two days. I lost track of how many trips but there were over 20 each day and with a full load of 20 bricks piled up close to the cab the whole truck was pretty much overloaded and the springs were almost at the rubber stops on the frame.

If I were to win the lottery and spring for the commercial trap I would need to mount it on a trailer to be towed by my truck and then placed out in the puckerbrush for shooting. It would take years to save enuf lead to cover the purchase price of their monstrosity.

I was worn out enuf to hire a teen ager to help me move this stuff. Since then I have moved this pile twice. Once to another apartment which I shared with a fella and then after he turned out to be a PITA I move the whole pile to my ex's garage. The pile resides in her garage alongside my pile of smelted alloy and my gun safe with the remainder of my guns.

I keep my safe over there as the the floor of my tin trailer cannot take the 700 lb weight of the safe and I am afraid that it will fall through the floor. The entry stairs and porch are lightly constructed of plywood and I know that that stuff cannot handle the weight at all.

I really need to construct a bullet trap to save my lead as these 50-90 boolits of 695 grains weigh almost 1/10 of a pound and it is criminal to waste that amount of lead by leaving it on the floor of the desert.

I went to the SHOT show at the Venetian a few weeks ago here in Vegas and they had a bullet trap for sale. The smaller one weighed over 500 pounds and cost a buncha money. It was overbuilt like a Abrahams Tank with steel plate and such and I know I can make one for cheap utilizing thin plywood reinforced with fibreglass and one end plate of AR 500 Steel. It shoudl be only about 36" long and filled with rubber crumbs and without the plate should weigh in the neighborhood of less than 130 lbs. With a set of handles and a pair of friends I could set this anywhere and stop my boolits from being wasted. Maybe I could incorporate an axle and a big set of bicycle wheels and tires to move it around.

Then I would have to not let my shooting buddies shoot at since they seem to always destroy my targets by misaimed shots and I do not need a flat tire. Then again I could protect the tires with some AR500 steel but that would cost more bucks and weigh more. I need friends who can shoot better but at least they are helpful in carrying stuff. Somewhere in there may be a happy medium.

I need to do something as my Scottish ancestors are turning over in their graves watching me waste valuable lead alloy this way.

[sundog]

Crash, let yer buddies shoot with you..., and then keep their lead!

[white eagle]

I have some of those bricks as well
little buggers is heavier than they look